Tales of Another School District Part II: The “Data” of Systemic Supervisory Practices

The beauty and sometimes the beast of systemic thinking in school improvement is that while we can speak to Senge’s 5 Disciplines and explore them pretty deeply, doing so, is also often misleading.

Sometimes I wish there were a “Sixth” Discipline because then I can use the metaphor of the Rubik’s Cube. I will anyway, even though we’ve yet to invent that sixth side. By Rubik’s Cube I mean to suggest that solving that puzzle means twisting and turning those colors and sides on three axes in all sorts of combinations quickly leads the puzzle solver to realize that if you twist one side often ALL the other sides are affected by your actions. It gets pretty complicated pretty quickly.

In the same way whilst we can describe each of Senge’s five disciplines it is as important to realize that these variables are not nearly so discreet as you may have originally thought. In other words, they do intersect, overlap, and blur together very readily. So even as I wax poetic to common shared vision amongst the supervisors I described in the previous post it is equally important that having a sense of shared vision is only one side of the cube.

If we mean to improve instructional practices systemically we also mean to engage in the other disciplines and in this post’s case, particularly that of Team Learning. Team Learning is about assuring that all participants are able to engage each other in effective dialogue towards  meaningful purpose. It is also about having common language and terms that can serve as an effective baseline for this dialogue. It’s about making sure that it is true that “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

In this case I am referring to the “data” of supervision. The bottom line is that the supervisor and the teacher need to be able to understand the actions and practices of the lesson observed in order to distill and identify the lesson’s plusses and deficits.

At least two steps are involved in doing this systemically. The first is that all participants, supervisors and teachers, are schooled in common rubrics about effective instruction.

The second step falls primarily to the supervisor to have effective data gathering means to capture the lesson’s activities and components so that the post conference collaboration can point the way to continuous improvement.

What will follow in this description is not particularly earth shaking. What it does do is affirm research based practices and suggestions that should characterize an effective supervisory system.

1. Observer and teacher should have pre-agreed on which components of the lesson that they felt were priority.

2. Observer should script the lesson and steer the bulk of the script toward the pre-agreed observation foci.

3. Observer should record what the students do AND what the teacher does!

4. Observer should use a range of artifacts as concrete evidence to substantiate principles for analysis and assessment in the post observation.

The next posts will elaborate on these practices. But I’d daresay that while there is nothing you may not have already known about effective clinical supervision you need to take your own school or school district’s pulse to decide the extent to which these suggestions are the rule rather than the exception.

Tale of Another School District

I am now wrapping up a two month training for a districts’ administrators and supervisors whose focus is to upgrade and standardize its supervisory practices.

The need for this came from at least two sources. The first was the realization of their new Assistant Superintendent for Instruction that the district’s practices were inconsistent and probably not very effective. The second was that we in New York State have been charged with adopting a supervisory model that has consistent, research-based rubrics that will ultimately enable a school district to somehow “quantify” at least part of the effectiveness of each teacher and each principal.

If any of us could have a penny for each word, spoken, written and shouted about this process we’d all be a lot richer than we are now.

What was good about how this process kicked off in this district was that the second need while certainly not being ignored for it cannot, does not appear to be the driving interest behind the efforts to upgrade their observation practices. Very refreshingly to the contrary actually, in that the district’s supervisors have recognized that the systemic practices associated with shared vision, mental models, and personal mastery,,,, and also systems thinking skills in general, could all benefit from upgrading what they do.

And the benefit(s) certainly appear to start with the belief that using good clinical observation practices will result in ensuring increased achievement for their youngsters.

I will eventually put the PowerPoints I used to help coalesce the supervisors’ work up on my website: http://www.actvelearningconsult.com, but the purpose of these next posts will be to codify my own reflection of the extent to which the group could of its own vision, improve what it does, and what the role(s) district leadership played and plays in solidifying and impelling its positive momentum.

To begin with there was no real model for effective clinical supervisory approaches. Oh there was an “observation form”. And here is where I will argue that function follows form rather than form follows function. By this I mean, that the actual physical format of the observation process was wanting in many dimensions. One of these, as silly as it may seem at first glance, was that the space provided for comments, recommendations and goals was such a small space that the observer would be hard pressed to capture and offer anything meaningful for the teacher to embrace. The message behind the music then appeared to be to write “something” but that its significance or effectiveness would not add up to much.

The supervisors certainly recognized this and there is active negotiation between the district and the teachers’ union about adopting a more effective format.

So the letter of the law will be addressed and the new “form” will generate a much more successful set of functions. But the spirit flowed from the group’s common values and priorities.

The group certainly adopted the shared vision that they could pull together a set of consistent practices and paradigms that would enable them to help all their teachers be exemplary.

Perhaps the key word is consistent because as is often the case in more districts than we all probably realize, there was no consistency of expectation of what a good lesson should look like. The only consistency was the “form” but the process of engaging teachers in meaningful dialogue about the qualities of a good lesson appeared to be lost in the flurry of administrivia that we all can find ourselves mired in.

So we began with affirming several teacher supervision models. You know, Danielson, Marzano, et al. But while any of these models have research based merit I pushed past this for the time being at least to emphasize Supervision 101 as in the value of pre-observation.

Apparently this was problematic on three counts. One is that pre observations were not necessarily the rule. Another was that supervisors would often do unannounced observations or do walk-throughs a’ la  Elmore, each protocol of which, does not lend itself to pre observation analysis. The third was that not everyone knew how to conduct a meaningful pre observation conference.

Perhaps a fourth issue was and is that the entire clinical process is pretty time consuming isn’t it? Using the 5 Disciplines as guideposts, that working against severe time constraints all school leaders feel, sometimes leads them into practices of expedience rather than into preferred. Here I am reminded of Steven Covey’s time use quadrant who argues that effective people spend the majority of their time in Important but not Urgent time usage. To be sure, it may not be urgent (as in health and safety urgent) for school leaders to spend a major chunk of their time in clinical supervisory practices, it is nonetheless IMPORTANT for the long term health of the school organization to devote major energies to raising and maintaining the quality of instruction.

These certainly speak to Senge’s Shared Vision discipline and to his Mental Models discipline.

As for the first issue, not necessarily the rule, here was an instance where the Assistant Superintendent and I had no problem offering up research and support to validate that a pre observation is a non-negotiable.

As for the second problem, that a good portion of observations done were walk throughs and drop ins we needed to be more creative. Here the group got creative by deciding to develop a new practice where all teachers would schedule what I will call a “what-if” conference where teachers and administrators could generalize about what kinds of instructional practices the teacher might think she would need feedback about. This would enable the supervisor to have some sort of guideline to use when she dropped in or walked through.

As for the third concern, where, supervisors needed to learn how to do a meaningful pre observation conference, using research, YouTube, and role playing we were able to generate a substantial model for implementation.

So yes, we are beginning to re-tool the overall system of clinical support but there were more issues to solidify as well most of which lie  in the systems practices of the district.

The next post will speak re data gathering.

Reinventing Education Dot Org

This blog is a plug for a website that I use very frequently. Check out http://www.reinventingeducation.org.

This site is supported by IBM as an arm of its philanthropic efforts to support educational change. It was developed by Dr. Rosabeth Kanter who is a recognized business / organizational leader out of Harvard.

She has developed a complex website whose use is not for the faint of heart. And this makes sense. Reinventing educational systems is just a tad complex and so you will find no Holy Grail, one-size-fits-all link that will answer all your prayers.

I urge you to sign on and then to register. For some reason, on registering, you cannot automatically use the site’s many, many resources. After a day or two you will be notified of your acceptance and then you can begin to engage it.

Start with Getting Started and then follow how the site will intuitively lead through the Change Wheels. Highly, highly recommend it.

Perhaps the best aspects of the site are the 88 instruments that are offered to measure stakeholders’ perceptions of just about any organizational / systemic issue you can think of. Stakeholders can access the site, answer the instrument online and the site will compute responses by frequency and means. Better than that, it will then make specific suggestions as to what to do as a result of the responses.

One of the most poignant experiences I have had in using this site was when I accessed the Change Wheel and used its Shared Vision resources. I invited the faculty of a building I was working with, to answer the instrument about Shared Vision. Teachers actually began to cry and become upset as they responded to the items. It became very clear to them that there was absolutely no shared vision in their building. And naturally that became the leverage for building in all the 5 Disciplines into the school’s organizational practices.

One of my doctoral students, Dr. Mary Kelly of Amityville Schools in New York did her research on this website. She uncovered some very interesting issues associated with the extent to which schools and school districts were successfully using the site to engage systemic reform. I urge you to contact her with questions you may have.

In essence though her research dramatically demonstrated that schools that used the site UNsuccessfully were invariably NOT organizationally READY to embrace systemic change.

If you think about it, that premise speaks volumes. Sometimes the spirit is willing but the flesh may be weak.

Try this out.

The Organization’s ” ‘tude” as in Mental Model

Senge speaks volumes to the learning-organization’s “discipline” he calls Mental Models.

Before we speak to what it is and how it may operate, let’s be clear about the premise of learning organization. I sometimes think that we in educational leadership positions might mistakenly equate Senge’s use of the learning organization term in the context of schools since after all, we are organizations that we hope foster learning. And by the way, that may be a pretty good example of a mental model.

However that isn’t how I interpret Senge’s premise.

His, and others who espouse what Demings and others would equate learning organization to, speak to an organization committed to learning, sustaining, and perpetuating itself. There are plenty of examples of such who have successfully been learning organizations and of others that have failed at it.

Let’s take the negative first: Blacksmiths were not a learning organization. If they were  they converted their skills and practices and learned how to run gas stations and auto repair businesses. Video store owners on whole were not learning organizations because they likely missed  or were unable to react to the technological innovations that deliver video directly to consumers.

On the positive side: Think of Apple. Apple was losing what was left of its computer marketing share until Steve Jobs recognized Apple had to reinvent itself to be a platform for linked technologies where the computer stood as the hub of other connected services, like video, music, and mobile computing. Think of … you know what? I cannot think of other companies or institutions that are better examples of reinventing themselves! I am sure there are many others but maybe someone can offer some ideas to me. I will refer you to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great for potential examples. And actually on writing this I am thinking of Walt Disney and the Walt Disney corporation as potentially good examples.

At any rate, where would you put the organization known as public education? Has it reinvented itself to not only sustain its existence but also to improve its likelihood of success? Hmmm. For that matter, what about governing agencies in general? How good have those organizations been at reinventing themselves against uncertain futures?

Senge argues strongly for five disciplines or practices that characterize exemplary learning organizations. One is Mental Models. I like the term ” ‘tude” as in Attitude as a more concrete one. That is, what are the attitudes, paradigms, mental models, dominating beliefs, of an organization that characterize how it does or does not operate?

Apply the idea to schools. What are the mental models driving the conversations in a school’s faculty rooms? What are the mental models that the school leaders use in their  faculty meetings? Are they toxic? Are they hopeful? Are they positive? Are they grounded in the belief that they and their colleagues are united around finding ways to continue to meet the needs of 21st students who will be 21st century citizens?

Are they locked into “We can’t!” or restricted by “They won’t let us!” or by “You know, we can do that?” or “Let’s try it and apologize later if it doesn’t work?”

And that brings me back to two points, one from a previous post, another is new: Remember unlocking creativity? We spoke about that when I noted how I as coach / facilitator felt morally responsible to keep the ideas rolling and flowing lest the one or two good ideas amongst the torrent never get a chance to flow through the filter? The other point is about my experiences in wrapping up the school improvement reviews I have describing.

As I twine the two points together both are about Mental Models. As I began the process of giving the finalized reports to the school / district teams I was once again struck by the chains that bound them. The Money-Mental-Model was one as described in the previous post, but not money or lack thereof, rather the lack of imagination or of courage to Reallocate monies to fund new and worthy ideas.

Of course doing so would threaten the system that created the original and Ineffective programs that perpetuate current power structures and power blocs. I’m not naive though. I understand how contracts, unions, and mandates real or imagined, can restrict reapportioning  resources to support new and creative ideas.

Nonetheless, the mental model, the attitude, that drives the decision making and the implementation of these choices, has, must be, courageously identified, parsed, twisted, turned, and eliminated in order to recreate the organization so it can recreate itself.

One effective way to confront and at least clarify negative mental models is to first of all point out what a mental model is to the group. Doing so sensitizes a group to how mental models may drive or defeat creativity and decision making. That will help but it must also be complemented by the leaders’ task to model and to help the group work very hard at HEARING each other by giving each other opportunities to dialogue so that folks become comfortable enough to hear their own paradigms – tudes and comfortable enough to adjust them if they realize how doing so will actually open the way for making an organization a learning organization.

Tales of Three Cities (really three schools) Part VI

Should I apologize for fancying myself a school-improvement nerd? I am that for sure. And while nerd usually has some unpleasant connotations in this world I guess it is still fair to say that I am one.

That is why it is a bit difficult for me to bring closure to the process I have been describing. One reason for that is that I don’t think there is closure to school reform / improvement efforts especially in schools with persistent needs.  For this reason, whilst the review process is largely done and now we are in the stage of finalizing the recommendations, there are plenty of lessons for those school leaders who also engage this process.

One I will allude to now and speak to mightily up the road is my wonder whether how, if, or ever, “support” from a state, regional, or federal agency has any positive, sustainable, results. What research I have begun to do thus far has not yielded much positive on this count. IF my continuous research efforts in this regard continue to be a dry hole then the obvious question is why?

We all deserve to have answers to this. NCLB, now RTTT and who knows what initials yet to be spawned continue to require that government agencies of some sort or another will invest themselves on one level supportively and perhaps on another level punitively (or so perceived by the schools or district under such lenses), into helping schools designated in need to improve their achievement.

But it simply isn’t as simple as their formulas would have you believe. In one of the schools where we are finishing up, on data analysis, we found that their African American population which in aggregate had not made the standard, was practically all also classified as Students with Disabilities. In addition, while the school was not cited for the performance of students with low economic wealth, 90% of these same students were also classified as such.

So were these children disabled? Were they underperforming because they were poor? Is poverty the ultimate root cause?

Covey speaks about one’s “sphere of influence”. Is it within any school’s power to overcome the consequences of poverty? Perhaps this is true in many instances, but can it be true, especially in the vile political rhetoric we are suffering nowadays, buoyed by terrible economic times that schools, of their own, with what resources they have, can universally make it all happen?

Some of you will cherry pick schools and school leaders who appear to have overcome the anchors of poverty for their school’s children. Some will point to dysfunctional public school systems and argue for charter schools or vouchers. By the way the research about their success isn’t too glowing either. And I even confess to some more than passing interest in their potential to be more successful than public school systems.

But now I come back to the school I describe above. They recognize many of their deficits. One solution they had put in place was to increase their school periods from eight to nine so that another period in the day would give them scheduling flexibility to provide more support services and to encourage more professional development among staff.

Then le Deluge kicked in, state aid monies were drastically reduced. Administrative and teaching staff  were slashed to the bone. And guess what, the ninth period? That’s right. It has been eliminated.

What is the message? If you say “Do more with less.” after I scream, I’ll say what “you’re” saying is that our governing and societal value system talks out of both sides of its mouth.

I did not intend for this post to go in this direction. I will point to other dynamics and creativity and mind sets and systems adjustments in the next post(s), but this is one mental model, poverty’s impact, that is an elephant in this room today .

Or maybe it’s about what we really think has importance.

A Tale of Three Cities (really three schools) Part V

We’ve rounded the corner. School X is “done”. School Y is “done”. And so is School Z which I have not really spoken about yet since I was able to convene their team only this past week.

School Z, as each has been, was also very interesting. As with the other schools many of the same initial variables prevailed. These are about the High Involvement variables I have already spoken to and will again many times over in additional posts.

I am always struck about how valid they invariably are. Here I give chief credit to Priscilla Wohlstetter and her colleagues for solidifying the research about high involvement variables in effective school improvement groups. I will also take much less research-credit for my own research of the existence of high involvement variables in Blue Ribbon schools. Nonetheless what often appears to be the critical factors in my experience is the Knowledge variable.

This variable on closer examination may be more cleanly refined by viewing it through two additional lenses: The first is the group’s ability to use data, both qualitative and quantitative, to identify root causes; generate goals; create effective and measurable strategies; and develop worthy operational and strategic plans. The second lens is the ability of the team to coalesce around inclusive group dynamics to foster meaningful dialogue without rancor and personal agenda.

School Z was remarkably proficient at meaningful dialogue among them. This was notwithstanding some specific individuals, understandably being somewhat more sensitive than others about resource allocation and their own roles and responsibilities in the school and its district. They seemed aware of this and took professional pains to leave their agenda at the front door as best they could. In fact, they became a valuable asset to the group when they offered additional perspectives and ideas from their own experiences to the recommendations the group tentatively considered.

My role in this dynamic was to encourage this, mindful too, of not letting them dominate the conversation.

The group also handled the data analysis activities quite well although typical cart before the horse diagnostics kicked in that I was hard pressed to reverse. And by the way this was true in the other groups too.

That is, they reviewed documentation, looked at performance data, did some walk-throughs, and several interviews. They distilled what they had found and even though they had groped around the entire elephant (mindful of the 5 blind indians who did same in the fable), drew conclusions, and offered recommendations slash solutions before they had identified the root causes they were trying to pinpoint.

Again, please understand that this is typical group / school improvement behavior and I dare say true of any committee in any organization. It falls to the Facilitator to keep this at minimum although I daresay it’s impossible to totally smother because decision making you see is just NEVER a linear process!

The best antidote to nitpicking solutions to pieces of a problem is to teach the group beforehand that they should be mindful of jumping to generalizations from specifics. Perhaps more important is the facilitator’s obligation to teach the group beforehand root cause identification strategies. I refer you to Paul Preuss and to Vicki Bernhardt among others, for the many ways to approach this.

What I find more effective is to teach the skill in isolation; model it on the most simple basis, then take one of the issues that they seem to be zeroing toward and modeling that again with the root cause identification strategies that you have shown.

Takes time?! You bet. But if you mean to “teach a man to fish” this is the best way to truly transform the individuals into a group problem solving exemplar.

A Tale of Three Cities (really three schools) IV: Corking Creativity?

Last week I worked in School X and also in School Y.

And in both, where I am helping them prepare school improvement plans for state agencies, again, system issues kicked up both positively and otherwise.

What also emerged were at least two observations I had of my own role(s) as catalyst – facilitator for their efforts.

Watching these groups evolve into a lean mean improvement machine is always a fascinating process for me and while there are common elements of their development there certainly is no cookie cutter to my expectations.

Here are two examples.

One school team, both actually, have gotten their fingernails dirty in considering mountains of data and documents as evidence of the extent to which the schools meet certain indicators. These indicators are: Data usage; Teaching and Learning; School Leadership; Infrastructure; Professional Development; and Resources.

Teams reviewed the documentation and made tentative conclusions about the extent to which the schools met these indicators, particularly in light of the reason(s) for which they had been cited. Both buildings are cited for students with disabilities. X is also cited for performance by their African American population. Y is cited for performance by their  English Language Learners population.

After they reviewed and assessed the paperwork they did walk-throughs of a cross sample of classes to focus on the teaching and learning indicator.

They also interviewed their colleagues and key administrators, and some community members to gather more information for the most valid conclusions possible.

The next step was to generate recommendations to the school and to the district about strengthening strengths and reducing deficits.

This is when it got interesting.

First of all both groups generated many, many, excellent recommendations both school based and also district based. My role was what I call PPIN, as in Pleasant Pain in the Neck so that I would coax, coach, cajole them to look at issues from many perspectives and from their own experiences and knowledge. In other words I was seeking creativity, not for creativity’s sake but to empower them to “think out of the box” ( I hate that phrase but it is apt here).

And creative they were. Yet as they began to generate they began to frighten some of the participants. They did NOT make this recommendation but I will use it as an archetype of what almost derailed the quality of their efforts:

They recommended that every student have an iPad. They were able to offer many sound reasons for it and even able to show how they will evaluate the success of such a innovative approach for their students. As this idea went “up on the board” some began to complain. “They will never allow this!” “We don’t have the money for this!” yada yada

I am rarely a didactic person but in this case, as Facilitator (another word I don’t like) I could not permit this!

I couldn’t permit this because putting a cork on the creative flow of ideas will invariably cork up any other creative ideas that may have been a bornin’. This is Rule One, Line One, Paragraph One, of idea generating (aka brainstorming): “Thou shalt not discourage ideas no matter how outlandish they may seem in an idea generating mode!”

Sure, they probably can’t afford iPads for every student but it isn’t necessarily the specifics of an idea we are percolating. Rather it is the possibility that we might be able to adapt the original idea to one that may actually be affordable. And while I can’t tell you how the group did come up with an amazing adaptation of the original premise I can guarantee you THAT idea would not have been born if I had corked up the creativity.

Now for sure, there is a time to come to closure. That is is in the Solution – Finding phase I will describe in a much later blog when we consider all the dimensions of Team Learning a la Senge’s Five Discipline.

The other example is about Mental Models. One school team had particularly strong views about the leadership’s contributions, positively and negatively to their school. They very much wanted me to interview the individual. So I did. Well, and I am pretty good at hearing the “message behind the music”, I came away with a fairly positive assessment of the individual’s points of view. I reported same to the group and at first they didn’t accept my assessment. It took some time for me enable them to as Covey puts it, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” In the end their mental model changed because they realized that their feelings may have overwhelmed the facts.

So the lesson(s) in this post? I suppose that if you are training or facilitating a school improvement group it is important to use Team Learning devices to ensure that they have both the knowledge competencies and the creativity competencies essential to promote a free flow of ideas. And it is important to not only understand one’s own Mental Model but also to work hard to generate dialogue techniques to promote empathetic respect for others’ Mental Models.

A Tale of Three Cities (Really Three Schools) Part IIIa

Drat and alas. The holiday vacation has obstructed the flow of the conversation here and has, to continue the tortured metaphor, dammed my ability to speak to interviews yet completed.

But to maintain some form of momentum let me give you a coming attraction of what may be emerging from School X ‘s first interviews and allow me to also reinforce the premise of High Involvement I spoke briefly to in the previous post.

School X’s team did interview some teachers. This school was cited for deficits in English Language Arts among its Students With Disabilities and its African American population. What may turn out to be very interesting is that the teachers’ alarm about African American students’ performance appeared to be about these students’ academic self-concept and their own perception of belonging.

I hope I am not premature here, but they did report that they felt that African American students did not on whole to aspire to be in the accelerated or advanced classes because they didn’t want to be the only students of color in the class! If this is true, this saddens me for their own sake and suggests that the team simply MUST recommend some serious action research about African American students’ perception of their roles in this school. More as it emerges.

Speaking of action research transitions this post to the next item of High Involvement. The High Involvement Model posits that a group cannot be effective unless it knows it power / authority; has mastered a set of operational and interpersonal competencies; has the data it needs to make effective decisions; knows how to make goals based on their knowledge competencies and on the data they have reviewed; can distribute leadership responsibilities among and to the appropriate stakeholders; can find or has the resources it needs; and can attribute extrinsic and / or extrinsic rewards to their efforts.

Action research speaks to all of these variables but particularly to the second and third factors; knowledge and information. All too often, as mentioned in the last post, groups make snap decisions with faulty or surface data. Perhaps even more troubling, school improvement groups may actually have all the data they need but lack the analytical skills of root cause analysis, futuring, goal setting and strategic / shared planning design to systemically design sustained and long term solutions.

Action research is one answer to this. Not the only one, but a good one. In the case of School X it really is important that they design a way to find out what their African American students may be feeling and / or thinking so that they can peel back their own onion to identify ways to strengthen what might at minimum be a problem in how these children perceive their ability to achieve.

A Tale of Three Cities (Really Three Schools) Part III

We have begun the school review in School X. The committee consists of a nice cross-section of administrators and teachers from outside of that school. A delightful group. Clearly invested. Very professional. A pleasure.

They began to review the mountain of evidence the school under review had assembled. These data consists of you name it; from official notes, observations, achievement data, etc. all of which intended to be used as yardsticks for determining how or to what extent the school “measures up” to indicators that the state has adopted.

The indicators, ranging from use of data to professional development, to use of resources; to teaching and learning etc., are thorough and seemed grounded in the best research about effective school organizations. Ultimately the group, after examining the evidence, observing classrooms, and performing interviews, will decide the building’s strengths and deficits and make recommendations appropriate. I’m told that many buildings use this report to inform the Comprehensive Education Plans they must also put together. Makes sense.

As I opened the conversation I urged them to realize that it was important to be conscious of the lens they used and the lens we will all use. By that I meant that there were at least two ways to engage the process; the letter of the law and its spirit. It is one thing, I said, to review the evidence as a checklist to mechanically determine if all the facts existed. It was another thing I urged, to look for the “message behind the music”.

In other words, the paper evidence should perhaps be the sheet music, but the real melody would be heard and recognized in the walk-throughs and interviews. It was also important to seek the root causes.

Root cause is a word bandied about far too often lately. I’d like a penny for every time I heard or read it when analysts (so-called) agonized about the economy’s collapse. I can mix a million metaphors here but I’ll use Senge’s description of one system archetype known as the quick-fix. It is obvious enough. I can “fix” a say, language arts deficiency short term, by chasing after the innovation-du-jour and it might even fix it. However unless the thinkers/planners take the time to truly peel back the onion (mixing metaphors again!) their solution such as Lone Ranger Professional Development; punitive supervisory techniques, a new text, a new piece of software or internet site, or a new teacher will not work unless all the pieces of the puzzle fit.

If you as reader, are experienced as a school reformer or planner you might be wondering about why I even talk about this premise. It is Planning 101 after all. However you also have to remember that such review teams more often than not, do not have the skills and the knowledge base immediately at hand to truly engage the process of reform and of planning effectively.

Check out Wohlstetter’s High Involvement Model or my website, http://www.activelearningconsult.com to get a better handle on what I am driving at …  or simply keep reading these posts:)

But my point here is that I had to teach the group about some root cause identification techniques such as the 5 Why’s and the Fishtail so that I could scrape their instant diagnose thinking sensibilities down to something more raw and more keen. Check out Paul Preuss or Victoria Bernhardt for a crash course.

But it gets more interesting when we get to interviews! Next post.

A Tale of Three Cities (really three schools) Part II

My visit to school Z was pushed to next week. My visit to School Y last week was a bit less tense than the last meeting.

I don’t lay this all on the resistance of the district to the process imposed on them. I will take some process blame in my own self-reflection. The state agency should also recognize its mistakes too.

As for me, my mistake(s) likely were assuming that the process had been clearly communicated to the school by the state agency. Another error on my part at the outset was assuming that the school and the district’s receptiveness to the process had already been cleared and clarified.

Not true in either case. When I began to repeat the role responsibilities of everyone district and building officials became concerned. They claimed they did not know about the review teams’ charge to observe classrooms. They claimed that  they did not know that the review team should not consist of members of the school under review.

Another mistake I made was that I dug in. Even though I was correct in understanding what I and the team was expected to do I initially made no room for a win-win. I think I dug in because I felt challenged virtually from the outset by a district official who claimed not to know about the classroom visits and felt that inasmuch as the school was cited for not meeting the standard in the categories of English Language Learners and of Students with Disabilities any observations we might do should only be of Special Education or ELL classes.

Now I was right to dig in about the need to observe a sampling of all classes! The official’s thinking, silo thinking of the first order, was actually quite telling on reflection. He simply did not see the school performance issue(s) as system / school wide and the sum of how instruction and of grouping these children might be affected.

And we will be observing all kinds of classes. But I confess to having been put off at the challenge and that led to needless win-lose conversations about the other processes noted above.

In the end I had enough good sense, the next day to realize that my own rigidity, in reaction to their continued rigidity, would only breed a he-said she-said mentality that would interfere with my own and the team’s ability to perform its duties and to make the best recommendations for the school and the school’s children. I won’t bore you with the specifics but in the end I relented on some procedure points that gave them concern without sacrificing the process.

The other elephant in the room is the teachers’ union. It is clear that the union is protective, rightfully, of its members. It is clear that the district is very mindful of the union’s sway and anxious to ensure that the union does not get upset.

I had and have major problems with this notwithstanding my own respect for what a union is supposed to do. What has saved the day in my estimation, at this point, is that I have worked with the union official assigned to the team. While is she is clearly devoted to what her role is it is equally clear that she is a professional who will collaborate and contribute mightily.

The review will begin after the holiday and we shall see.