Administration in Schools
This chapter covers a variety of topics that affect teachers directly at
the level of the school.
Of central concern is the role of the school in the community and the
organization of schools.
Part of the organization consists of the administrative positions and the
roles of the incumbents.
The chapter concludes with an examination of trespass in schools.
The community–school movement arose during the 1970s and has had
an impact in all provinces although not on all schools.
Bringing the school and community closer together, the central theme of
the movement, arose from the lighted schoolhouse idea of the 1930s as
well as from the recognition that school capital facilities are expensive
and should not go unused for most of the day.
Lazaruk defines a community school as “a school where, with the
endorsement of the school board in cooperation with other local
authorities and on behalf of the community, there is formal commitment
to the use of the educational process for both individual and community
betterment.
There is also a formal commitment to consciously orient the school to
the community it serves.“ (61).
Community–school integration goes beyond the sharing of physical
facilities.
Community schools include a community orientation in their curriculum
and attempt to make use of the human and material resources in the
community.
The sharing of physical facilities is often governed by what are called
joint–use agreements—agreements involving school boards,
municipalities, and sometimes provincial governments for the shared
use of facilities such as libraries, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and
swimming pools.
The agreements cover the use during the day, week, and year of the
facility; the facility's repair and maintenance; and its staffing.
Some agreements also provide for the construction of the facility.
Sharing provides for greater utilization of the facility without any
increase in capital investment.
Instead of closing the facility after school hours, community groups and
members of the public are invited in.
Aside from recreation, after-hours activities can include meetings of
community groups, courses, and daycare.
Courses are usually avocational but may include high school
equivalency upgrading for
adults.
Elementary school children can receive daycare services before and
after school hours, and, where space is available, preschool children
may receive daycare during school hours.
Schools in Canada typically operate in yearly cycles with student
promotion and re-assignment occurring at the end of each cycle, that is,
at the end of each school year.
In schools on semester or quarter systems there may be sub–cycles
within the school year.
In Canada the school year usually begins in late August or early
September, after a summer vacation, and ends between the middle and
the end of June.
During this period schools operate on most weekdays except for
statutory holidays and special school holidays.
All Canadian jurisdictions have a Christmas break during which school
is not held.
This begins between mid–December and Christmas Eve and ends
sometime after the first day of the following calendar year.
A spring break of about 10 calendar days will commonly take place
sometime between the end of February and the end of April.
This break is less standardized than the Christmas break.
The typical school year in Canada contains 180 to 200 instructional
days and may contain additional non-instructional days for teachers,
but not students, during which teachers will attend meetings, prepare
for classes, or participate in professional development activities.
Some school boards or other organizations sponsor summer schools
during the summer break.
Most summer schools are aimed at special–needs students or students
at the high school level.
These may be from three to six weeks in length and sometimes cater to
students who have failed courses during the regular school year or who
are missing required credits for other reasons.
Some summer schools charge their students tuition, something that
cannot be done in public–sector schools during the regular school year.
Several Canadian jurisdictions have embarked on year–round schooling.
This involves operating schools for all or nearly all of the calendar year,
staggering the break and vacation periods for different groups of
students.
This allows schools of a given size to accommodate a larger number of
students by ensuring that at any one time at least one group of
students will not be attending school.
In a quarter system, in which the year is divided into four parts, the
school can group students such that each student attends school for
three of the four quarters and takes a vacation in the fourth.
By staggering the vacation periods over the four
quarters, schooling can
be provided for more students than the school can accommodate at any
one time.
This is one of the main attractions of year–round schooling.
There are numerous possible patterns of year–round schooling with the
main variables being the length of the in-school and out–of–school
periods.
Many patterns are named in this manner.
For example, the 45-15 plan involves each student group taking 45
weekdays of instruction followed by 15 weekdays of vacation.
Most plans have gaps in the school year, particularly around Christmas,
during which all groups are on break.
One of the so-called “Calgary models” consists of a 60-20 plan with
common breaks from Christmas to New Year's day and for the first
three weeks of July (Ministry of Education Policy Branch).
For climatic reasons, it is difficult to sell a model in Canada which does
not include a lengthy vacation for each student sometime during the
summer.
The predominant vertical organization found in Canadian schools, that
of age grading, was introduced 150 years ago.
Various forms of continuous progress, tracking, non-grading, subject
promotion, semestering, and credit units have modified the graded
structure in some systems but have not displaced it.
In an age-graded school, children normally progress through 12 grades
in 12 years, although some children may be required to repeat one or
more grades and, less frequently, some may skip grades.
The rigidity of the rate of progress through the system is seen as a
major drawback and is the problem that continuous progress and
non-grading are meant to address.
Continuous progress plans were devised to permit some children to
move through the grades at a faster or slower rate than the lock-step
one grade per year.
Because of the need to teach children in groups, most operational
continuous progress plans have involved a small number of tracks with
a group of children in each track progressing at the same rate.
Thus a three-track plan could involve groups completing the equivalent
of six grades in five, six, and seven years.
Depending on the size and philosophy of the school, such a plan could
require more than one track in a classroom, particularly at the
elementary level.
Some high schools use tracking systems that reflect the differing
aspirations and abilities of students rather than a continuous progress
philosophy.
Tracks may be identified by numbers or by names such as college
preparatory, university preparatory, academic, general, commercial,
business, industrial, vocational, and pre-employment, among others.
Students in different tracks take a somewhat different set of courses
and may take common courses at different difficulty levels.
Different tracks lead to different destinations.
Non-graded schools come the closest to true continuous progress.
Children are organized into classes but not grades.
Ideally, at the beginning of a school year, each child, instead of being
promoted to a higher grade, simply takes up where he or she left off at
the end of the previous school year.
True continuous progress requires considerable individualization of
curriculum and instruction.
Non-grading has been most common and most successful at the
elementary level, particularly in the early years.
In schools with non-graded primary divisions, pupils would not be
subject to grade promotion within the non-graded structure but would
be promoted out of it into the graded upper elementary when they were
felt to be ready.
Historically, non-graded schools preceded graded ones.
One-room rural schools operated as non-graded schools with the teacher
grouping children roughly according to achievement level.
In a typical graded elementary school, each child is promoted to the
next grade or is held back in the same grade at the end of each school
year.
In a junior high or senior high school where different subjects are
taught in different classes, it is possible to have promotion by subject.
Thus a student in grade ten might be promoted to grade eleven in
mathematics but be held back for an extra year in grade ten English.
Subject promotion, which is common at the senior high level and less
common at the junior high level, could be regarded as a discrete form of
continuous progress.
Semestering, which is common only at the secondary level, involves
breaking the school year into two halves, a first or fall semester and a
second or winter semester.
Courses, instead of running for a full school year, last for only one
semester.
A new set of courses begins at the beginning of each semester.
Semestering may be accomplished by doubling the number of hours per
week in a course and halving the number of courses taken
simultaneously by each student, thus retaining the number
of hours of
instruction in each course.
As an alternative, one can halve the total hours in each course and
double the number of courses and still maintain the number of hours
per week of instruction.
The main advantage of semestering is the increased flexibility of course
scheduling and course selection.
In practice the increase in flexibility has been difficult to fully exploit.
Frequently a full-year course will simply be split into two halves with
the first half offered in the first semester and the second half in the
second semester.
Flexibility will still be increased if there is provision for taking only one
of the two halves or if the first half is also offered in the second
semester, but simply splitting courses changes very little.
Semestering appears to offer greater advantages to large schools that
already have scheduling flexibility due to size.
But assessments of the pros and cons of semestering have often been
confounded by other changes introduced at the same time.
These include curricular changes, increases or decreases in period
length, and changes in total instruction time.
If a school year can be halved, it can also be divided into three or four
parts.
Such divisions produce trimester systems and quarter systems, which
exist in some colleges and universities but are rare in elementary and
secondary schools.
Diminishing returns soon set in when the school year is divided
excessively.
Nevertheless, this type of organization lends itself to various patterns of
year–round schooling.
The credit system was developed in the early 1900s by the Carnegie
Foundation as a means of improving the vertical articulation between
high schools and colleges.
Credit units are sometimes called Carnegie units.
Each credit or Carnegie unit represents a certain number of hours of
classroom instruction or contact, 120 hours originally, and is a means of
describing the amount of instruction.
The value of a credit now varies from 8 hours to more than the original
120 hours, depending on the jurisdiction or the institution.
The time basis of credit units has been challenged on the grounds that
some people learn faster than others and that classroom instruction is
not everything.
Challenge examinations or equivalency examinations are sometimes
used to award credit to students who appear to have mastered the
material but have not taken the classroom instruction.
These examinations simply test for the level of mastery of the material
that is expected from someone who has received the instruction.
The credit system is widely used at the senior high level in Canada and
to a lesser extent at the junior high level.
Typically, to obtain credits, one must take the classroom instruction and
receive a passing mark in the course.
Graduation may be contingent on having earned a defined minimum
number of credits.
The horizontal organization of most Canadian schools is based on the
self-contained classroom group of about 30 students.
At the elementary level one teacher frequently teaches all subjects to
his or her class, whereas at the secondary level departmentalization,
with different teachers teaching different subjects, is the rule.
These two organizational types may be combined to form various
semi-departmentalized structures.
In the self-contained-classroom type of organization in its purest form,
one teacher teaches the same group of students all day every day.
Such a teacher must be a subject matter generalist, but that teacher
develops a personal relationship with his or her pupils.
This personal relationship is seen as a major strength of self-contained
classrooms.
In departmentalized schools, teachers become subject specialists and
students receive instruction in different subjects from different teachers.
Students, or less frequently teachers, move from classroom to classroom
during the day in a series of class periods.
During each period, each group of students receives instruction in one
subject.
This type of organization permits the subject promotion of students and
reduces the number of different class preparations required of each
teacher.
Students have contact with more teachers and teachers with more
students than in non-departmentalized schools.
The teachers in each subject or in closely related subjects form the
departments from which this method of organization receives its name,
but not all departmentalized schools have formally organized
departments.
Depending on the size of the school there may be a science department
or separate chemistry, physics, and biology departments.
In small schools, mathematics and science may be combined.
The members of a department frequently plan instruction and
evaluation together under the leadership of a department head.
In a departmentalized school each student and most teachers are
assigned to homerooms, which perform certain administrative functions
such as recording attendance, distributing information, and providing
for student council representation.
Frequently at the junior high level, all students in a given homeroom
will take all their classes together, but at the high school level this is
usually not the case.
It cannot generally be the case in systems with subject promotion.
Departmentalization permits the offering of courses at different levels
based on difficulty and content.
At each grade there may be levels intended for very high achievers,
university entrance, vocational and commercial, and pre-employment.
These levels are often identified by numbers, with the lowest number
corresponding to the highest or most difficult level.
Mathematics 10-2 can refer to grade ten mathematics at the second
highest difficulty level, for example.
Not all courses will be offered at all levels, particularly in small schools.
Students can be moved up or down from one level to another either at
the end of a school year or sometimes during the year if their
performance appears to be too high or low for the level they are in.
Levels originally appeared in conjunction with tracking, but in many
schools tracking has been eliminated without eliminating course levels.
Students in level one or two in one subject tend to be there in all
subjects, but, without tracks, this can be altered in individual cases.
The fixed-length period has created problems in departmentalized
systems because any single period-length will not be suitable for all
subjects.
The period-length that takes students to the end of their attention span
in history may be too short to accomplish anything in a shop subject.
To remedy this, various forms of modular scheduling have been devised
that involve a relatively short time module, typically under 30 minutes.
Class periods are scheduled as some multiple of the modular time, with
laboratory and shop subjects often receiving a higher multiple than
classroom subjects.
Students spend more continuous time in subjects with a high multiple
but not necessarily more time in total.
Although high schools and many junior high schools are fully
departmentalized, semi-departmentalization is used as an alternative to
the self-contained classroom at the elementary level and to full
departmentalization at the junior high level.
As the name implies, students spend considerable time with a
homeroom teacher but are taught some subjects by other teachers.
The homeroom teacher may be a subject specialist teacher for part of
the school day or may have preparation time when relieved by the
specialist teacher.
Teachers in elementary
schools are often given preparation time by
having itinerant specialist teachers take over their classes for subjects
such as art, music, physical education, or French, while the classroom
teachers receive preparation periods.
An example of a semi-departmentalized arrangement is the Joplin plan
in the upper elementary school, in which self-contained classrooms are
departmentalized only for reading.
The children are grouped by reading ability for reading instruction.
Each teacher teaches reading to a certain ability level but does not
become a subject specialist.
Block-time, another type of semi-departmentalization, is found mainly
at the junior high level and is often used to smooth the transition for
students moving from self-contained classrooms into a departmentalized
structure.
Block-time classes involve two or more consecutive class periods taken
with the same teacher teaching more than one subject.
The subjects are usually closely related and may be taught in an
integrated way.
Block-time plans combine limited teacher specialization with limited
departmentalization.
The horizontal organization of schools can be altered by several staffing
variations.
Team teaching involves teachers working in groups of two or three to
teach one subject.
Teaching teams are generally responsible for the same total number of
students that all the teachers would be individually responsible for.
For certain purposes these students can be taught together in a group
that would be larger than an ordinary class.
If the large group is taught by one teacher, the released time gained by
the team can be used for preparation or for tutoring students in small
groups.
Team teaching allows flexibility in class size and use of time but
requires extra co-ordination and planning.
The existence of teaching teams permits another variation,
differentiated staffing.
At the secondary level, school staffs are differentiated by subject
specialty but tend not to be hierarchical.
Differentiated staffing involves the formation of a more hierarchical
structure by increasing the number of different positions.
In an academic department in a high school, for example, there may be
a department head, teachers, assistant teachers, teacher aides,
technicians, and clerical staff.
Differentiated staffs in large schools tend to have specialized
paraprofessionals in areas such as laboratory maintenance, audio-visual
materials, coaching, and preparation of teaching materials.
In some Canadian jurisdictions, differentiated staffing has been
hampered by rigid funding formulas and collective agreement
provisions.
Apart from department heads, there are two administrative positions
commonly found in Canadian schools—principal and vice-principal.
In the early history of schools, one teacher in a two- or three-room
school would be designated as the principal teacher and given special
responsibilities.
Later, as schools became larger and some principal teachers ceased to
be teachers, the word “teacher” was dropped and the word “principal”
became a noun to name the position.
In some other countries and in some private schools the terms
“headmaster” or “headmistress” are used instead of principal.
Generally all schools have one principal, but the number of
vice-principals varies from zero to four depending on the size and level
of the school.
Small schools often do not have a full-time principal.
The principal may be a part-time teacher or may be the principal of
more than one school.
Provincial legislation or regulations often prescribe responsibilities for
principals, but these tend to be incomplete and to inaccurately describe
the role.
Section 265 of the
Education Act
of Ontario contains 14 paragraphs prescribing the duties that a
principal has in addition to his duties as a teacher.
These include order and discipline in the school, co-ordinating the
efforts of school staff members, holding examinations for promotion
purposes, looking after the health and safety of the pupils, and various
reporting and record-keeping tasks.
The principal could be described as the manager and the instructional
leader of the school.
The management responsibilities include supervising the
non-professional staff, order and discipline, general oversight of the
physical plant, community relations, liaison with school board
supervisory personnel, and a variety of others, largely of a housekeeping
nature.
The instructional leadership role taken by the principal varies but tends
to be more important in small schools and in elementary schools.
It includes the supervision of teachers, particularly new teachers, on
whom the principal may be obligated to write reports.
The instructional leadership role is greatly attenuated by provincial
curricular requirements.
For example, in Ontario one of the principal's statutory instructional
leadership roles is to ensure that only approved books and materials are
being used in the school.
Although provincial statutes define the job of the principal to a greater
or lesser extent, this is not the case for the vice-principal.
As a result vice-principals assume responsibility only for tasks
delegated by the principal.
There is little pattern to this except that the job of pupil control and
discipline seems to be delegated frequently.
Provinces generally have legislation, either in school or education acts
or in trespass acts, that specifically covers the matter of trespass in
schools.
According to section 1 of the
Trespass Act
of New Brunswick, an “authorized person” means an owner or occupier
of premises, and the term “occupier” includes school personnel and
teachers.
This establishes teachers as authorized persons as the term is used in
section 2 below.
2(1) No person shall trespass on
-
· · ·
-
(b) the premises of a school, vocational school,
university, college, trade school or other premises used
for educational purposes, or
-
· · ·
with respect to which he has had notice from an authorized
person not to trespass.
2(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a person has notice
not to trespass when he has been given notice by word of
mouth or in writing to refrain from entering or from
remaining on the premises . . .
Additional provisions in the same section establish the burden of proof
and provide for penalties.
Not all such clauses covering schools require that the trespasser be
warned as this one does.
In an Alberta case (“R. v. B.”), a 15-year-old student was charged with
trespassing in a high school, other than the one in which he was
registered, when school staff members found him fighting in the halls.
He moved for a nonsuit on the grounds that he was not a trespasser.
The court dismissed the motion by relying on wording in the
School Act
which made it an offence to disturb or interrupt the proceedings of a
school or loiter or trespass in a school building.
Schools operate in cycles, the longest of which is the school year.
Schools have a vertical organization that students encounter over time
and a horizontal organization at a point in time.
Vertically, most Canadian schools are age-graded with a discrete yearly
cycle, but this has been modified in some cases by continuous progress,
non-grading, tracking, subject promotion, semestering, year–round
schooling, and course accounting with Carnegie credit units.
Horizontally, the typical elementary school has self-contained
classrooms whereas the typical secondary school is departmentalized.
There are numerous patterns of semi-departmentalization as well.
Some schools employ team teaching and differentiated staffing.
All provinces have legislation governing disturbances and trespass in
schools.
In many cases there are specific provisions for elementary and
secondary schools contained in education statutes.
There are also general trespass statutes that apply to schools along
with other premises.
-
How can teachers improve the relationship between their school and
its community?
-
Many countries have a longer school year than the Canadian
provinces do.
Some, for example, continue for two weeks into July before breaking for
a much reduced summer vacation.
Should Canada lengthen its school year?
If so, how should this be done?
-
Should elementary schools be departmentalized?
Do elementary school children need the sustained contact with one
teacher that characterizes self-contained classrooms?
To what extent, if at all, could instruction be improved in elementary
schools by subject-specialist teachers with fewer preparations?
-
What are the advantages and disadvantages of tracking and of
different levels of the same course?
Are these arrangements undemocratic or unfair?
Would failure to track or to use different course levels lead to
mediocrity?
-
Should teachers in a school be permitted to elect principals and
vice-principals from among their own ranks?
If not, should teachers have a say in the selection of administrators for
their school?
Should administrative positions be rotated among teachers?
-
Are Canadian schools organized in a way that intellectually isolates
teachers?
How can co-operation and collaboration of an academic and professional
nature be encouraged among teachers?
For information on community schools see Prout and Lazaruk.
Miller describes most types of school organization.
For Canadian research on this topic see Baker and Sigurdson.
The Ministry of Education Policy
Branch and Kreitzer and Glass
describe issues involved in year–round schooling.
Baker, Peter J.
(1980 01).
The Carnegie Unit: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives.
Edmonton: Alberta Education Planning and Research Branch.
British Columbia Recreation Association.
(1983).
The Community and the School Joint-use Agreements.
Vancouver: author.
“Education Act” (Ontario).
(1995).
Consolidated Ontario Education Statutes and Regulations 1955.
Scarborough: Carswell.
37–234.
Lazaruk, Walter A.
(1982 08).
Community Schools in Alberta: A Comparative Analysis
(executive summary).
Edmonton: Alberta Education Planning and Research Branch.
Kreitzer, Amelia and Glass, Gene V.
(1990 04).
“Policy Considerations in Conversion to Year–round Schools”.
New Brunswick Educational Administrator.
19: 1–5.
Miller, William C.
(1973).
Educator's Fact Book on School Organization.
Belmont, California: Fearon Publishers..
Ministry of Education Policy Branch.
(1994 08).
Year–round Schooling: Some Observations from the Literature.
Victoria: Province of British Columbia.
Prout, Peter F.
(1977).
Community Schools in Canada.
Toronto: Canadian Education Association.
“R. v. B.”.
(1984).
Alberta Reports.
50: 205–209.
Sigurdson, Sol E.
(1981 10).
The Block Plan.
Edmonton: Alberta Education Planning and Research Branch.
“Trespass Act”.
(1992 06).
Statutes of New Brunswick.
Fredericton: Queen's Printer.
7,T-11.2: 1–14.
© Lawrence M. Bezeau 2007