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This research compares governance in Florida local STW Partnerships. It defines governance and summarizes the study's conclusions and recommendations. The report's Executive Summary is below. The entire report (including Appendices) may be downloaded in PDF format.
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Introduction
Governance Defined
Conclusions and Recommendations
Endnotes
Florida's regional STW partnerships are charged with creating school-based and work-based learning opportunities and ensuring that these two system components are linked to help students
- develop awareness of career options
- achieve career goals as expeditiously as possible by removing barriers for a smooth transition from high school to post-secondary institutions, and
- develop academic and workplace skills to succeed in an increasingly competitive and technological economy.
Governance is critically important to the guidance, administration, and promotion of STW concepts. Effective governance results in the formulation of policy and program implementation consistent with statewide STW priorities and strategies. It is one of eleven focus components identified in the Florida School-to-Work Evaluation Plan.
The following summarizes an analysis of relevant governance characteristics of the seven regional STW partnerships that have ended their first year of implementation as of July 1997.1
The National School-to-Work Office (NSTWO) defines governance as "managing the system" and comprised of four elements: Organizational structure, system evaluation, fiscal management, and strategies to make the system self-sustaining.2 This working definition of governance is in agreement with the definitions found in the management literature. The Florida School-to-Work Evaluation Plan3 specifies governance as important in the
Support [of] systemic change regionally and locally in the planning, development, oversight, and delivery of career preparation and job training programs servicing both in-school and out-school youth through active involvement of employers and other partners to support regional and local issues in economic and workforce development (p. 18).
Based on both the Florida School-to-Work Evaluation Plan and the NSTWO statements, governance is defined as the responsible and responsive exercise of power that guides local partnerships in building an organizational structure which effectively supports the planning, implementing, evaluating, and self-sustaining activities that promote an educational reform strategy aimed at helping students move from schools to productive careers. Thus, the following major components of governance were comparatively analyzed4 across partnerships: Organizational structure, planning and policy formulation, system evaluation, fiscal management capacity, and strategies used to make the system self-sustaining.
Some of the issues identified in the study included:
- connections between the governance of the partnerships and the local Workforce Development Boards (WDB's) are in some cases not clearly defined;
- the degree of specificity and level of effort dedicated to planning (implementation plans) varies greatly among the partnerships; and
- while evaluation plans including methodology, survey instruments, and data collection procedures have been developed, there is no evidence that the procedures have actually been implemented.
Planning efforts
The partnerships were found to engage in different levels of specificity regarding their planning efforts. While some partnerships have carefully formulated their implementation plans including time lines and assignments of responsibilities for each task in each focus area, others had not succeeded in determining exactly how the partnership plan to implement the STW initiatives. Inadequate attention to this critical governance element may prevent connecting STW components in a systematic and comprehensive approach.
Coordination
Coordination is accomplished primarily by the process of mutual adjustment and collaboration, which relies on frequent and informal communication. Formally, partnerships improve their coordination efforts by including in their organizational structure teams or committees charged with coordination. Also, coordination is enhanced by delegating partnership members to participate in more than one working committees.
Structure
Partnerships tend to organize in a relatively "flat" three- to four-level hierarchical structure made up primarily of committees or teams. No "one best way" was found to organize partnerships. Their organization depends more on how partnerships respond to factors in the organizational environment, identified needs, and organizational goals.
Evaluation implementation
The partnerships recognize the importance of an ongoing evaluation mechanism to assess the effectiveness of the system. Implementation of the various evaluation models was not evident. A dynamic evaluation process based on a continuous quality improvement model becomes critically important to assess the effectiveness of the partnerships as STW local partnerships develop. Progress from the stage to implementation to eventual institutionalization will require a greater concern with the evaluation process.
Sustainability
Continuance of the STW beyond the period of federal funding would depend on whether local partnerships have identified and secured alternative funding sources and whether partnerships have succeeded with infusing STW concepts throughout the system. Despite evident progress, the partnerships still need to make substantial strides on implementing strategies that would assure that the STW concept accomplishes a systemic change. A strategy short of effecting a systemic change would not be sustained and would not be different than any other school reform program.
Decision-making
The partnerships were found to involve their working committees/teams at lower levels of the hierarchy to influence decision making. This bottom-up approach is guided by management plans developed by the partnerships. Such management plans help the partnership's leadership to select the most appropriate course of action. There is no set of rules that guides decision making for all situations. A collaborative and participative approach to decision making is most appropriate to the goals and organizational mission of STW partnerships.
Fiscal Management
An adequate analysis of fiscal management capacity of the designated fiscal agents was beyond the scope of this analysis. However, the study focused on a description and explanation of the fiscal agents. STW partnerships most frequently selected community colleges, local school boards or, in one case, the regional Workforce Development Board as their fiscal agents. This seems to be a logical decision considering that these same entities are major members of the partnership and have demonstrated management capacity in previous endeavors.
1. The seven first-year implementation local STW Partnerships are: Alachua-Bradford, Volusia-Flagler, Polk County, Orange-Osceola, Quad-County, Suncoast, and Broward County. Back to text
2. U.S. Department of Education and U.S Department of Labor. (1997). School-to-Work Bulletin No. 97-63.Back to text
3. Frank T. Hammons. (1996). Florida School-to-Work Evaluation Plan, developed for the State of Florida School-to-Work Partnerships, School-to-Work Joint Services Division. Back to text
4. This comparative analysis was based on: (1) quarterly reports prepared by the STW partnerships; (2) evaluation self studies prepared by the STW partnerships prior to evaluation site visits; (3) evaluation site visit reports prepared by the Florida STW Evaluation Liaison Office following evaluation visits; (4) organizational charts provided by the partnerships; and (5) structured telephone interviews with STW Coordinators.
Quarterly reports, evaluation self studies, and evaluation site visit reports (1, 2, and 3 above) were used as primary evaluative data to compare across partnerships. Organizational charts were useful in analyzing and explaining organizational structure models used by the partnerships, and organizational coordination. Structured telephone interviews were used to clarify and confirm the findings resulting from the analysis of the self-studies, evaluation reports, and the organizational charts. Back to text
Report Prepared by:
Institute for Workforce Competitiveness,
Florida School-to-Work Evaluation Liaison Office
Florida International University, March 1998
Send comments to IWC at xiwc@fiu.edu
Copyright © 1998 by Institute for Workforce Competitiveness.
Revised: July
27, 1999.
