PLS: Relación entre la calidad de un SIE y el beneficio percibido

• Reexamine job descriptions to make explicit connections between the mission-driven goals and individual roles and responsibilities.

• Reexamine committee, team, and task force composition and focus to reaffi rm connections between the mission-driven goals and collective agenda.

• Focus staff meeting time on the analysis of student work to deter- mine the gaps between current performance and mission-driven goals and work to identify appropriate instructional and organizational remedies.

• Use mission and vision language to engage school community in the articulation of concerns that must be addressed in order to achieve larger systems goals. An example of this process was carried out in one Connecticut school system (see Figure 3.9): A task force composed of staff, students, and parents worked for one year to develop a vision of the graduate that captures the aims of a 21st century learning organiza- tion committed to high achievement and student well-being.

Figure 3.9 Vision of the Graduate

[We] are committed to preparing students to function effectively in an interdepen- dent global community. Therefore, in addition to acquiring a core body of knowl- edge*, all students will develop their individual capacities to:

• Pose and pursue substantive questions

• Critically interpret, evaluate, and synthesize information

*The core body of knowledge is established in local curricular documents which refl ect national and state standards as well as workplace expectations.

Figure 3.9 Vision of the Graduate (continued )

• Explore, defi ne, and solve complex problems • Communicate effectively for a given purpose • Advocate for ideas, causes, and actions • Generate innovative, creative ideas and products

• Collaborate with others to produce a unifi ed work and/or heightened understanding

• Contribute to community through dialogue, service, and/or leadership • Conduct themselves in an ethical and responsible manner

• Recognize and respect other cultural contexts and points of view • Pursue their unique interests, passions, and curiosities

• Respond to failures and successes with refl ection and resilience • Be responsible for their own mental and physical health

Once the vision was drafted, representatives of the task force held a series of forums with their constituents (students led student meetings, parents led parent meetings, etc.) to articulate concerns and determine the extent to which those concerns posed signifi cant impediments to realizing the vision. By leading the larger school commu- nity through this gap-analysis exercise, participants not only became more invested in the language of the vision, but they also realized that the priorities of the school district from this point forward would be driven by these shared learning goals.

The Concerns Exercise

I’m most concerned about ________________ (practice, policy, structures, cur- riculum, programs) because ______________ (tied to the Vision of the Graduate). 1. Context

2. Task Directions

• Name the concern

• Connect to component(s) of the vision statement

• Explain the reasoning behind the connection

• (Optional) Offer potential solutions

3. Examples (selected specifi cally for the stakeholder group) 4. Rules (if any)

Sample responses:

• I’m most concerned about the policy used about the weighting of grades at the high school because it mitigates against students pursuing their unique interests, passions, and curiosities. Because the weighting system rewards students more for getting an “A” in an AP and Honors class, students who take classes with no AP or Honors designation are actually penalized for electing to take courses which they fi nd personally fascinating but have a negative impact on class rank and honor roll. • I’m most concerned about the lack of a meaningful vocational education program which inhibits their opportunity to explore, defi ne, and solve complex problems as well as pursue their unique interests, passions, and curiosities. There are a growing number of students who need to prepare for the workplace because high school is designed for students who intend to go on to traditional four-year college programs.

• I’m most concerned about the current practice of assigning graduation credit based on seat time because the goal of schooling is to acquire core knowledge and develop individual capacities. Students should be awarded credits based on demon- strated competencies. The time it takes for students to meet the prerequisites within the standard 6 block day inhibits their ability to pose and pursue substantive questions and pursue their unique interests, passions, and curiosities.

Source: Milford Public Schools. Reprinted by permission.

Conclusion

The renovation of the 21st century schoolhouse requires the boldness to permanently disrupt the status quo. Educators must create structures to develop ideas so that fresh thinking occurs with greater frequency and receives a better reception when shared. Pairing this habitual practice with the gritty determination to get results amplifies powerful ideas to close the gap between the vision and the status quo. Every institution has the potential to achieve an “idealized” vision but must consider a range of possible innovations that are most likely to cause results.

This renovation also requires what Abrahamson refers to as the “creative recombination” elements. “Change with less pain involves knowing what already exists in the system that can be revised, as well as knowing how you can redeploy and recombine existing elements in the system into new confi gurations” (quoted in Fullan, Hill, & Crévola, 2006, p. 14). Michael Fullan (Fullan et al., 2006) suggests that lead- ers look both within their own organization to previous initiatives attempted as well as outward to new practices:

Education reform is at a stage where many of the components of successful large-scale reform are evident in schools’ collective basements. One half of the solution is to seek out and identify the critical elements that need to be in place; the other half is combining them creatively. This is not simply a job of alignment, but rather one of establishing dynamic connectivity among the core elements. (p. 15)

Educators know from experience that oftentimes the most innova- tive ideas become saddled with organizational restrictions (e.g., bell schedule, funding structures, teacher and administrator union concerns, assessment requirements) to the point where the original concept is no

longer appealing. Distance learning equipment that was purchased by school districts decades ago with the promise of expanding course offer- ings with minimal budgetary cost largely gathered dust. Standards-based report cards were developed to improve the quality of information that parents received about student achievement, but the complexity of many reports caused parents to wish for a return to the days when their children received a letter or number grade along with a handwrit- ten commentary about their child’s performance. Leaders must expect this challenge and develop plans to shepherd a true “disruption” to the status quo. According to Christensen and colleagues (2008):

In the language of disruption, here is what this means: unless top man- agers actively manage this process, their organization will shape every disruptive innovation into a sustaining innovation—one that fits the processes, values, and economic model of the existing business—because organizations cannot naturally disrupt themselves. This is a core reason why incumbent firms are at a disadvantage relative to entrant companies when disruptive innovations emerge. And it explains why computers haven’t changed schools. (p. 75)

Changes mean little if they do not translate into progress toward or realization of mission-driven learning goals.

4

Designing Tasks to Focus