n the late 1980s and 1990s, one which allows for greater authority and empowerment in decision-making by stakeholders. As Hunter and Swann (238) note, the development of this trend in corporate America dealing with many of the same problems in the face of globalization as educational institutions, spread to the educational environment “Innovative corporate leaders and consultants devised and implemented productivity-enhancing strategies placing managers and workers on high-performance teams that gave them authority to reinvent their work environments…Educational groups issued reports advocating a new direction for public education.”
The education reform initiatives in Memphis, Tennessee, included restructuring and SBM as a means of enhancing local control of decision-making while also raising academic standards and performance. All 161 schools in the Memphis school district were included in a study two years after the implementation of SBM throughout the district (Stringfield 107). Researcher Linda Bol and her colleagues found that there had been significant improvement in the following areas in the two years since the district converted to SBM “Team building and goal setting, teacher attitudes, school climate, changing teaching practices, student achievement…student achievement increased significantly after 2 years of implementation and design implementations fostered changes in teaching toward more student-centered and authentic instruction” (Stringfield 107).
There are other urban school districts that have tried to implement SBM district-wide but with less success than the changes in Memphis. In Texas, a state mandated SBM program was implemented in urban, suburban, and rural high schools. However, faculty perceptions and mental attitudes toward SBM and the level of support from districts, administrators, and the community were found to be directly related to the degree of successful implementation “Degree o...