Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In 2010, Tennessee passed legislation to remove priority schools from their local districts and place them in the jurisdiction of its own state-run turnaround district, the Achievement School District (ASD).  While state efforts to take over and turnaround schools are not new, they vary considerably in scope and style.  The ASD has adopted a management philosophy that adheres closely to the principles of portfolio management and market-based reforms.  Under these ideas, the ASD has sought to maximize the flow of state per pupil funding directly to charter management organizations (CMOs) while keeping their own central office as lean as possible and funding their own staff positions largely through federal and philanthropic dollars.  They have assiduously avoided central interventions, and offered operators broad autonomies over hiring, curriculum, instruction, and budgeting.  They set very high accountability targets and stiff consequences for operators that do not meet them.

At the same time, the ASD must engage in a complex set of interdependent relationships with other agencies and organizations in its environment to achieve its goals.  This type of interagency and cross-sector cooperation is notoriously difficult within the US federalist system of government which is designed to limit government authority rather than expedite coordinated action.  For the ASD, however, obstacles to collaboration extend beyond the typical barriers presented by the different levels and branches of government to include a complex mix of ideology, overlapping jurisdictions, and contentious local politics.

For example, the ASD is officially part of the state department of education and must answer to the state commissioner.  Yet relations between the DoE and the ASD, while of much importance to both sides, are complicated by contrasting management styles and organizational philosophies.  The ASD is fiercely committed to autonomy whereas department officials are accustomed to more conventional district management that emphasizes regulations and compliance. The ASD also lives in other governance “grey zones.”  Although it is technically part of the state, its jurisdiction is carved from the territories of traditional districts.  These districts retain residual control over decisions that are critical to the viability of the ASD and the realization of its goals.  These districts also have greater political legitimacy and standing in the eyes of local stakeholders who have been fiercely resistant to the ASD’s takeover of local schools.  This community backlash has forced the district to distance itself from the ASD and to limit collaboration and coordinated action.

This paper analyzes the ASD’s efforts to design a central office that juggles three competing managerial imperatives alluded to above: (1) staying true to its core convictions about autonomy and a limited district role; (2) securing rapid gains in learning outcomes; and (3) maintaining political and financial viability for itself and its operators.  We leverage three years of research and over 140 interviews to show how the ASD’s unique system of governance coupled with its unconventional position vis-à-vis local districts has made attaining these goals an extraordinarily complex task.