In Schools, On Schools
SPI's blog is named to emphasize that our best ideas come from observations in our own schools as well as at high-performing schools across the United States. We are proximate to the work going on in high-poverty schools that get results for students, and we are working to share these bright spots with others. Through generous sharing of best practices, our mission is to increase access to high-quality schools for all students, regardless of zip code.
Claims of school improvement are a dime a dozen.
Most claims I see are not grounded in any kind of reasonable evidence. Worse than that, the claims are often made without a logical definition of improvement.
In this article, I’m going to teach you a three-part definition that will help you easily tell when improvement has occurred and when it hasn’t.
But first, let’s start with a challenge.
Read MoreMost goal setting I see in schools is ineffective and counterproductive.
The typical approach is to increase the most recent results by some round percentage such as 10 or 15 or 20%.
But absent certain conditions, these “stretch” goals end up completely disconnected from reality.
I want to teach you three conditions that will lead to much more effective goal setting.
Read MoreThe #1 reason why educational leaders misinterpret their data is they don’t take natural variation into account when doing the analysis.
Instead, they make comparisons between a current figure and some previous value.
But, this simple and limited comparison cannot fully capture and convey the behavior of data that occurs across time.
This leads to overreacting, or less frequently, to underreacting to data.
I am going to teach you a method that will allow you to react less and improve more, a win-win for educational leaders with limited time and resources.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreW. Edwards Deming’s teachings are most widely known in industry and government. However, his teachings and principles apply to educational institutions, which of course, is the very point of Win-Win. He taught the Japanese, and later American companies that would listen, to adopt a systems thinking perspective.
Read MoreAs you begin to view the world through a systems lens, the idea of improving the core system of which you are a part becomes more challenging. However, seeing the world in this way also opens a number of possibilities for improvement for which you may have been previously unaware. At the very least, this helps in understanding the various system levels in which your organization is situated.
Read MoreUnited 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.
Read MoreThere 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?
Read MoreA system is a set of elements interconnected in such a way that it produces its own pattern of behavior over time. Systems are coherently organized in a way that achieves something. The system may be impacted by outside forces, but its response to these forces is characteristic of the system itself, and that response is seldom simple. Systems thinking then is a way of thinking that focuses on recognizing the interconnections between the parts of a system and synthesizing them into a unified view of the whole.
Read MoreMost typically, when I refer to a system in Win-Win I am referring to an organization (e.g., United Schools Network). Thus, a useful definition of a system is “an organization characterized by a set of interactions among the people who work there, the tools and materials they have at their disposal, and the processes through which these people and resources join together to accomplish its work.” The aim of a system is a qualitative statement with methods attached that detail its long-term constancy of purpose.
Read MoreUnderstanding 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.
Read MorePrinciple 14: Clearly define top management's commitment to continual improvement of quality and its obligation to implement the 14 Principles. Plan and take action to put everyone in the organization to work to accomplish the transformation; the transformation is everyone's job. Start with education for all in positions of leadership.
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