Improvement guru W. Edward Demings once said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” My experience in schools has shown me over and over again that Demings was right on point.
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One of the enduring questions in school improvement work is why some schools fail regardless of the resources and attention directed toward them. Blame is often placed on the individuals that work in those schools. But is that fair?
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Like most people working in high-poverty schools, I had never seen a high-performing school serving similar students in action. Think about that for a moment. In the vast majority of struggling schools, it is unlikely the people that work there have ever experienced organizational-level success.
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