Home / Lectures / Samantha Meyer, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
Primary School Networks:External Social and Resource Ties of Public, Charter, and Catholic Schools

Samantha Meyer, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
Description
Semester:
- Winter 2016
Speakers:
Lecture Time:
Fri, February 5, 2016 @ 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Lecture Location:
Room R1240, Ross School of Business
Speaker Webpage(s):
No speaker websites available.
Introduced By:
No introduction available.
Abstract
Primary and secondary school reforms typically involve internal improvements, such as improvements to curriculum, teaching methodologies, leadership, or the physical space. All these improvements are certainly important, but what schools do (and do not do) externally may also matter for school success. Schools, like private and for-profit organizations, are open systems and thus it is important to consider the way schools understand and manage their external environments. In this talk, I situate schools as embedded in complex resource environments, and allow for the possibility that schools, or more precisely the people in them, do something about it. Using data from over 90 interviews and 250 surveys from nine primary schools in a large Midwestern city, I describe the external social and resource networks of schools. I discuss the variation in these networks across different school types (charter, public, and Catholic) and different neighborhoods (low, middle, and high SES), and highlight the potential equity implications of primary school networks when network ties are a source of supplemental resources. I give examples of the way different schools in the study manage their external environments, and I discuss evidence on the agency schools have around how to manage their external environments. Lastly, I frame the decision of how to manage the school external resource environment as a complex operational problem faced by education leaders, principals, and school employees.
Recording & Additional Notes
Introduced by Chen Zhang,