michael mintrom and richard walley 2011_education governance in comparative perspective

7/31/2019 Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley 2011_education Governance in Comparative Perspective

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EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Michael Mintrom Richard Walley

Rethinking Education Governance in the Twenty-First Century Conference

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Center for American Progress

December 1, 2011

Abstract: This chapter surveys education governance in six jurisdictions that have enjoyed high

average levels of student attainment on standardized international tests over a sustained period.

The survey explores how different governing institutions and relationships shape the content of

education policy and school operations. The featured jurisdictions are: Australia, Canada,

Finland, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Wide variation exists among

governance arrangements in these jurisdictions, so it is possible to assess whether some specific

arrangements generate better student outcomes than others. In fact, links between governance

and student achievement are weak, suggesting that intermediary factors have far greater

influence than governance itself. We claim that governance reforms will serve to promote

improved student achievement only when the new governance arrangements make educational

effectiveness the central goal. Further, due recognition must be given to the far greater influence

of policy and program factors, like teaching quality. We drawn six lessons for governance

reformers: (1) Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize

the power of leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and

(6) Address teacher preparation.


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EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley1

In the present era, the leaders of national, state, and local governments the world over caredeeply about the quality of schooling in their respective jurisdictions. Political leaders, public

intellectuals, and business elites have long recognized the importance of education for social

cohesion, for the transmission of social values, and for economic advancement. This explains the

widespread development in the nineteenth century of systems for universal public education, and

the efforts made worldwide in the twentieth century to emulate, expand, and enhance those

systems. The present era, then, shares with the past a relentless quest on the part of governments

everywhere to ensure that education of suitable quality is made available to as many children and

young people as possible. But the present era is also distinct.

The most noticeable difference between the past and the present is the urgency and importancethat is now attached to ensuring quality education for all. The causes of that difference are two-

fold, and closely related. First, it is now well understood that knowledge is the fundamental

driver of economic advancement (Florida 2004; Helpman 2004). Second, continuous economic

advancement predicated on the market system, and the competition engendered by that system,

has led to greater integration of local, regional, and national economies with global economic

processes (Friedman 2007; Porter 1990). Intensification of economic competition has wiped out

much of the stability and predictability that once characterized everyday life in economically

advanced democracies. Doing whatever can be done to win back some of that stability and

predictability has become a mandate for political leaders everywhere. In a nutshell, that explains

why education and, specifically, education governance, is a hot topic globally. It will remain ahot topic for the foreseeable future.

Through their combined efforts, the authors of other chapters in this volume have effectively

portrayed the range of issues that arise when we consider educational governance. There is little

doubt that governing institutions and relationships can have significant influence on the content

of education policy and on school operations. So while governance of public schooling in the

United States is fraught with complexity and controversy, everything turns on a simple question:

Who should control what happens in the classroom? To a large degree, the history of public

schooling in the United States is a story of battles for that control. The progressive movement

that was in ascendance from 1890 to 1920 placed considerable emphasis on the need to separate

1The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New

Zealand Ministry of Education.


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the administration of governmental systems from the control of politicians (Knott and Miller

1987). The idea was that bureaucracies would be staffed by professionals exhibiting neutral

competence (Kaufman 1960). In the realm of public education, the progressive movement was

responsible for the creation of school boards that served to buffer schools from the direct

interventions of politicians in decisions concerning the curriculum, the hiring of staff, and so on

(Tyack 1974). Subsequent efforts during the twentieth century to rebalance the control of

schools, and give politicians and parents more influence have been thoroughly documented

(Ravitch 1983; Clune and Witte 1990). The progressive movement, and the governance

arrangements that it successfully locked in place, cast a very long shadow over public schooling

in the United States. By designas documented by Tyack and Tobin (1994)much political

savvy guided the establishment of the one best system of public schooling, and it was built to

last. This is shown by the resilience of the system against wave upon wave of pressures for

reform. The creation of education bureaucracies operating at arms length from political

influence has made systematic, top-down change extremely difficult. (See Jeffrey Henigs

chapter for a review of executive-level efforts to achieve greater control over public schools).

In this chapter, we seek to contextualize recent discussions of educational governance in the

United States by contrasting developments in this country with those in several other countries.

Our comparative study shows that distinctly different governance arrangements are equally

capable of producing excellent results, as measured by student performance on standardized

international tests. This finding is consistent with recent work by John Hattie (2005, 2009).

Through meta-analyses of student outcome data, Hattie has shown that a variety of classroom-

level practices have much stronger impacts on student learning than do differences in class size

and other matters that broadly link to school governance. We conclude from this convergence of

evidence that education governance can make a significant difference to student outcomes solong as it supports effective practices in schools and classrooms.

The chapter is organized in six sections. Part one considers general factors relating to

consideration and categorization of governance arrangements across different jurisdictions.

Part two considers the comparative performance of our case countries on international

standardized testing. We then move to a series of more specific case studies and cross-

jurisdictional analyses. Part three considers the contrasting cases of high-performers Finland and

South Korea. Part four briefly reviews the recent history of governance reforms in the United

Kingdom and the resulting effects on student outcomes. Part five considers the governance of

schools, their usefulness as units of comparison for performance, and some indicative

information on ways in which governance may, through intermediary factors, influence student

achievement. Part six presents our lessons for governance reformers: (1) Avoid costly political

battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of leadership, (4) Focus on


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classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and (6) Address teacher preparation. We

conclude by considering the implications of these lessons for education governance reform in the

United States and elsewhere.

Part One: Ways of Thinking about and Comparing Governance

In seeking to understand governance struggles in any area of public policy, it is crucial to

appreciate the ways that specific actors can effectively undermine, constrain, or veto decisions

made by others (Konig, Tsebelis, Debus 2010). In general, the greater the number of people who

are given legitimacy to weigh in on decisions, the greater the number of veto points that any

given decision must clear. It seems redundant to note that comparing education governance

arrangements internationally is complex. The central questions of who makes which decisions on

what in what circumstances have a wide variety of permutations and forms that make simple

comparisons difficult. The range of factors needing to be governed, and scope of diversity even

within jurisdictions, should make us suspicious of simple conclusions. (This point resonates with

evidence in Barry Rabes contribution to this volume, where the focus is placed on governanceissues in the distinctly different areas of health care and environmental protection.)

Figure 1 presents a non-exhaustive matrix of actors and decisions in education governance. Each

blank box in the center of the matrix can be thought of as a veto point, offering an opportunity

for people to wrestle control in decision-making. The first thing to note about this figure is that

placing a check in any box on the matrix does not preclude a check being placed anywhere else.

Finances may be managed by a parent committee, approved by a local board, and voted by

central government within an existing and possibly quite limiting legislative framework. The

multi-dimensional complexity portrayed in Figure 1 continues to reveal itself when considering

that simple catch-all terms such as, for example, curriculum are not homogenous. Curriculumcan range from prescriptive programs of learning to broad frameworks with a great deal of

teacher autonomy; sometimes both alongside each other at different ages or with different

subjects. Additionally, it is a feature, particularly of many Anglo-Saxon systems, that dispersion

of control across this matrix varies across institutions within a jurisdiction. Long-established

private schools, and newer entities such as academies in the UK and charter schools in the US,

enjoy a greater degree of autonomy than their rule-constrained counterparts. But the payment of

fees or close engagement of parents in school decision-making changes the balance of what one

might call soft governancea degree of influence rather than control.

Finally, the nature and circumstance of the unit of comparisonthe jurisdictionhas hugeimplications for thinking about governance. For example, whether a decision or control is

delegated in legislation to a Cabinet-level Secretary of Education or a bureaucrat within a

Department of Education has implications that are played out in the context of the constitutional


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arrangements of the jurisdiction itself. Personalities, finely-attuned balances of power, and

political horse-trading in spheres completely unrelated to education may have profound

influences on the style of governance applied to education. It is also worth noting that decision-

making in these jurisdictional units tends to be driven more by individual idiosyncrasies that

structural commonalities. Even looking across a jurisdiction where school curriculum is set at a

national levelsuch as in New Zealandand one with more locally-established curriculasuch

as the United Statesdisguises the fact that New Zealand, with a school-age population of

around 750,000, is smaller than many of the local decision-making entities in the US.

Culturethe finely attuned balance of social norms and expectations that places pressure on

individuals and groups to behave in certain waysplays an enormous part in the successful

operation of education governance arrangements. Common evidence of the comparatively

greater success of parent education governance in high-income or high-SES areas is but one

indicator of this (Robinson and Ward 2005). Reducing layers of government control of public

schools can greatly reduce veto-points and, hence, contestation of decision-making. It also holds

the potential to address concerns about the uneven spread of managerial competenciesthroughout an education system. This helps explain why, during the past two decades, we have

seen mayors, state governors, and presidents seeking to achieve greater control over traditional

forms of school governance, always to the detriment of control previously exerted by actors

closer to the schools themselves, such as superintendents and boards (Allen and Mintrom 2010;

Henig and Rich 2004).


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Figure 1: Actors and decisions in education governance

Cur

riculum

Standardsand

Ass

essment

Enrolment

Rec

ruitment

Finance

Ope

rations

Management

stru

cture

Classsizeand

stru

cture

Property

mai

ntenance

etc

Central government

Local government

Local governance entities

(e.g. school boards)

Local or central bureaucracy

(e.g. Ministry of Education)

School governance entities

(e.g. UK governors)

Principals / head teachers

School middle management

Other specialists

(e.g. financial)

Parents

Teachers

Students

Other interested community

parties

External specialists


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(e.g. academics)

Etc.

The search for simple conclusions relating education governance to student outcomes is unlikely

to bear useful fruit. Easy conclusions abound, but those that hold up to rigorous interrogation are

few and far between. To further set the scene for this chapter we next consider soft and hard

control of schools, and indicate some ways to map veto points in educational governance. The

chief difficulty here is one of interpretation of information, and the real life effects of policy

settings. The example of school choice in Finland is instructive, and explored in a little more

detail later in this chapter. We note a number of seemingly conflicting key facts. School choice

in Finland is the most minimal of all jurisdictions under discussion. Official settings can simply

be characterized as zero choice; school places are assigned and that is that. Nonetheless, a

process exists whereby parents can apply to have this assignation changed, and around a quarterof parents do so. We also note that around 50 percent of Finnish principals report other schools

in their locality competing with them for students. So some degree of choice (or de facto

choice) exists in Finland, but clearly, the ability of parents to actualize this choice is limited. So

how does one characterize the level of choice in this system?

This leads to a further challenge, the role of soft governance. In systems as complex as

education, one anticipates a wide variety of individual circumstances. Relationships,

personalities, incomes, locations, and general predispositions all come into complex play.

Frustrating though it might be to those with an appetite for centralized control of schools, in

reality a school-level decision on particular testing practices can be as influenced by theprincipals friendship with a key parent as by central government policy. A simple and common

circumstance is practice around enrolment choice. Typically, home location determines

eligibility for attendance at a particular school across most jurisdictions. Property prices in those

areas reflect the ability to enroll a child in a favored school, and this will often in turn be

advertised by realtors. Parents with the necessary wherewithal will make these decisions

carefully, years in advance. This is a fascinating user-pays situation, where markets assign prices

to education through intermediary products, and provide some parents with one type of choice

where none is supposed to exist. Similar behavior is seen in some parents attending particular

religious institutions to secure enrolments into faith schools. Another example of the impact of

soft governance can be considered by working through Figure 2, which presents our suggestedmatrix in a case study of New Zealand. We highlight the relevant decision veto points below.


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Figure 2: Actors and decisionsan example from New Zealand

Cur

riculum

Standardsand

Ass

essment

Enrolment

Rec

ruitment

Finance

Ope

rations

Management

stru

cture

Classsizeand

stru

cture

Property

mai

ntenance

etc

Central government X X X X X

Local government

Local governance entities

(e.g. school boards)

Local or central bureaucracy

(e.g. Ministry of Education)

X X X X X

School governance entities

(e.g. UK governors)

X X X X X X X X

Principals / head teachers X X X X X X X X

School middle management

Other specialists

(e.g. financial)

X

Parents X X X X X X X

Teachers X

Students

Other interested community

parties

External specialists


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(e.g. academics)

etc

The matrix in Figure 2 highlights some key features of the New Zealand system of schoolgovernance. Local government and regional governance entities do not exist in New Zealand.

Every school is governed by its own board of trustees consisting of parents, teachers, students in

secondary schools and other local luminaries, and the school principal. Ostensibly, the board of

trustees runs all aspects of school operations with the principal acting in a kind of CEO role, and

reporting to the Board. There is a strong theoretical and legislative underpinning to this

arrangement. But real life examples of differing arrangements abound. Common forms include

instances where the principal has captured the board and runs a benign dictatorship with little

meaningful parent input. Another common form involves instances where the board works in

direct opposition to the principal in dysfunctional arrangements that tend eventually to be

dissolved by central government intervention. Thus, local governance of schools tends to becharacterized by levels of expertise, the strength of specific personalities, the historic level of

board engagement in decision-making, and the availability of financial resources.

Fundamentally, in New Zealand at least, there are as many governance arrangements as there are

schools. This should not lead us to abandon our line of enquiry concerning how governance

arrangements shape educational outcomes. However, it should lead would-be reformers of

governance systems to be alert to the difficulties surrounding efforts to wrestle control of what

happens in schools and classrooms. Most importantly, we should avoid applying generalizations

to situations that defy simple categorization.

Part 2: Contrasting Approaches to Education Governance and Student Performance

In this chapter we have chosen to consider six jurisdictions in particular as they share broad

comparability, in terms of reasonably well-developed systems of universal public education

(albeit with varying levels of private contribution). It is fundamentally more meaningful in terms

of culture and concept to compare the US to, for example, Australia or the UK than to Qatar.

Nonetheless, one of the recurring themes of this chapter is the caution that must be exercised in

comparison and transposition of results and findings. Small differences play out in large ways.

As a starting point for considering the impact of governance on student outcomes internationally,

we now summarize outcome data from the OECDs Program of International Student

Assessment (PISA). The overarching question from examination of this, and other evidence, is

whether it demonstrates or infers a link between governance arrangements and student outcomes.

The data from this program is relatively comprehensive for all comparator jurisdictions (PIRLS


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b) Mathematics

c) Science


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The results presented in Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c have two notable features. First, the means

themselves have small standard errors (usually somewhere between two and five points), so

differences are both substantively and statistically significant. Second, all our jurisdictions

appear to perform reasonably well; only the United States and the United Kingdom drop a little

below the OECD mean in some years and subjects. With the possible exception of the science

and mathematics scores for the United States, none of these jurisdictions perform inadequately,

at least in this study. There is no evidence of a crisis in student outcomes. Nonetheless, ifkeeping ahead of the rest of the world in education matters for economic competitivenessand

evidence increasingly suggests that it doesthen there is good reason to avoid complacency and

to look for lessons to learn from other jurisdictions that are producing equivalent, or slightly

better, education outcomes.

The jurisdictions under study seem to fall into three distinct groups. The US and UK hover

around the OECD mean in most years and scores, although the UK appeared to suffer a serious

degradation in performance between 2000 and 2006 (no data are available for the UK from

2003). There is a mid-high performance group of jurisdictions that appear relatively stable,

although falling slightly over time in reading and math: New Zealand, Australia, Canada.Finally, both Finland and Korea are notable for their consistently high but slightly unstable

scores over time.


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One factor that seems to merit consideration is the congruence across the three sets of results. It

is not the case, for example, that students from Finland seem to be tremendously good at science

but suffer in terms of literacy. They just appear to be equally good at everything. Equally, the dip

and then rise of US performance is common across all three sets of data.2

There are two possible

conclusions to be drawn here. Firstly, something exogenousabout the administration of the

test, for exampleproduces such consistent results across areas that do not need to be consistent.

But PISA is a carefully designed study with a large sample size (countries need to assess at least

4,000 students to participate). The other possible conclusion is that there is indeed something

common about the learning experience of many students participating in the study. Possibly, the

education systemand the governance settings of that systemare factors that exert a broad and

diffuse influence.

Figure 4 offers an attempt to compare PISA data to quantified measures of governance. It

considers reading, mathematics and science scores against three quantified governance measures

from PISA 2009. These are:

An index of school responsibility for resource allocation

An indicator of school choice, as measured by the percentage of principals reporting one

or more schools in the local area competing for students

An index of school responsibility for curriculum and assessment

There are important caveats that come with these measures. They have been chosen from PISA

as they are clear and quantifiable. However, taken on their own, they can seem counterintuitive,

and disagree with our assessments of country education systems elsewhere in this paper. For

example, Finlands relatively low score on curriculum responsibility reflects the role of local

boards of education as opposed to school-level decisions; but as noted elsewhere, these are small

and extremely local entities, and in practice teachers enjoy a great deal of autonomy over these

matters. In comparison, New Zealand reports a high degree of curriculum autonomy despite a

nationally legislated curriculum and a highly prevalent (although not compulsory) nationally

administered senior secondary qualification. This may be because the New Zealand curriculum is

a relatively non-prescriptive learning framework, which deliberately grants autonomy to teachers

while providing overall national consistency.

Similarly, a high percentage of Korean principals report competitor schools, despite the

Korean system offering virtually no parent choice. This may be more of a reflection of the

2The only counterfactual here is Korea, whose performance in reading seemed to peak in 2006, but at the expense of

science.


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perception of principals than actual parent discretion. This is but one indication of the influence

of culture and local circumstance, which can create distinct gaps between intent and outcome, or

between technical description and actual experience.

The results are interesting, as much for what they do not tell us as what they do. Simple

categorizations, and even key indicators and indices, do not tell a good story about governance.Links to educational outcomes remain opaque. We must constantly be wary of the allure of

simple heuristics. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the only observable relationship here is a

tendency for higher-scoring jurisdictions to prefer national or regional resource allocation over

school-level. In itself, a counterintuitive finding, and one not supported when the results of all

PISA jurisdictions are taken into account. The same data for all jurisdictions participating in

PISA show, if anything, a slight relationship in the opposite direction.


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Figure 4: Relating Student Outcomes to Education Governance Arrangements

Index of school responsibility

for resource allocation(OECD mean = 0, positive

values indicate greater

balance of school

responsibility over regional

and national bodies)

percent of principals reporting

one or more schools in the samelocal area competing for students

Index of school responsibility

for curriculum and assessment(OECD mean = 0, positive

values indicate greater balance

of school responsibility over

regional and national bodies)

ading

tional

rage

nts)

thematics

tional

rage

nts)

ence

tional

rage

nts)


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Frustratingly, this analysis does not clarify the nature of governance factors that influence

student achievement. However, more can be learned from PISA by examining the impact of thelongest-standing alternative governance arrangementprivate education (see Figure 5).

Public, universal education for the vast majority of jurisdictions is a relatively recent

phenomenon, with a current lifespan of no more than 150 years. Private education has been the

predominant form of education for a much greater period of human history, but, for the ages of

five to around fifteen in most developed economies, has been usurped by publicly-funded

education over the last 100 years. The notion of private education is subject to as many

subtleties as education governance, but it is safe to assume that across most jurisdictions, this is a

form of education paid for by the consumer or their families.

As a broad generalization, the direct purchase relationship comes with greater institutionalautonomy, and greater accountability to the purchaser. Often private schools benefit from higher

levels of income than their public counterparts, and enjoy better facilities, and sometimes are

able to offer higher rates of teacher pay. Due to the purchase relationship, and the wide

availability of a free-of-charge alternative in most jurisdictions, private schools tend to be

populated by students from wealthier backgrounds.

The PISA 2009 results contain much cogent information about the effect of private schooling.

Most importantly, across the participant countries, a thirty-point reading score difference, in the

favour of private schools, exists between students attending private and public schools (OECD,

2010). This is approximately equivalent to two-thirds of the difference between the lowest- andhighest-performing comparator jurisdictions in 2009 (the UK and Korea). However, this mean

difference between public and private schooling outcomes narrows to negligibly few points when

controlled for socio-economic status (OECD 2011).

The OECD suggests a small number of factors of private schooling that account for the

remainder of this point difference. These include choice of curriculum, better disciplinary

climates and better resourcing. Across our comparator jurisdictions, the picture is one of highly

interesting variance. The two highest-performing jurisdictions, Finland and Korea, show a small

but relatively stable advantage in private schooling. The UK and U.S. results are different and

quite extraordinary, however. In the lowest-scoring comparator jurisdictions, private schoolingmakes a huge difference, but after controlling for SES, the difference is negative. An awkward

implication that could be drawn is that those private school students would have been better off

in a public school (and their parents could have saved a great deal of money). But maybe, more

sensibly, what these results tell us are something about the relative success of public school


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institutions in different jurisdictions in eliminating the disparities between students that accrue

from SES differentials. These are fascinating and complex results that deserve further

investigation.

In summary, achievement data tell us that this set of alternative governance arrangements do

impact student achievement. However, they do so in a very small (and sometimes negative) waywhen the much more influential factor of socio-economic status is taken into account.

Figure 5: Difference in Mean Reading Scores Between Students Attending Private and

Public Schools

Part 3: The Contrasting Cases of Finland and South Korea

Of all the jurisdictions under comparison, it is Finland and South Korea that tend to attract most

comment. Both countries perform consistently well in international evaluations, particularly

PISA; South Korea and Finland ranked second and third in the world respectively on reading

scores in 2009. Both also achieved top five placings in Science and Mathematics. Within reading

scores, they formed a group of three countries with Hong-Kong China whose scores were not

statistically significantly different. Fundamentally, their performance is comparable.

It is worth considering these results more closely. One further indicator of system performance is

spread of results. PISA divides the tested student population into reading levels ranging from one

(the lowest) to six. Both jurisdictions show comparatively few children reading at low levels and


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comparatively greater numbers of children reading at higher levels. But whereas Finland has

more than twice the average percentage of students performing at the highest level in reading,

South Korea comes in only just above the OECD average. Finland also enjoys a relatively small

spread of scores, implying it experiences consistent success as well as better chances of, on at

least one measure, excellence. The characteristics of the systems in these jurisdictions contain

interesting similarities as well as differences. PISA in 2009 contained some categorised features

of education systems that it is worth exploring.

Both jurisdictions offer little parent choice

Both South Korea and Finland offer low or nonexistent levels of parent choice of school. In

South Korea, children are randomly assigned to both public and private schools. In Finland, few

private schools exist, and all are comprehensive, that is, granted little or no leeway over

student selection. An interesting adjunct to this is that, in both jurisdictions, private schools are

funded by the state. Nonetheless, we must return to earlier caveats about this information; a high

percentage of principals in Korea report local competition for enrolments, a fact which mayindicate a high level of academic competition between institutions despite a low level of choice.

Both jurisdictions are somewhat decentralised

Through the pressure of successive waves of population growth, South Korea devolved greater

degrees of responsibility to municipal authorities, consisting of sixteen provincial offices and

182 local boards. These entities take care of budget and general administration tasks. The

majority of control of schools in Finland sits with municipalities, of which there are 336.

However, we should be cautious of simple comparisons. The school-age population of South

Korea is approximately 7.5m, compared to approximately 800,000 for Finland. This makes thesmallest South Korean administrative entity approximately twenty times the size of one in

Finland. These entities have quite different spans of control. There also appears to be a subtle but

important distinction between the drivers of this decentralization. The Finnish system emphasises

localalmost village-levelcontrol of schooling. The historical drivers of Korean

decentralization are more around efficiency; simply that the system grew too large to be

efficiently managed centrally. One interpretation of this latter driver is that when examining the

decentralised Korean system, we are simply viewing a centralised system with distributed

administrative functions. Attitudes to assessment practices add further weight to this

interpretation.

Both countries treat curriculum and assessment very differently

The Finnish education system is characterised by something that would be all but an anathema to

many western economieszero state testing until the final secondary level assessment, and


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indeed very little official testing, period. In contrast, and in common with many developed Asian

economies, South Korea tests often and for many purposes, with tests occurring as early as

elementary school. Much effort is expended studying for the all-important CSAT university

entry exams, but with many (albeit non-standard) staging posts along the way.

The curriculum comparison is also revealing. Both jurisdictions ostensibly implement a nationalcurriculum document. But the on-the-ground approach could not be more different. The South

Korean national curriculum appears to be adhered to strongly, with centrally mandated subjects

and textbooks. This assessment should be qualified by reference to recent moves to decentralise

some aspects of the Korean curriculum to a school and teacher level (Kim, 2005). Nonetheless,

our qualitative assessment is a high degree of curriculum homogeneity, mostly enforced by the

high-stakes rule of the centrally-administered CSAT (Lee 2010; Suen and Wu 2006).

In contrast, the Finnish curriculum is implemented almost entirely at a municipality level, with

individual teachers enjoying a high degree of autonomy over curriculum subjects and choice of

texts. This point is worth exploring further. The OECD notes a positive relationship between lowschool transfer rates (the rate at which students are moved to different schools, most often due to

behavioural or other academic difficulties) and autonomy in setting curriculum and assessment

practices. In fact, autonomy over curriculum across the OECD seems to be a key and important

setting correlated with improved reading scores. When considering the percentage of variation

between countries in reading performance accounted for by school system features, PISA 2009

found that a difference of around 23 percent was attributable to autonomy for curriculum and

assessment. A difference of around 1 percent was attributable to responsibility for resource

allocation.

Teachers enjoy high professional standing, but there are differences

Finland in particular is often noted as having a carefully selected teaching workforce, qualified to

Masters level. South Korean teachers complete a four year programme of tertiary study, but this

does not make them much different to most other developed economies. Equally, teacher pay in

Finland is only slightly higher than the OECD average, whereas South Korean teachers are paid

at a level second only to Luxembourgoise educators (who are generally cited as a high outlier in

teacher pay discussions). What both countries do appear to have in common is a culture of

respect for the profession of teaching. This cultural x-factor is often cited as a missing

component in a number of mid-ranking education systems; that teachers are not placed on a par

with doctors or lawyers in the social hierarchy.

Both jurisdictions place high value on pre-primary education


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deprived, inner-city areas of the UK. A key setting was that academies were to have a sponsor or

group of sponsors; individuals or organisations who were to make a financial contribution to the

construction of the school, and have a hand in running them. This concept is very different to a

number of other governance reforms. At its core, it does not seek to reduce or enhance state

control, parent choice or decision-making, and from the outset seeks to apply reform to the

points where it is considered most necessary; failing schools in poor communities. What it does

seek to do is increase the influence of actors external to the education system since the

philanthropic initiatives of the industrial revolution. Academies are directly accountable to the

Department for Education, without the intervening layer of a local education authority. Another

intriguing element of the policy was that academies are wholly owned by company-type entities

(companies limited by guarantee with charitable status).

A relatively careful study of the comparative impacts of academy status on student achievement

has noted, after taking into account a large number of control variables (including pupil SES and

test scores on intake), a statistically significant impact on test scores for early academies (those

established before around 2007), but an insignificant impact for later adopters (possibly due to

establishment phase effects) (Machin and Vernoit, 2011). The study also notes a significant

effect of becoming an academy is an increase in the quality of student intake, as measured by

age-11 test scores, and a corresponding decrease in the quality of intake at neighbouring

schools. This in itself is not an insignificant point. Based on a meta-analysis of international

research findings, Hattie (2005: 401) notes an effect size of 0.50 of peers on student outcomes.

This effect size suggests that the presence of more able peers may positively influence less able

peers.

A strong story forms from the UK evidence, but apparently a story of variable impact. The

removal, insertion, and removal of a layer of control, devolution of authority, involvement of

altruistic private sector sponsors and construction of entirely new physical facilities to house

brand new schools does not seem to impact negatively on student achievement, but positive

impacts are variable, and tend to accrue to students from more advantaged backgrounds. SES as

a predictor of achievement comes to the fore once again. In fact, matching evidence from factors

known to improve student achievement with the range of commentary on academies, the most

telling, but frustratingly underexplored, indicator is from the National Audit Office in 2007

most academies have high quality leadership and governance and have improved teaching

and learning, drawing on the benefits of their new environments (National Audit Office, 2007).

It appears that the quality of leadership of governance mechanisms rather than the design ofthose mechanisms has the greatest impact on student achievement. Maybe academies have

managed to source higher-quality governance from business, NGOs and charities, and this has

enabled some improvement in student achievement. But this enabling must have been mediated

by practices in teaching and learning that followed on from that good leadership.


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Part 5: Successes and failures in schools; relationships between governance and

achievement

Another way of considering the inter-relationship between education governance and

achievement is to consider the success, or maybe even more usefully, failure, of schools. The

notion of the school as an entity that is a crucial element in any intervention logic recurs inconversations about education governance. More or less competition could be cited as good or

bad for education; but written into the terms of the debate is the idea that it is competition

between schools. Governance by parent committees is most often governance of schools. Is there

much evidence that this is actually a useful node of analysis? In fact, much evidence on

academic achievement focuses on the primacy of what happens in the classroom (and, indeed, on

the much more influential parent, family and socio-economic factors). PISA 2009 again tells us

that the greatest variation in performance is within, rather than between, individual institutions

and jurisdictions. In short, there is more difference between the worst and best students in any

country than between the average scores of the worst and best countries. Similarly, there is more

difference between the worst and best student in any school than between the worst and best

schools.

There is a strong empirical basis to the assertion made regularly in many of our comparator

jurisdictions that, despite middling rankings and sometimes huge disparities, our best

students are amongst the best in the world. In fact, this is not only true but potentially so true

as to be fairly pointless. The best Kyrgyzstan students are amongst the best in the world, but

unfortunately around a quarter of the others appear to lack basic functional literacy at age fifteen

(OECD, 2010). Nonetheless, there is considerable literature relying on schools as the unit of

analysis, and a substantial body of thought backing up the idea that a school can be successful

or failing. Accepting for the moment that this is a useful concept, and conceding that the PISA

data suggest that schools as institutions hold sway over around 45 percent of the variance in

student achievement, what does this mean for governance? Or to consider a different

propositiona lot is to be gained across the 30 percent variance in achievement that occurs

between schools. What role might governance have there?

Australia, in a similar way to federal companions Canada and the U.S., has delegated the bulk of

education policymaking to its component jurisdictions. Nonetheless, Australian schooling has

shown some general trends overall, not least a significant rise in the number of private schools,

with those entities accounting for around a third of enrolments. As well as private and

government schools, there is a proportion of Catholic schoolsessentially private schools run by

religiously affiliated trusts or boards.


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An analysis of the effectiveness of Australian schools in 2004 went some way to confirming the

hypothesis that the institution as a whole can in some way be responsible for the results of

individuals, despite those individuals experiencing different teachers and teaching. After

controlling for social intake, size, location, sector and achievement on intake, the authors found a

wide variation, both above and below an expected level of performance. This was particularly

noticeable at the lower levels of scores; some school scores show several standard deviations

both above and below the mean. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004).

However, the links through to governance in this study were diffuse. Overall, around 90 percent

of variation in performance was ascribed to factors other than the school as an entity. Of the

remaining 10 percent, only small effects were noticeable for differences between Catholic,

Government and Independent schools. Parent choicea matter, it appears, of high public policy

value in Australiaseems at a macro level to be adding little to individual school performance.

We might hypothesize much better results from private schools in a system where choice is so

prevalent. This tends not to be the case. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004)

Studies of the relationship between governance and failing schools tend to tell a different story.

There is actually a large body of work both on the subject of what makes a good school good,

and how to rescue a failing school. We do not propose to investigate it in depth here. Rather, it

is noteworthy that the bulk of advice on the matter deals with leadership and governance as a

central theme (Robinson 2011).

The UKs National Audit Office, relating well-trodden advice in turn from OFSTED and similar

entities, establishes a framework of common problems for poorly-performing schools. These

areineffective leadership, weak governance, poor standards of teaching, lack of external

support, and challenging circumstances. (National Audit Office, 2006) In 2006, it noted about 4percent of primary and 23 percent of secondary schools could be described as poorly

performing. To explore one aspect in a little more depth, the 2006 report noted the crucial role

of governors (volunteer parent governing committees) in challenging head teachers and senior

teaching staff in failing schools. It appears that an accountability role is important. The centrality

of leadership, and the role of the principal as a direction-setting change manager, is also

acknowledged. But the idea seems to have been most effectively expressed by the Iowa

Lighthouse inquiry into school board behaviour in districts with extreme differences in outcomes

(the study compared a small number of very good boards to a small number of very bad boards).

Effectiveness here was linked to what must seem obvious best practice. Not only was there a

focus on good governance, but this took the form of explicit recognition of the interface between

governance and teaching (The Iowa Association of School Boards, 2001).


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New Zealands Education Review Office also notes leadership as a key factor of successful

schools, but says little about governance. Its five point framework for successful schools is

A focus on the learner

Leadership in an inclusive culture

Effective teaching

Engagement with parents and communities

Coherent policies and practice in a cycle of continuous self review (ERO, 2011).

Four key points emerge from this discussion that align with messages throughout the chapter.

Schools have an impact, but not as much as teachers

Governance has an impact on schools, but only a diffuse impact on learners

A purposive approach to governance that seeks to make specific links between

governance practice and student outcomes is more likely to have a positive impact on

student outcomes

Although not properly investigated or explored, it is possible to hypothesise that strong or

innovative governance measures are most useful when rescuing failing institutions, but

have less impact on the high performers. However, a failure of governance often leads to

a failure of the institution.

Part 6: Lesson Drawing

Based on the forgoing survey and discussion of educational governance and student outcomes

across six jurisdictions, we now draw lessons for governance reformers.

Lesson 1: Avoid costly political battles

Transforming education systems requires massive political will that must be sustained over many

years. The history of educational reform is littered with examples of failed efforts. Largely, this

is because the grammar of schooling has been well-established, and has resulted in a variety of

somewhat arbitrary aspects of school systems being treated as essential elements (Tyack and

Tobin 1994). Reform efforts that have worked have tended to add new components to school

systems, usually leaving other aspects in place. The resulting incrementalism, or tinkering

around the edges, has meant that many features of schooling appear the same today as they did a

century ago (Tyack and Cuban 1995). Significantly, this kind of system-level resistance to


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change is not unique to the field of education. Incrementalism has long been recognized as a

predominate change dynamic in various areas of government activity and in corporations (Cyert

and March 1963, Lindblom 1959, Simon 1947; Wildavsky 1964). Getting beyond

incrementalism typically involves high levels of coordinated activity led by policy entrepreneurs

(Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Mintrom 2000). In light of this, effective change efforts often

involve engagement in local level experimentation, creation of whole new organizational entities

working alongside traditional forms, and efforts to build networks and political coalitions. When

considering education reforms, we suggest that efforts should be made to avoid costly political

battles. These can readily suck time and energy away from the focus of change itself. In practice,

this suggestion implies that creating coalitions of willing change agents and working around the

edges of traditional systems are likely to be the most fruitful ways forward. When sufficient

evidence is assembled to support arguments for change, and when prefigurative forms of change

have had a chance to flourish, the likelihood of securing major change will increase. While

teachers unions might be considered a powerful brake on reform, it is also worth considering

ways of presenting reform efforts that will not immediately buy a major fight. In fact, a numberof actions that would appear to promote the achievement of valued education outcomes also

involve raising the status of teaching as a profession. Distasteful as some might find it, first

exhausting those options is probably more effective than going directly into battle with the

education establishment. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in governance

arrangements are likely to generate valued education outcomes without provoking major political

battles?

Lesson 2: Use appropriate diagnostic tools

Systems of public education, to be judged as providing adequate return on investment, must

produce outcomes of high value to society. Agreement about what outcomes are most valued can

be illusive in pluralistic societies that exhibit diversity and multiculturalism. Yet, even in

societies exuding social and cultural homogeneity, conceptions of valued outcomes are subject to

on-going, incremental change. In the present age, continuous economic transformation is forcing

debate about what matters most in education (Florida 2004, Hirsch 2006, Murnane and Levy

1996, Robinson 2009). Kenneth Strike (1998: 211) has proposed that states and nations should

hold schools and students accountable using a high, but narrow bar. For example, all young

people, and all societies, benefit when high standards are set regarding the attainment of basic

literacy and numeracy. According to Strike, government should not, in the name of pluralism,

tolerate either student failure or school failure on these narrow measures. Meanwhile, holdingschools and students accountable for performance only in basic literacy and numeracy, leaves

considerable scope for school leaders and communities to decide what curricular elements matter

most to them, and how they should be taught. From a governance perspective, test results

represent vital indicators of system performance. Testing programs generate the information


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required to diagnose how well an education system is performing. Aside from giving a picture of

overall system performance, diagnostic tools are most useful when they can identify areas of the

system that are not performing well. We advocate use of appropriate diagnostic tools, such as

measures of student gain scores, because they can greatly assist in the allocation of resources

across a public school system. Implementation of sound testing systems should therefore precede

more comprehensive changes in education governance. Governance reforms and related efforts

to achieve greater control over public schools make sense only when clear evidence exists that

schools are performing poorly. No priority should be given to governance reforms affecting

schools currently producing good outcomes. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in

current governance arrangements are likely to generate better information on education outcomes

and assist in prioritizing areas for reform efforts?

Lesson 3: Recognise the power of leadership

Discussions of education governance typically circle around big questions of structural design

and control. While there is certainly value in exploring ways to achieve better structural design,we should not neglect the power of leadership to make things happen in change-resistant

environments. For example, Richard E. Neustadt (1960) made a classic argument that, given the

separation of powers in the United States system of government, the most important power of

presidents was the power to persuade. Subsequent studies of United States presidents in power

and presidents in the making (see, e.g. Wilson 1999; Caro 2002) illustrate how peoples ability to

span structural boundaries and master the rules of the game are crucial to achieving significant

change in a system that routinely stymies change efforts. Studies of agenda setting and policy

entrepreneurship (Kingdon 1984; Mintrom 2000) further confirm how effective leadership

efforts can make change happen, seemingly against the odds. This suggests that, for people

interested in securing better education outcomes, finding ways to effectively empower locally-

led change processes can be productive. Such efforts, carefully orchestrated, offer the promise of

creating new coalitions that could ultimately support ambitious efforts to better align governance

structures with the pursuit of valued educational outcomes. Some recent studies of leadership in

schools have explicitly explored how the practices of people in leadership positions, such as

school principals, can produce gains in student learning. These studies recognize that classroom

interactions are central to the production of valued educational outcomes. For example, Richard

Elmore (2004: 57) has proposed that [l]eadership is the guidance and direction ofinstructional

improvement. This is a deliberately deromanticized, focused, and instrumental definition. Such

a focused definition resonates with notions of leadership as the promotion of creative problem-solving within collectivities (Heifetz 1994; Weick 2001). Based upon a meta-analysis of prior

research, Viviane Robinson, Margie Hohepa, and Claire Lloyd (2009) identified five school-

level leadership practices that impact positively on student outcomes. These were: establishing

goals and expectations, effectively organising resources for the attainment of valued goals,


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planning and evaluating teaching and the curriculum, promoting and participating in teacher

professional development, and ensuring an orderly and supportive environment (see also

Robinson 2011). Among these, the practice that appeared to have the most impact on student

outcomes was promotion and participation in teacher learning and development. These findings

support arguments that value can be gained from efforts to distribute leadership throughout

schools. Such efforts empower teachers and promote learning conversations among stakeholders

(Lambert 2003; Robinson 2008; Spillane 2006). Effective school leaders also tend to build

inclusive relations with members of the broader school community. When managed carefully,

such efforts can scaffold student learning (Reihl 2000; Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd 2009).

Insights from such research on the power of leadership have led to the development of

programmes in New Zealand and elsewhere that train school principals to serve as effective

leaders. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements

are likely to support school leadership that contributes to better education outcomes?

Lesson 4: Focus on classroom practicesIn the context of discussions of education governance, placing a focus on classroom practices

may seem misplaced. Yet, we have shown that valued education outcomes can be broadly

generated by national school systems displaying almost polar-opposite governance mechanisms

(i.e., Finland and South Korea). The focus on the classroom leads us to consider what elements

of a governance system matterand which dontfor promoting improvements in student

learning. Fundamentally, education outcomes are the products of the interactions that occur

between teachers and students. Anecdotally, most people who have attained success in their lives

can recount turning points that occurred through their engagement with specific teachers or

mentors (Ericsson, Prietula, Cokely 2007; Gardner 1993; Robinson 2009). More formally,

systematic observations of teachers in classrooms confirm that appropriate application of specific

practices can have profound effects on student learning. Consider, for example, the giving of

feedback to students. When carefully managed, and given in a constructive fashion, feedback can

strongly support progress in student learning (Hattie and Timperley 2007). Indeed, a meta-

analysis of evidence reveals that an array of classroom practices, appropriately applied, can have

much more influence on student learning than politically-charged factors such as class sizes and

the financial resources available to a school (Hattie 2005; 2009). Richard Elmores classic

discussion of backward mapping (1979) and his more recent considerations of school reform

(2004) confirm the importance of elevating classroom practices in discussions of education

governance. Governance reformers should ask: What changes to current governancearrangements are likely to have the most impact on improving classroom practices?

Lesson 5: Attend to student preparation


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The value students gain at any step in their education depends greatly on what they bring to it.

This raises several matters for consideration. On a somewhat negative note, we need to be

sensitive to the limits of what schools can do when working with students. Certainly, there is

plenty of evidence confirming that specific attributes of family and social settings affect

individual educational outcomes (Cuban 2003; Jencks and Phillips 1998). However, we verge

upon despair when these deficits are viewed as fixed and teachers treat them as insurmountable

barriers to student success. Deficit thinking assumes that factors like family poverty, instability

in housing and family relations, learning disabilities, and parents limited educational attainment

present obstacles to student learning (Garca and Guerra 2004; Valencia 1997). But too much

focus on student deficits can become an excuse for teachers to assume that any efforts to promote

learning will be a lost cause (Timperley 2005). Emerging evidence on effective teaching

strategies and the results of school efforts to engage families and communities as partners in

student learning suggest many deficits can be turned around (Sheldon and Epstein 2005; Van

Voorhis 2003). Schools and teachers need to figure out what they can do, and to employ teaching

practices that add value to students, even in the face of troubles that are beyond the control ofindividual teacher and schools. Longitudinal studies of students who experienced high-quality

early childhood education, and those that did not, clearly demonstrate the positive impact of

early interventions that improve student preparation for subsequent schooling. The most

powerful evidence to date has been summarized by James Heckman (2006). The clear message

here is that investments in high-quality early education serve to promote student performance in

subsequent years of schooling and well beyond. Additionally, evidence from the OCEDs PISA

studies confirm the pattern that education outcomes for students at age 15 are positively

influenced by their previous exposure to pre-school educational programmes. Governance

reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to help give

students strong foundational experiences in life that will enhance their ability to make the mostof their subsequent educational opportunities?

Lesson 6: Attend to teacher preparation

After investigating characteristics of top-performing national school systems, Michael Barber

and Mona Mourshed (2007) concluded that the quality of an education system cannot exceed

the quality of its teachers and the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.

Our discussion of the education systems in Finland and South Korea support these observations.

Strong empirical evidence offers further confirmation. For example, analyses of longitudinal data

from the Tennessee Valued-Added Assessment System offer clear evidence of the powerfuleffects that good teachers can have on student outcomes. S. Paul Wright, Sandra P. Horn, and

William L. Sanders (1997) reported that effective teachers appear to be effective with students of

all achievement levels, regardless of the amount of heterogeneity in their classrooms. In contrast,

if the teacher is ineffective, students will achieve inadequate progress academically, regardless of


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Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of

leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Attend to student preparation; and (6) Attend to

teacher preparation.

Political leaders everywhere face strong incentives to achieve greater returns on public

investments in education. Given this, it is tempting for many to seek radical changes ingovernance arrangements, with the intention of gaining greater control over what happens in

schools and in classrooms. While we can certainly see the merits in pursuing governance

reforms, we also recognize that such actions often create major political battles that deflect

attention from the core business of improving student outcomes. For this reason, we suggest that

would-be reformers should seek to achieve changes by both working with people in the current

system and by looking for ways to introduce changes that challenge the hegemony of traditional

schooling arrangements. With respect to working the inside track, a lot could be gained by

improving the information that administrators have regarding student performance, by getting

teachers to focus on outcomes for students, and by ensuring that students are appropriately

prepared for each level of education. Changes along these lines could be achieved through efforts

that recognize teachers as professionals and that involve getting resources to the places where

they can make significant differences to student outcomes. Evidence on major reform efforts

suggests that when political leaders take the risk of tying their reputations to achievement of

specific changes, those changes can happen rapidly (Barber 2008; Fullan 2011; Osborne 1988).

Of course, major risks accompany such a strategy. But if public leaders are not prepared to stake

their fortunes on creating major system improvements, then it is unlikely that anyone else will.

With respect to working outside the present system, we suggest that efforts to promote

experimentation in schooling can do a lot to inform practices within traditional schooling

systems. However, in such cases, effort must be made to ensure that experiments are effectivelyevaluated and that knowledge of their effects is adequately disseminated to others who could use

it.


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