“Getting things done” in community schools: the institutional work of community school managers

ABSTRACT

Community schools extend traditional school responsibilities by providing additional resources to support students, families, and communities, and ultimately attempt to change the school institution. Integral to the institutionalization of community schools are community school managers (CSMs) and their institutional work. Drawing from institutional theory, this study uses interview data to explore the deliberate actions taken by CSMs to create institutions, focusing on their efforts to develop their institutional identities and change normative associations. Institutional identities of CSMs were defined by their implementational responsibilities and organizational positioning. While CSMs skillfully identified, provided, and allocated resources within their implementational identity, the organizational identity remained ambiguous, lacking clarity on their organizational position or consistency in the teams on which they served. CSMs struggled to create normative associations that linked the resources they provided to the community school strategy. Moreover, the local leadership structure and principal support significantly and differentially impacted CSMs’ institutional work.

KEYWORDS:

• Community school
• school leadership
• school context
• school reform
• institutional theory

Acknowledgment

The authors of this manuscript confirm that the data used in this manuscript were approved by the Johns Hopkins University Institutional Review Board (HIRB00010362) and all participants provided informed consent. The data for this manuscript were collected using funding from a contract with a district that had received federal funding for this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 High school students who were at least 1 year older than the expected age for their grade were also included in the “at-risk” category, but this was not applicable to the three schools included in the study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megumi G. Hine

Megumi G. Hine is a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Education studying school, family, and community engagement. Her work focuses on understanding the structure and outcomes of partnerships between schools, families, and communities, with the goal of identifying ways to help districts and schools develop equitable experiences for minoritized communities. Having worked at the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins prior to the PhD program, Megumi has collaborated with schools, districts, organizations, and state departments of education across the country and internationally to implement partnership programs that promote student success.

Steven B. Sheldon

Steven B. Sheldon is an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and co-director of the Center for the Social Organization of Schools and the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships. He has over 20 years of experience conducting research and evaluations into the development, implementation, and impact of family engagement in children’s education. His work focuses on the impact of school and teacher outreach to families, such as home visits; how school leadership facilitates the development of school, family, and community partnership programs; the role of evaluation for strengthening family and community engagement; and the extent to which practices to engage families are associated with family and student outcomes.

Yolanda Abel

Yolanda Abel is an associate professor in the Department of Advanced Studies in Education at Johns Hopkins University School of Education. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for Social Organization of Schools, the Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, and the Center for Africana Studies. Her publications appear in American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Negro Education, Education and Urban Society, and School Science and Mathematics.