On June 30 we brought our contract to lead the Minneapolis Schools to a successful conclusion. This was the longest and most successful agreement in the nation between a private firm and a public school board to lead a school district. After 52 months and several unique pay-for-performance contracts, we completed our central task of turning the district’s performance around. Now the Minneapolis School Board and The Public Strategies Group, Inc. have also successfully completed a planned transition in leadership.
This experience has left us proud and optimistic about the future of urban education. During our 4 plus years of serving the children in Minneapolis the district made remarkable gains: |
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- a 5% increase for 8th graders on the state’s reading test including a 13% increase for African American students and a 29% increase for those 9th graders taking the test for the second time
- the largest gains in 5 years for elementary students taking the California Achievement Test
- conversion to a system of community and magnet schools with extensive school choice for families
- the development of a complete set of curriculum standards for kindergarten through grade 12
- the initiation of a new approach to assessment that aligns testing to curriculum standards and gives students, families and teachers information they need to improve
- the incorporation of consequences for performance into the contracts for administrators and teachers
- the development of a unique collegial, professional development process for teachers and other employees
- the completion of an accountability design that aligns the expectations for all part of the system with the challenge of improving student achievement
- a financial condition rated as “best ever” by the district’s outside auditor
- a 70% yes vote on a $250 million property tax referendum last year
- the investment of over $150 million in new buildings and remodeling and more....
We also learned some profound lessons about schools, change and leadership. These were best summarized by a second grader one day in commenting on the job of the superintendent
“A leader is someone who changes things to make things better.”
It takes tremendous energy to change an organization. The challenge is to focus that energy on changing the right things - the things that will really make a difference for students.
When it comes to public education most people hardly know where to start. The litany of problem areas is well known: poverty, disrespect, lack of family and community support, frightening finances, weak governance, safety concerns, a hollow curriculum, wimpy accountability, lack of focus, a culture of fear and mistrust, low standards, alienated students and families, low morale, deficits, dilapidated buildings, ancient technology and on and on....
As a result, there is also a lot of energy for change in public education. Citizens, families, community and civic organizations, mayors and city councils, governors, legislators, state superintendents and department administrators, the President, business organizations, foundations, communities of faith - everyone it seems has a theory or a plan.
With all that is going on -- including the rising number of court, state and city takeovers and the prominence of education reform on the agendas of most state legislatures -- one could reasonably conclude that education is in transition. But in transition to what?
Transforming education requires us to leave behind our ideologies and some of the most ingrained habits and beliefs that govern education today. The transformation requires us to move:
- from accepting good intentions to rewarding achievement of results;
- from a system in which employees and others follow rules to one in which they chase a sense of purpose;
- from a system that assigns students and families to its choices to one that serves them with their choices;
- from control over inputs to accountability for outcomes;
- from organizations steeped in the traditions of bureaucracy to ones challenged by the imperatives of service; and
- from an ethic of distrust and mistrust to a culture of high expectation.
The Five C's
In their book, Banishing Bureaucracy, David Osborne (a PSG partner) and Peter Plastrik identify five strategies that must be pursued by any organization that hopes to win the competition for public support. They call these The Five C's: Core, Customer, Consequences, Control, and Culture.
As applied to education they help us recognize the possibilities for change that will actually make things better - change that we as leaders must pursue if we are to take our leadership responsibilities seriously.
Core
Schools are expected to do too much and, as a result, can’t do any of it effectively enough. Performance will improve dramatically IF we focus schools on their primary purpose - ensuring that students learn. This means clearing the decks of activities that don’t support this central purpose. Beyond that it means focusing the core of the organization, its curriculum, on a combination of the critical basics plus the thinking and communicating skills needed to transform information into knowledge. Finally, it means uncoupling the steering function of leadership (setting standards and holding schools accountable) from the rowing function of management (running schools on a daily basis). This last principle is perhaps the most critical. School boards and superintendents, those who should be most focused on standards and performance (the essence of steering), consistently find themselves drawn into operating issues and accused of micro-managing, of doing the actual rowing. The result, especially when governors, legislators, state education officers and now mayors get too involved in “running” the schools, is way too much rowing and too little steering. By separating those who steer from those who row, both can do a better job. This can be done in any number of ways. Possibilities include creating separate boards for each purpose, creating separate committees within the Board, having separate jurisdictions (city and school district or state and school district) play distinct roles, creating both a chief academic officer and a chief operating officer instead of a single superintendent, and so on. The structure is less important than the separation of roles.
Customer
Schools exist to serve families and students. Schools must be accountable to those they serve. Accountability comes when customers have choices and providers face consequences (ranging from rewards to interventions) for the results they produce. Families should choose the public school their children attend. Options should include district owned schools in their “home” or other school districts as well as charter and contract schools that obligate themselves to public purposes. Money should follow students to the school of their choice. These arrangements make accountability to families and students clear and powerful.
Consequences
Right now the only ones at risk in most of our education systems are the students. Student achievement needs to be consequential for all stakeholders. Performance agreements or contracts that specify the consequences both for success and for failure are essential. These agreements can tie consequences to performance for students, families, teachers, whole schools, support services and the district itself. Such a performance management system requires that schools collect and use information in ways that allow all stakeholders to track their performance, make changes when necessary, and anticipate the consequences of the results they produce.
Control
We can power up school performance by cutting the bureaucratic overburden in many of our systems. Doing so means putting authority (and accountability) where it belongs - in schools and classrooms. Central offices should become organizations serving their school customers in ways that contribute directly to student success. The community, and specifically parents and community organizations, should be empowered and expected to act directly in support of the learning of their children.
Culture
Schools must exemplify achievement, trust and courage. For that to happen we must end the culture of failure, mistrust and fear that pervades all that happens in too many districts. Doing so means breaking habits by creating new experiences that challenge “the way it’s always been,” including opening school doors to the increasing diversity of our communities; touching hearts by re-establishing a covenant for learning among all stakeholders; and winning minds with plain spoken, research-based strategies and actions that directly challenge and support success in the classroom.
Changing things to make things better - that’s real leadership. Too much of what passes for change in education is nothing more than moving things around in the hope that things will get better. Just ask the kids. Change for their benefit requires action that focuses on the core, customers, consequences, control and culture of our schools. That’s where the leverage is. Pulling those levers requires leadership. |
