Dissertation writing help - Innovation, leadership, and resource utilization practices in three high schools with significant learning gains: a multi-site case study

I need Custom Dissertation Writing Service on resource utilization in high schools

Despite a number of new high school reform initiatives, patterns in student achievement data from U.S. high schools remains stagnant. Although major resources are invested annually in high school operations and improvements efforts, the performance evidence for comprehensive high schools is level or declining in many states. As high school leaders confront the challenge of enhancing performance of all students, the need to effectively implement school improvement strategies has become paramount.

This study addressed four key research problems to examine the relationships between high school innovations and resource allocation patterns:

(1) What were the characteristics and key features of the school innovation strategies or new initiatives launched in three comprehensive high schools that contributed to significant improvements in student achievement during a recent five-year period?

(2) In these high performing schools, what were the critical attributes of leadership behavior or performance that guided school improvement processes related to: data-based decision-making, instructional improvement, supporting structures, or other distinct school innovation processes?

(3) To what extent did the school innovation processes produce interactive, synergistic, or catalytic effects on leadership behavior and/or student achievement outcomes?

(4) How and to what extent were patterns of school resource allocation and expenditure associated with the school leadership action during the past five years?

Current studies of high school redesign have focused on strategies to enhance student achievement, including achievement for low-income students. To date, the findings support reforms and strategies in four general areas:

(1) providing leadership and changing culture,

(2) using data-based decision-making,

(3) focusing on instructional improvement, and

(4) providing supporting structures. While research exists on patterns of resource reallocation that are related with school improvement and student achievement, these studies have centered on elementary and middle schools.

This study utilized a conceptual framework drawn from the research literature, which also served as the provisional hypothesis for a grounded theory of high school innovation strategies. A multi-site case study design was used to identify strategies employed at three comprehensive high schools and patterns of resource allocation that are associated with significant, recent gains in student achievement and reduction of achievement gaps. The grounded theory approach generated a new framework of teacher empowerment in high school improvement. Extensive stakeholder interviews and document analyses were used to surface the key elements and guiding themes for the teacher empowerment framework. The model for analysis of resource allocation was a school expenditure structure at each site for analyzing the use of resources that linked to instructional delivery by identifying school resource indicators (Odden et al., 2003).

The provisional hypothesis was only moderately supported by the data. Arising from the constant comparative method, the new framework identified and described the role of teacher empowerment in overcoming several obstacles to improvement amid the organizational complexities of large, comprehensive high schools. In these schools, teachers have been empowered to take action. Those actions empower them collectively to:

(a) improve student achievement,

(b) improve instruction,

(c) garner efficacy for the improvement strategies, and

(d) establish high expectations. Undergirding teacher empowerment are the support structures associated with leadership, pressure for improvement, capacity-building intentionality, and human and fiscal resource allocation.