Looking back at a ‘new’ idea

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

In the mid-1990s, when Brian Cram was superintendent, the Clark County School District was experimenting with "site-based management." Individual school principals were given more control over budgets, curriculum and staffing.

Sound familiar?

It was something of a precursor to the school empowerment proposal being debated today by Nevada lawmakers and educators. And it yielded mixed results.

On the upside, the district allowed principals to pick their own teachers from an applicant pool instead of being assigned staff from the central office, a process that remains in place today.

But in other respects, the site-based management model backfired. Proven teaching methods were tossed aside by freewheeling principals in favor of the educational trend du jour - often with poor results, Cram said.

For instance, reading teachers abandoned phonics in favor of "whole language," a less structured approach to literacy that incorporates children's literature and encourages students to use invented spelling when writing. Rote memorization of multiplication tables also fell by the wayside at many schools after a statewide debate of the merits.

As a result, student test scores, especially in mathematics, sharply declined.

The student performance free fall "was absolutely unacceptable," Cram said. He sent then-district administrator Bill Hanlon, who was overseeing a math and science honors program, to find out what was going on.

What Hanlon found stunned him.

"People would look me straight in the eye and say kids didn't need to know their math facts because there were calculators and they didn't need to spell because computers have spell checkers," Hanlon said.

Hanlon also discovered that the definition of site-based management varied among schools, leading to confusion and lack of accountability.

"Some principals thought it meant nothing, others took huge advantage of it," said Hanlon, who now runs the Regional Professional Development Center, created by the Legislature to provide teacher training.

Many of the schools didn't realize they were out of compliance with local and state requirements, Cram said. A more uniform district wide approach to curriculum and instruction followed.

That uniformity has only been solidified in recent years by increased demands at the state and national level.

"Tests are a lot more important and there are a lot more rules than there were," said Cram, who retired in 2000 and is now director of the Greenspun Family Foundation. The Greenspun family owns the Las Vegas Sun.

Two school empowerment bills are under consideration in the Legislature. Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to take $60 million away from teacher incentive programs to pay for 100 empowerment schools statewide. Democrats, led by Sen. Steven Horsford of North Las Vegas, say empowerment can be accomplished by shifting more of the existing funding directly to schools.

In the days of site-based management, the amount of freedom and flexibility a school had depended largely on the principal, Cram said.

"Some were risk takers and more willing to try things," he said. "The level of success depended on the student population, the administration, the teachers and the parental attitude. Probably in reality, that's a measure of how successful any school will be, no matter what management system is being used."

If empowerment is to work, a "major variable" is the experience level of the principal and staff, Cram said. Less experienced administrators, of which Clark County has many, may be less adept at charting their own course, he added.

There are lessons to be learned from site-based management, Cram said. Schools need the freedom to tailor programs and services to meet the unique needs of their student populations. At the same time, instructional methods must be geared to meet curriculum standards.

"If you have a principal who says it's not that important for elementary school kids to know the multiplication system, you're going to have problems," Cram said.

Cram said there are clear benefits to "involving more people in the decision-making process of a school. "

"It's an absolute given that parental involvement influences student achievement. Staff involvement is also critical. Teachers want a say in what goes on in a school and they have every right, and the school is a better place because of that."