You’ve set ambitious goals for your school or district, but now comes the harder question: how will you actually achieve them? It’s not for lack of effort. It’s because most improvement efforts skip the most important question in leadership: By what method?

This question sits at the center of the science of improvement. Goals don’t produce improvement. Targets don’t produce improvement. Hoping and trying harder don’t produce improvement. Only method produces improvement.

In this post, I’ll teach you a method that actually closes the gap between where your system is now and where you want it to be.

How to set targets for your educational goals

Setting targets for your goals is no easy task.

Many leaders create “ambitious” SMART goals. Another common approach is to set a “stretch” target where you shoot for some percentage increase over current performance.

No matter the method, most of the targets I’ve seen across my career have been pretty arbitrary.

In this post, I’m going to teach you a process for creating logical targets for your educational goals.

Viewing Education as a System II

The final insight from the systems view is the role of feedback within the system. A deep and technical dive into feedback loops goes beyond the scope of this post; I’d encourage readers to check out Donella H. Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primer for anyone interested in an accessible introduction to learning more about this critically important concept. However, it is worth touching on a few important points as we wrap up this series.

System Structure I

United Schools, where I work, is a system made up of four public charter schools and a nonprofit hub that serves as the central office for the schools. It is also a subsystem of the system of education in Columbus, in Ohio, and in the United States. This illustrates the point that a system contains subsystems and is itself a subsystem of a system in which it is contained.

Thinking in Systems II

There may be no better example of non-systems thinking in education than when the issue of poverty is discussed. In one camp, you have people who insist that in order to fix underperforming schools, you must fix poverty. In the other camp, you have the people who insist that to fix poverty, you have to fix underperforming schools.

So, which camp has it right?

Our System Aim

At United Schools Network, we recently added a system aim as a complement to our vision and mission statements. Taken together, USN’s vision, mission, and aim statements help align the work of everyone in the network.

Learning to ImproveJohn DuesFebruary 28, 2024Continual Improvement, Deming, systems thinking, system aim, vision, mission

Understanding Systems

Understanding systems may be our best hope for making meaningful change across the many dimensions of our lives at home, at school, and at work. The system lens helps us see events as a part of trends and those trends as a part of an underlying structure. This understanding provides us with improved ways of managing in this world of complex education systems.

14 Principles for Transformation: A Recap

Continual improvement guided by the 14 Principles is not a project or program to be implemented, but rather a never-ending commitment to quality. With that mindset framing in hand, a recap of each of the principles that have been discussed in this series follows.

Principle 11: Eliminate Arbitrary Numerical Targets

Principle 11: Eliminate arbitrary numerical targets in the form of work standards that prescribe quotas for teachers and numerical goals for people in management. Substitute leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity.

Principle 9: Break Down Barriers

Break down barriers between departments and grade levels and develop strategies for increasing cooperation among groups and individuals. Administrators, business & financial managers, operations staff, support staff, students, and teachers, etc. must work as a team to foresee problems in the production and use of high-quality learning experiences.

Principle 8: Drive Out Fear

Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the school system. No one can perform their best unless they feel secure to express ideas, ask questions, and make mistakes.

Principles for Transformation: An Introduction

In January and February, I outlined six common management myths. The point of those two posts was to help education systems leaders see what not to do. I’m now turning to a set of principles that can be used by these same leaders to guide their transformation work. I’ll kick things off this month with a brief introduction and a bit of background information regarding the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation. From there, I’ll describe each of the principles through twice monthly posts from April through November.