Navigating Comprehensive School Change

Robert Everhart, Thomas Chenoweth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781930556317
• eBook ISBN: 9781317919667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book, an accessible resource for busy practitioners, is a unique hybrid of two genres. As a "tourist guide," it shows you how to prepare for the journey, what to pay attention to upon arrival, and how to deal with the unexpected. As a "consumer report", it helps you identify some of the best tools and sources about change, access useful information about the change process, and find information about the strengths and challenges of various strategies. Thorough and comprehensive, it offers essential information about how to form leadership teams, identify high stakes problems, build commitment, create a school-wide vision and establish school-wide goals, handle setbacks, maintain the vision and sustain change, and evaluate and assess comprehensive school change. Also included is a section called "Ports of Call," which provides sources of information to help you implement comprehensive school reform at your site.

1

HOW ABOUT A SHORT COURSE ON NAVIGATION?

Assumptions and Key Lessons About Change

Chapter Highlights

Clarify assumptions. It is important for all participants to know, understand, and support the essential premises on which a comprehensive school change proposal is based.

Explore the research on change. There are many valuable lessons found in the research on school change. Using these lessons can significantly improve the change process.

The Story of South Central Middle School and Educational Change

Mary was a dedicated and conscientious teacher. Indeed, her positive reputation was amply supported by the numerous awards that she’d received within her district and the recognition accorded her by the state chapter of the Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD). What’s more, Mary always attracted many parent volunteers who were willing to assist in the classroom as well as to participate in the variety of field trips and after-school events for which Meadowlark school was well known. Though Mary had received her administrative licensure a few years ago, and had been an elementary vice-principal for two years as well as principal in the summer school program for one summer, she wasn’t seriously considering school administration at the age of 49. Mary would be eligible to retire from teaching in another eight years and she loved working directly with students—a passion that she was afraid she’d no longer experience if she entered the pressure-cooker environment of building administration.

In October of 1998 however, Bruce Tolliver, the principal of Meadowlark, invited Mary into his office, closed the door and, after the usual small talk about children, family, and district politics, said to her in very direct terms: “Mary, there’s a middle school principal position open next fall and the superintendent wants you to consider it. While I dread losing you, I agree with her.”

Teaching has room for very few promotions, and the administrative route is one of the few. Although Mary was honored by Bruce’s comments, she knew that administration was an honor she could easily decline. Besides, why would she want to leave Meadowlark for South Central Middle School? Everyone in the district knew that South Central ate up administrators and spat them out with regularity. Indeed, no principal had lasted more than three years in the past decade, and no wonder. Student performance was low on virtually every scale, and student mobility was at 40 percent per year. Parental involvement at South Central was negligible—except when an outraged parent’s complaint got the attention of a local civil rights organization, which in turn then broadcast their complaints before the school board and the media.

“Thanks Bruce, for considering me, but my answer is no,” Mary replied. As much as Bruce tried to talk her into keeping an open mind, he couldn’t get her to reconsider. He had expected as much.

Superintendent Jennifer Craig, however, had yet to use her charm on Mary. Jennifer was in her third year as superintendent and had already made her mark in the community on the theme of improved student learning. Jennifer was of the opinion that when students failed to meet educational standards, it wasn’t because they lacked the capacity. Rather, the fundamental problem was that the schools had not found the best strategy to teach those students. Given that student learning was at the heart of schooling (and most especially in poor and minority neighborhoods like that served by South Central), Jennifer believed that schools had to become invested in the improvement of student learning.

To meet this challenge, Jennifer didn’t issue edicts from the central office or promulgate strategic plans. Her approach was much more incremental, more long-range. She believed that the schools themselves had to take charge of their own destiny—to struggle with facing what wasn’t working, why it wasn’t working, and to develop their own plans to meet the challenges. She subscribed to the philosophy that her principals should be empowered to find ways to effectively involve the entire staff in the process of comprehensive school change, and indeed should form leadership “teams” within the school in order to maximize that involvement. In this environment, Jennifer viewed the role of the school board as one of establishing broad policies to facilitate school-based change efforts. The responsibility of the superintendent’s office was to create the environment to support those policies and to hold the schools accountable. Finally, the individual school buildings were to be charged with devising the most effective means to meet these goals.

Jennifer also tried to put her money where her rhetoric was through her actions of reducing the budget of the central administration by some 10 percent and transferring most of those funds to the schools themselves.

As charismatic as she was, however, Jennifer had her weaknesses. Oftentimes, she was too impatient to change and some felt that she was so far ahead of her staff that she lost many of them in her wake. Additionally, while Jennifer was great at long-term visioning, she was less adept at crafting the details of how to reach those long-term visions. These characteristics left some staff thinking that Jennifer’s activity was designed more to enhance her career mobility than it was to serve the schools and children of the Bridgeport School District.

After Jennifer called Mary into her office to discuss her philosophy and strategy, Mary had to admit that she was impressed by Jennifer’s enthusiasm and vision. When she listened to Jennifer review her aspirations for all schools, and especially troubled ones like South Central, Mary realized how similar her own philosophy was with that espoused by Jennifer. She liked the notion of shared leadership and a democratic environment within which to make decisions about teaching. Her perspective clearly recognized the strengths of the professional educators and provided the space to effectively utilize those strengths. A focus on student learning had always been at the heart of what Mary did in her classroom, and she believed that was one reason why she had consistently been successful at raising student achievement. Finally, Jennifer had a way of advocating for change without making it appear that everything from the past was bad and the people who did it were incompetent. Rather, change was a natural process, and advocating for change was really a strategy for continuous renewal within the school. A few days after talking to Jennifer, Mary called us to ask what we thought. Because we had been the university faculty members who led the administrative cohort preparation program in which Mary had been enrolled five years ago, she thought we might be able to help her think about the plusses and minuses of Jennifer’s offer. Mary had been one our best students in the cohort, and we encouraged her to accept the position.

So, it was with anticipation (as well as a bit of nervousness) that Mary attended the school board meeting in January of 1999 where it was announced that she had been appointed the new principal of South Central Middle School, effective July of that year. Certainly the task before her would be challenging, but with a supportive superintendent, Mary felt confident that she could play an important role in changing the expectations for students at South Central School.

Not surprisingly to us however, within a few days of the announcement of Mary’s appointment, we received a message on our voice mail. “Help,” said the voice on the recording. “You know who this is; you helped get me this job, now you have to help me prepare to meet the faculty of South Central in a week. What do I say? I need a crash course in school change. Call me back—today!”

We did return Mary’s call and reminded her that the challenges of school change were formidable and couldn’t be overcome with a cookbook. We knew, however, that she needed some “talking points” to help prepare her comments for the meeting with the faculty. So the next day we met Mary after school and reminded her that much of what she needed to say to the faculty were points that had been raised during her administrative licensure program that we directed a few years ago. We also reminded her of the key issues critical in any change effort. Slowly, Mary became more confident and realized that she knew more than she thought she did. She was ready to meet with her new faculty to begin navigating school change at South Central.

After reading this chapter, you’ll understand what Mary and other future school leaders learned in the administrative program that we taught. More specifically, we introduce you to the assumptions about school change that we discussed with the group over the year and why we think they are so important. These assumptions, which underlie the organization and content of this book, represent fundamental values that we hold about the change process.

You’ll also be exposed to a snapshot of key critical factors about change that we believe are prerequisites for successful change. When Mary asked us for a “crash course” on school change, these factors were the ones we thought might be included in a syllabus for such a course. Indeed, these factors are integral to this book and are derived from key findings from the research on change(discussed in depth in Chapter 8) as well as our own experiences in assisting schools with comprehensive change efforts.

Our Assumptions

Change in schools, as in any formal organization, is a highly complex process bounded by many conditions. We believe, however, that there are some basic assumptions that must be introduced, debated, and ultimately adopted if change is to be successful in your school. This book is guided by these assumptions and it is important for us to spell them out.

Major Assumptions of this Book

Change must focus on improved student learning

School change must be comprehensive, not piecemeal

Effective school change demands shared leadership

All relevant stakeholders must be involved in the change process

Effective change means changing school cultures

Focus on Student Learning

First, when we discuss educational change, we’re operating under the assumption that all such change is directly targeted toward the improved learning of all students. It might seem unnecessary to state this as an obvious assumption of this book; however, we believe otherwise.

A strong focus on student learning is necessary.

Many educational changes can be characterized as focusing on factors that a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Authors
• Figures and Tools
• With Appreciation
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 HOW ABOUT A SHORT COURSE ON NAVIGATION?ASSUMPTIONS AND KEY LESSONS ABOUT CHANGE
• 2 LAUNCHING THE SHIP: HOW DO WE PREPARE THIS THING TO FLOAT? PRE-INITIATION & INITIATION
• 3 IS EVERYBODY ON BOARD? BUILDING COMMITMENT
• 4 DID YOU SAY TO TURN PORT OR STARBOARD?IMPLEMENTATION
• 5 WAS THIS ROCK ON THE CHART? SUSTAINING CHANGE
• 6 HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’VE ARRIVED?EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT
• 7 CONCLUSIONS—AND (NEW) BEGINNINGS
• 8 DOESN’T SOMEBODY OUT THERE HAVE A CHART? LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT CHANGE
• PORTS OF CALL IN YOUR FUTURE NAVIGATIONS: RESOURCES FOR CHANGE
• INDEX