General description

The research examined the decisions of Israeli high schools regarding the implementation of a large amount of resources allotted to them for work with small groups.  The resources were given to the schools as part of an educational reform, encouraged by the Teachers’ Union, which was an active partner in its creation in the unique form of supplementary “weekly instruction time” for each teacher in the school. During these hours the teacher would have to teach small groups of students.  The research focused on the products of the first year of the reform’s implementation, and identified nine organizational patterns chosen by the schools to implement the additional resource.

Theoretical Framework

Many education systems deliberate about the way to allocate resources to schools. There is a dispute as to whether supplementary resources can achieve measurable educational results. Policy-makers usually assume that an increase in outgoings produces better results and so they are willing to increase their investments.  They believe that these investments contribute more to the system than they can cause damage. They assume that there is a significant influence of resources on achievements and demonstrate this with examples of successful exploitation of resources allocated for the reduction of number of students in classes (Angrist and Lavy, 1999; Baker, 2012; Biddle and Berliner, 2002; Gibbons et al., 2011; Krueger, 2003; Krueger and Whitmore, 2001).  Contrastingly, others claim that it is difficult to identify a correlation between allocation of resources and academic achievements; the main argument being that it is unclear whether the additional investment produced the results because of effective actions by the school or because of the background from which the students originated (Allen et al, 2012; Grubb, 2009; Hanushek, 2003, 2008).

The government, which in most cases is the allocating body, deliberates whether to grant the schools freedom to realize the resources independently or to intervene in the schools’ decisions and to closely supervise their implementation. Often the allocating body imposes instructions, and obliges the receiver to act accordingly to ensure realization of its goals, while the schools prefer financial flexibility (Mensah & Werner, 2003; Suartz, 1993).

Effective implementation of the resources necessitates  strong staff cooperation, a positive school climate, standards-based curricula and collaborative and student-centered instruction all fully supported by management. Additionally it was found that assimilation of a culture based on management-staff trust facilitates success for resource realization (Machin, 2010), while overcrowded classes, high staff turnover, lack of staff participation in decision-making, and a sense of confusion during decision-making and low implementation of learning curricula were found as ineffective (Mangan et al., 2014).

In Israel, the resources provided in the form of “weekly instruction time” were part of the “Courage to Change” reform implemented gradually from 2011 in Israeli middle and high schools, following a similar “New Horizons” reform implemented three years before in kindergartens and elementary schools (Schechter, 2013). The reform allowed the schools great flexibility in determining content for the supplementary instruction time, specifying only that it should be used for teachers’ meetings with small groups of students. Schools were not allowed to exchange the budget for needs not including interaction with students (Tamir, 2009).  The research examined how school managements decided to implement the supplementary “weekly instruction time” allocated to their teachers.

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