UC Berkeley

Urban school districts are complex public organizations where education leaders, governing bodies, and communities work together to design policies to educate the youngest citizens in their city. This study looked at how actors in one urban school system, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), developed and debated innovative policy ideas when faced with three concurrent events in their external environment: the global coronavirus pandemic, greater calls for racial justice, and an increased need to address climate change. I used ethnographic critical policy analysis methods to examine how marginalized policy actors expressed resistance to dominant ideologies and aimed to transform the school district through innovative policy design. Two primary research questions guided the study. First, I asked how the school district innovated in response to unexpected exogenous shocks; and second, I questioned how the case advances theoretical understanding about innovation inside city school systems. The study conceptualized school board meetings as a design space in which policy actors with various backgrounds and perspectives collaborated to co-produce education policies. Using observations of actions and behaviors during these meetings, the study first categorized actors into groups that shared similar goals and logics to advocate ideas. Equity and justice were big concerns among all at OUSD, and two prevailing strategies drove district discourse. Some policy actors were motivated by a need to create and maintain stability across the organization by balancing the budget, offering a variety of school choice options, and closing underperforming schools. Other education leaders and activists were driven by a desire to redesign the budget to allocate resources towards new causes centered on addressing issues of racial and social justice. While charter school advocates sided with board members that supported stability, students, community activists, and local organizations coalesced around approaches to directly address equity concerns through district policymaking. Between 2020 and 2021, the governing board, students, and community members developed, debated, and passed five equity-related innovative resolutions to current challenging problems in our society: school safety, remote learning, climate change, Black reparations, and mental health. Using observations from policy debates and public hearings and interviews with a select sample of community members, my research illustrates how actors vied for power and collaborated as they advocated ideas and perspectives, convinced others to cooperate, and designed solutions to collective problems. Findings are organized into three papers and all use quotes to illustrate main themes. The first paper, Challenging an Urban District to Address Racial and Social Justice describes the two prevailing perspectives held by policy actors at OUSD and shows how they frame concerns and formulate goals to address modern issues of equity. The second paper, Student Voice in District Equity Innovations argues that students should actively help design education policies and outlines steps, drivers, and barriers that students at OUSD faced when advocating for change. The third paper, Strategic Action and Social Skill in Urban District Reform analyzes the tactics, strategies, and skills that students, community activists, and charter school advocates used when sharing concerns and brainstorming solutions during policy debates. Two broad theories helped structure the design of this study, 'a theory of fields' which sheds light on the study of actions and behaviors in social arenas, and 'new public governance' which explains a shift in public administration towards innovation through multi-actor collaboration. Findings from this research demonstrated how these theories can be applied to understand social and political phenomena in urban school districts and how groups of social actors exert influence and power over decisions to advance collective goals. Exogenous shocks from the external environment accelerated innovation at OUSD as district actors were forced to address unexpected issues. While they did not always agree on their approaches to change, through collective debate they were able to arrive at agreements and advanced five innovative policies. This research tells the story of whose ideas were privileged in the final designs of their collective work and how new innovations may improve their field. It advances theory on characteristics of social skill that actors use to push for organizational changes. And it shows how actors with different perspectives collaborate to design new ways to address modern education problems, advancing theory on how diverse and multicultural fields may innovatively transform their public systems.