Today, I’m going to look at the sociological theory of institutionalism, or institutional theory. Similar to open systems, institutional theory was championed by Richard W. Scott and his buddy John Meyer. In a nutshell, institutional theory looks at the deeper and more resilient aspects of social structures. It considers the processes by which structures, including norms, routines, rules, and general behavioral processes become established, or institutionalized guidelines of social behavior. Basically, in order for organizations to survive, they must conform to the rules and belief systems prevailing within the environment, because institutional isomorphism, both structural and procedural, will earn the organization legitimacy. Without legitimacy, the organization cannot survive.
What the heck is isomorphism? Within the world of sociology, an isomorphism is a similarity of the processes or structure of one organization to those of another, such as imitation or independent development under similar constraints.
Institutional theory asks questions like: Why do organizations act in the way they do without any technical rationality? Often times, the structure is not tightly coupled with operations within the organization, rather, it is tightly coupled with the surrounding environment. This is caused through attempts to gain and maintain legitimacy, all while staying relevant. Being tightly coupled allows the organization to appear operationally rational and structurally sound, even if the organization is actually quite loosely coupled.
There are three pillars of institutional theory: normative, cognitive, and regulative. Normative refers to accepted practices. Cognitive refers to the way we think about things or our understanding of how things operate. And regulative refers to the laws and regulations that constrain and enable behavior.
Today, I’m going to look at charter schools in Oakland through an institutional lens. As you may recall, I talked about charters in reference to social movements, where there are parent, state, and national groups both for and against the rapid expansion of charter schools throughout the district. Using an institutional lens, I’m going to examine how charters are setup and expected to function within their environment, or their institutional isomorphism.
Within education in the last twenty years, accountability through high-stakes testing has risen to a startling degree. While charter schools are operated and organized much differently than traditional district-run public schools, they are still subject to meeting certain accountability standards in order to keep their charters. Across the nation, charters have been under fire for having more agency over their student populations through no-excuse disciplinary practices and policies.
This means, charter schools often have much more control over who is attending their school through the infamous charter school lottery. Charter entrance is determined by an arbitrary lottery process each April when there are more applicants than seats available. Traditional public schools allow all students entry into the school. Charter schools have a strict cap. When there are more applicants than seats available, charter schools hold a lottery process, subsequently creating a wait-list. In Oakland, this wait-list is already hovering around 2,680 students and has no intention of slowing down.
Because charter schools want to continue scoring well on state tests, they often push out the most hard-to-reach students, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students with disciplinary problems. This allows them to continue earning high marks, while leaving traditionally run district schools with the most challenging student populations. This admissions process allows charters to appear like open public schools, but their disciplinary policies and selective retention allows them to act like private schools. In this way, the outside appearance is extremely tightly coupled with the environment – meaning, the ability to appear public while acting like private is tightly coupled with charter management organizations, while appealing to public school advocates.
Wait, but I thought charter schools were public schools? Sort of. Charter schools often tout their public school categorization, but they use private funds from hedge funds or charter management organizations (CMOs). This means, they have much more agency and autonomy within their schools, as they are not held to the same structural and operational standards as district run public schools. On top of this, charter schools often reflect the aims of the private organization and board of directors who operate them, rather than the goals of teaching professionals.
But are they public? There have been countless lawsuits across the country of charter organizations arguing in favor of their public school status and against their public school status – basically, the argument changes on which regulations have to be met. This is a direct reflection of how charters are trying to meet the institutionalized norms of public schools, while keeping their autonomy as private schools (and also trying to meet the institutionalized norms of private schools). Charters opt to call themselves public when it comes to receiving public financing, but classify themselves as private when it comes to the unionization of the teaching force (which allows them to fire teachers without cause while not providing benefits packages).
Then we have a string of fiscal mismanagement. Massive corruption scandals, millions of dollars missing, and a severe siphoning off of resources caused the Oakland school board to vote 4-3 in favor of shutting down the American Indian Model Schools. In terms of legitimacy, it doesn’t seem like scandals like this are doing charter schools any favors or are working towards expanding equitable education for all students.
Charters often espouse their public school label to gain legitimacy and promote their own endurance with traditional public school advocates, yet they act like private institutions and answer to private organizations (so is this really about consumer choice?). Remember Jerry Maguire? Charter school functioning is kind of like that.
With failing schools, Superintendent Antwan Wilson wants to open up the floor to any organization that can turnaround the schools. This includes charter schools. Many of those against the charter expansion claim this is just a way to privatize public schooling in Oakland. On the flip side, charter schools argue that are creating more equitable choice for Oakland students and families while reforming public education in a way that traditional public schools cannot. Seems a bit ironic, right? Charter schools claim to create equitable choices, which is an institutionalized goal of school choice and a way school choice sustains its legitimacy (and a huge reason why charter schools have become so popular), but countless studies have shown that charters push out the most disadvantaged and hardest-to-teach students because they are not under the same scrutiny and oversight as district-run schools. So is it really equitable? This is another example of how charters are promoting public school goals and responsibilities, but actually creating a façade for private operations.
To bring this back to how it relates to institutional theory, the rise of charters has created a push and pull on two separate institutionalized goals. The first are traditional public schools, which have long been a driving force within education. The second are the recently institutionalized goals of charter schools and charter management organizations, who are slowly turning the public system into a privately operated and owned institution.
Currently, Oakland is trying to mimic school systems like New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia – districts which were consistently failing and on the verge of bankruptcy. By allowing charter organizations to come into the district and infiltrate the public school system, Oakland is trying to mimic the short term successes of those bigger urban districts. Will Oakland have the same results? As it stands now, the results for charter schools vs traditional public schools are anything but impressive – charters have not shown to improve results at a drastically higher rate than traditional public schools.
What do I think will happen? As you may have noticed, I’m a big believer in traditional public education. I hope that as a district and a country, public education will win out over the drive towards charters and privatization.
Oakland Unified School District 