Democratic Dilemmas: Joint Work, Education Politics, and Community

appendix a

The origins of this book date back to early 1999. In the process of conducting research for the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy (CTP)—a national research center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education—I had the opportunity to examine in depth the Mid Valley School District. During this research, I discovered the district’s work on improving systemwide education through enhanced community involvement. As I observed the unfolding of the district’s CAP initiative I became increasingly absorbed by questions of district-community collaboration and what factors accounted for its demise. This pilot work framed much of my thinking about democratic joint work, informing the overall research design of the study from which this book draws. The following sections describe this design, as well as data collection and analysis methods. RESEARCH DESIGN The preliminary research in Mid Valley raised many unanswered questions. Determined to understand why joint work never materialized in Mid Valley and why it appears to thrive in other districts, I sought a second case to which I could compare the Mid Valley experience. This comparative case study design allowed me to examine the ways in which joint work and efforts to initiate joint work played out in multiple settings. Qualitative case study methods were particularly appropriate for this analysis because they could produce “thick descriptions” and an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon embedded in its context.1 Sample Selection District Sample I selected a purposive sample of two school districts of comparable size and grade configurations in the same geographic region of California. (See table 1.1 in 185 APPENDIX A Methodology chapter 1 for a summary of key characteristics.) I chose these districts because each viewed collaboration of community and educators as a valuable part of its work as a district and employed different organizational forms of this joint work. My intent was not to identify districts that were representative of all California districts but instead to select “strategic research sites” that would maximize opportunities to examine and develop theory around joint work.2 By selecting districts of comparable size, grade configurations, student demographics, and regional and state context, I hoped to better isolate the phenomenon of educator-layperson collaboration and the factors that shaped it (i.e., issues of size and grade levels cannot explain differences I observed in joint work in these two districts). Identifying the second district was not easy. Given that the first case represented a failed attempt to initiate joint work, my intent was to locate a second district that succeeded in bringing together educators and citizens in a joint endeavor and achieving action. As my research with the CTP had uncovered, many districts claim to involve community in reciprocal partnerships but in reality offer parent education classes or an isolated parent involvement event that is not geared at districtwide improvement or two-way interchange. One administrator who worked with districts participating in a regional reform initiative, the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC), told me, “All the districts I have worked with lately would say that they are doing something in this regard [involving community in joint work], but I don’t know that they would match what you are seeking. What they say is very different from what they do, I find.” Through my work with the CTP, I identified Highland, a district in the same geographic region as Mid Valley that had a long-standing commitment to and reputation for involving community members in establishing longrange goals for the district. The district also was recommended as a place worth studying by several local reform experts, including a strategic planning consultant, the director of the Association of California School Administrators ’ Planing Center, and BASRC staff. I realized that while Highland had a reputation for being community friendly, collaborative, and successful in its efforts to convene strategic planning, it was possible that through my research I would discover that the actual practices did not match this perception . Throughout data collection I was receptive to hearing and observing evidence that might have contradicted this reputation. Thus, the design did not assume a comparison of two dichotomous cases, but in fact a comparison of two cases of joint work that were likely to vary along a continuum on a number of dimensions (e.g., extent of community participation). School Sample To ensure that I captured a full range of school-level voices in my research, I selected a sample of three schools from each district...