Principals, shared decision making, and school ref)rm. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

When schools adopt shared decision making (SDM), principals ' authority is limited. Neverthe-less, all six principals in the SDM high schools we studied supported SDM, at least in part because they had chosen to serve in an SDM school. The three principals who were most supportive of SDM also had ambitious visions of instructional reform. After 1.5 to 2 years, the high schools in which these principals served experienced a heightened level of conflict among the faculty. In large part, the conflict was due to these principals ' efforts to use SDM as a vehicle to foster large changes. Teachers resisted major change, and principals became impatient with the participatory process and tried to promote their own versions of reform. Only a modest degree of reform was achieved, but it was more than was achieved by SDM principals without a reform agenda. Reformist principals in non-SDM high schools implemented modest reforms as well, although at the expense of suspicion and antagonism after changes were introduced. We explore the dilemmas that reformist principals face and suggest policy implications. Shared decision making (SDM) is a reform of significant proportions, altering as it does the balance of power in schools. When schools shift to a system of SDM, some of the principal's authority is transferred to the teacher-administrator decision-making group. Johnson (1990, p. 143) writes: "As teachers' formal powers are augmented and adminis-trators ' authority is abridged, the role of the principal will be redefined. " The redefinition inevitably reduces the domains in which the principal holds unilateral sway (Cohen, 1987