Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Teacher Involvement in Instructional Decisions
and Planning
As described in an earlier chapter (Ashwill, this volume), the United States edu-
cational system has a diffuse governance system (see also, Cohen & Spillane
1992). Case Study schools were thus shown to vary, with teachers in some dis-
tricts enjoying a good deal of autonomy, while teachers in others were expected
to meet external demands imposed by local school councils, district school
boards, or state performance standards. This section describes three ways that
instructional decisionmaking and planning occurred in the schools we visited.
In one elementary school, there was a well-established and clearly shared sense
of what was appropriate and desirable for children of each age. Experienced
teachers helped new teachers learn ‘‘what to do and how things work.’’ In an-
other, a major goal was to meet the external demands of district, state, and even
federal guidelines. The math and science curricula had arrived at the school in
much the same way as other mandates and were perceived by teachers as being
yet another set of expectations from the outside. In the third school, the teachers
seemed to interpret changes in practice as ‘‘something the office wanted.’’ The
contexts in which teachers functioned thus created opportunities and constraints
that mirrored other characteristics of the job and school. Three brief examples
help to clarify these differences.
Rockefeller Elementary School. 
Teachers in this school expressed a shared sense
of ‘‘best practice.’’ For example, teachers themselves had developed the math cur-
riculum that had been in effect for a number of years. It was an ‘‘unwritten expec-
tation,’’ explained one fifth-grade teacher, that the experienced teachers would
help their new colleagues. ‘‘They get manuals when they come in. Then the
teachers discuss with them what they do and how things work.’’ Such a belief
system precludes pervasive or rapid change, because a consensus about practice
has developed over time.
Midtown Elementary School. 
In this school, teachers described a situation in
which their use of time was dictated by the state, (i.e., in terms of the amount
of time to be allocated for each subject), their performance level by the district
(in the sense that they were required to teach units again if more than 20 percent

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of their students had not passed), and by the science curriculum that had been
selected for them but was perceived by the teachers as being too difficult for the
children. The principal in this school was also encouraging teachers to move to-
ward a ‘‘whole-language’’ approach, but the teachers complained that it was
impossible to implement such an approach when each subject had to be taught
each day for a specific amount of time.
A committee of teachers from across the district had selected the new science
curriculum, chosen because kits of scientific experiments came with the series.
As one teacher explained:
So in the past when we’ve had science books, we haven’t had any equipment.
All we’ve had is a book. So this year we have the equipment. Last year and
this year it was much better than when we only had a book.
Despite the ostensible value of having kits, virtually everyone I spoke with about
this curriculum eventually commented that it was too difficult for the children.
The first observation of a fourth-grade teacher using it showed her carefully pre-
paring her students to take a test scheduled for the following day by giving them
the answers ahead of time. First she wrote down the first six answers on the
board and instructed the children to write them down on their papers. Then she
went through the true and false and multiple-choice questions. The subject mat-
ter, dealing with such concepts as velocity, force, and inertia, seemed difficult for
children of this age. I circulated through the room later and noticed that children
had written down the answers but not the questions. When I later interviewed
this teacher, she described how she also felt compelled to help the children when
they actually took the test:
I had to read the questions to them, and I’d give little hints, you know, we
were talking about fulcrums, and so I-we were talking about fulcrums and le-
vers and (moves arm to demonstrate) oh, I’d move my arm and say the lever
is on the what? And, oh, OK, so then they’d get it, so it’s more a visual learn-
ing.
She explained that she had shown a list of these terms to friends:
I had taken those words to a group of friends of mine, and this is a group
that hasn’t studied science in a very long time, but professionals at that. I
asked them: What are these things? What are these things? What are these
things? And they were just floored at what a fourth-grader was learning, and
I had a lot of parents that are very upset about it, too. This is just too hard.
But, then again, is it too hard because they’ve never had to do it before?

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In this district there is a policy that 80 percent of students must get 70 percent
or better on each unit test or the unit must be taught again. There were five
books in the set, one physics-based, one on geology, one on oceanography, and
so forth. However, only one set of classroom books had been purchased for this
school—and there were five teachers. Another teacher described how this
worked:
We bought all the equipment that goes with the science series, but we only
bought one classroom set of books for each unit. It means we have to share.
So this year since there were five of us using the books . . . . I sat down
and figured out a schedule of who gets what books when and when you have
to quit. So we’re all tied into this little schedule, another little box we’re tied
into.
Thus, it was virtually impossible for a teacher to teach a unit again, because once
a set of classroom books had been passed on, it would always be in use. The only
way out of the dilemma was to ensure that most students passed—by teaching
the test.
As teachers talked about this curriculum, more and more problems emerged. One
teacher described a teacher at another grade level who had only taught one unit
of science because she didn’t understand it. Another described a teacher who
wasn’t ‘‘keeping up’’—‘‘so she skips stuff in the book and then when it comes
time to test them, you know, she has to cut that part out or else’’ . . . . Since
the administration was encouraging teachers to move toward a whole-language ap-
proach, I was told that the principal decided the oceanography book from the
next grade level would be good to use with younger students, because it went
along with readings in language arts. The book was not only too difficult for many
children to read, however, it was also impossible to coordinate language arts and
science across five teachers at the same time. Finally, sharing science kits seemed
to introduce even more uncertainty. When I observed a student teacher dem-
onstrating an experiment from this series to a class of about 25 students, she
reached the critical point when she had to use thermometers only to discover that
they were missing from the kit.