A lack of authentic school improvement plan development. Evidence of principal satisficing behavior
| Published date | 13 May 2019 |
| Date | 13 May 2019 |
| Pages | 261-278 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-09-2018-0154 |
| Author | Coby Vincent Meyers,Bryan Alexander VanGronigen |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
A lack of authentic school
improvement plan development
Evidence of principal satisficing behavior
Coby Vincent Meyers
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, and
Bryan Alexander VanGronigen
Department of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Abstract
Purpose –School improvement planning, especially for low-performing schools, can be conceptualized as a
planning process to strategically improve organizational processes, operations and outcomes. However,
bureaucratic procedures and related inflexibilities sometimes results in inauthentic plan development. The
purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent and ways in which principals engage in satisficing behavior –or
being in the realm of “good enough”–when developing school improvement plans (SIPs).
Design/methodology/approach –The authors qualitatively analyzed 364 short-cycle SIPs submitted by
principals of 134 low-performing schools participating across three cohorts of a university-based systems
leadership program focused on change leadership and school turnaround.
Findings –Eight satisficing behaviors in the SIPs were identified. The five most prominent satisficing
behaviors follow: plan content is consistent across schools within a district; a plan or plan features are
resubmitted; plan priorities focus solely on test scores; plan timeline is insufficiently considered; and the
directly responsible individual (DRI) (to complete tasks) is insufficiently considered. Overall, 80 percent of
SIPs contained two to four satisficing behaviors, and fewer than ten SIPs were free of such behaviors or, in the
authors’estimation, completely authentic.
Originality/value –The development of SIPs is mandated for the nation’s lowest-performing schools, but
little analysis of such plans has been conducted over the last 20 years. Moreover, although the notion that
principals engage in satisficing behavior has been raised previously, to the authors’knowledge, this is the
first study to systematically identify ways in which principals satisfice.
Keywords Principals, Leadership, Satisficing behaviour, School improvement plan, School turnaround
Paper type Research paper
School improvement planning is a common undertaking in the USA and other Western
nations (e.g. Fernandez, 2011; Muijs et al., 2004; Strunk et al., 2016). The basic idea behind
improvementplanning is for educational leaders(e.g. school principals) to developa plan with
measurable outcomes that, when implemented, will result in organizational improvements.
Focus areas within plans could include, among others, addressing school climate, improving
instructional quality, or implementingdata-driven decision making. Such a planning process
fits a rational organizational paradigm in which the development and enactment of a school
improvement plan (SIP) should result in improved organizational processes, operations and
outcomes, such a s student achiev ement in school s (VanGronigen an d Meyers, 2017) .
An SIP is a physical and/or electronic document in which, at minimum, the following
information is provided: organizational goals to be achieved within a stated period of time;
action steps to achieve those goals; timelines to direct implementation of action steps and
the plan in general; and measurable outcomes to determine the extent to which the plan was
implemented and resulted in achieving organizational goals (see VanGronigen et al., 2017 for
a more detailed explanation of the school improvement planning process). Thus, from a
rational organizational paradigm, if school principals better envision the change they want,
identify the right problems, increase their own and others’preparedness to address these
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 57 No. 3, 2019
pp. 261-278
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-09-2018-0154
Received 1 September 2018
Revised 2 January 2019
22 February 2019
19 March 2019
Accepted 28 March 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
261
SIP
development
problems, manage resources and uphold expectations, schools should improve (Chapman
and Harris, 2004).
The simplicity of this logic is especially appealing when we consider low-performing
schools. We see evidence of this in accountability systems in the USA, UK and elsewhere.
Such systems impose external pressures that require low-performing schools to develop
SIPs as part of their “turnaround”efforts (VanGronigen and Meyers, 2017). In the USA,
federal policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Every Student
Succeeds Act of 2015 along with opportunities such as the School Improvement Grants
program have prioritized improving the nation’s lowest-performing schools. For
approximately 20 years, low-performing schools have been required to submit annual
SIPs to state education agencies for review, monitoring and evaluation.
Although the development of SIPs is intended to improve goal development, alignment,
and completion within schools, there is evidence that the endeavor often lacks rigor and
might be designed in counterproductive ways (Mintrop and MacLellan, 2002). SIP templates
created by state education agencies might reduce school principal autonomy, constraining
authentic plan development and encouraging formulaic responses (VanGronigen and
Meyers, 2017). State responsiveness to plans can also lag and lack insight. The annual
nature of plans can also reduce school principal flexibility by confining them to what is on
paper despite the potential existence of a more adaptive and responsive way forward
(e.g. Barringer and Bluedorn, 1999). Not surprisingly, there is some evidence that school
principals developing plans engaged in satisficing behavior –in other words, the completion
of the plan for its own sake and with minimal authentic investment (Mintrop and MacLellan,
2002; Mintrop et al., 2001).
SIPs, however, have seldom been studied at all. In this study, we add to the sparse body
of research on SIPs by analyzing approximately 400 of them to determine if school
principals engage in satisficing behaviors when developing plans. This is an important
consideration, given how pervasive school improvement planning is in nations with
accountability systems. If an embedded assumption of a system is that SIPs should organize
and drive change, but the SIPs are developed in substandard or inauthentic ways, that
assumptions on which the system is based would appear to be violated. Therefore, we ask
the following research questions:
RQ1. In what ways, if at all, do school principals engage in satisficing behaviors when
completing SIPs?
RQ2. Over multiple planning cycles, how frequently, if at all, do school principals engage
in satisficing behaviors?
Our analysis of SIPs developed by school principals leading low-performing schools is an
initial consideration of if, and how, they might engage in satisficing behavior during the
improvement planning process.
We turn next to a deeper explanation of our conceptualization of satisficing. After that,
we provide a brief review of the literature where we connect school accountability, school
leadership of low-performing schools and school improvement planning. We then provide a
description of our study context, sample, and methodology. Results from the study follow.
We conclude with an overview of results followed by a discussion of implications for
research, policy and practice.
Conceptual framework: what does it mean to satisfice?
In his conceptual formulation of satisficing, decision-making scholar Herbert Simon (1957)
posits that the rational choice theory –or the position that an individual has preferences and
acts accordingly (Krosnick, 1991) –is unrealistic because it fails to account for boundaries.
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