Heath and Heath’s 2010 work titled Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard is without question a timely read for any of us tasked with the responsibility of leading change as well as anyone involved in change. Come to think of it, it’s just a must read for everyone.
This week I gravitated to a particular statement in the book as the implications of the Race to the Top plan for North Carolina rolled out. Heath and Heath write, “But sometimes in times of change, nobody knows how to behave, and that can lead to problems” (p 226).
This is particular true give the Anson County Schools have been subjected previously to both the “list and look” of policy makers at the state capital for schools that persistently perform low on End of Grade or End of Course assessments. As such, a few of our schools have experienced a plan to fix them. Those efforts despite good intentions did not meet or exceed the expectations, requirements or promises of school reform. How will we behave this time?
Differently!
We have learned much from what has not worked. Moreover, we know much more about why reform has not yielded the results as promised.
We have heard and used all the pithy and trite statements about change. Bummer! They tend to be true more often than not. Right?
There are no easy change formulas, strategies, or methodologies. If there were, we would have used them – wrote the book, made the DVD and not be worried about funding public education.
Our learning from past efforts include first and foremost the importance of communication. Creating awareness, understanding and support consumes time, creates division, conflict, and often provokes reaction often negatively expressed. Nonetheless, we are making it a priority to create awareness of our current reality – how we got here, what worked and what didn’t, what has been accomplished and achieved, factors that must be considered, and the need for a comprehensive “call to arms” to meet or exceed what is expected from us, by us, and for each learner in our system now and in the future.
To that end, I made the decision that staff, leadership, the Board of Education, and soon public know where we are, where we are going, and the need to work together to get there. Simply, this time, everyone must be aware, understand, and assist sincerely, authentically, and transparently to address root cause of failed learning.
It was not comfortable standing before the high school faculty to unpack the Race to the Top plan on Monday. Equally humbling was reporting that evening publicly before the Board of Education that, despite the accomplishments and achievements of the past three years, the hard work of dedicated and caring staff, and the efforts to transform our school system we now faced unprecedented intervention, oversight, and accountability from the state.
However, as the RttT transformational team from the Department of Instruction acknowledged, the Anson County Schools has everything in place for breakthrough results. In fact, there isn’t a school or school system on the new “list” that has all the components of transformation in place as we do.
As I shared publicly, everything we have put in place over the past three years remain the “right” work. The challenge for us goes deeper than programs, initiatives, alignment, and focus.
We’ve learned the absence of an authentic and relevant value proposition for learning will not motivate, inspire, or compel students to learn. In a like manner we’ve learned the value proposition for education must be present in the behaviors we, the adults, exhibit daily – not just in our schools – throughout the county.
The work of transformation is the “right” work. It will not be easy – transformation never is. It starts with the acknowledgement and ownership of dissatisfaction of our performance to date – a clear vision of what could, would, should be for each learner, and taking the steps, together, to get there – we will behave differently this time! We must!