|
In 1996, The Public Strategies Group became the first private company to assume leadership of an entire public school system, the Minneapolis Public Schools. Some days it feels like it's been a lot longer than that. But I have an important marker to help me keep time- my daughter. Just as we began the work of reforming the Minneapolis district, I went home on maternity leave. During those first months, I kept up with our efforts. all the while doing radio talk shows across the nation about our one-of-a-kind arrangement with Minneapolis. Admittedly, it was pretty strange to answer questions like "What values will you be imparting to our students?" for cellular callers in Memphis.
Eventually, I became woven into the work of running the district.
It was late August 1994, with the start of school just around
the corner. Little did I foresee that the first major crisis we'd
face that fall would be just getting the kids to school. School
opened and our transportation system was a disaster. Buses were
one to two hours late, scores of students never even got on the
bus, and new bus drivers got lost weaving through unfamiliar Minneapolis
streets. The phone system in the transportation department crashed.
Getting home was no better. Parents waited two hours or more to
see their children arrive home, and at least one child was lost.
That was just day one.
Imagine what was going on in our heads this past fall. But despite
all the worrying, we had the best school opening in the district's
history. The turnaround in transportation was just short of miraculous.
It illustrates the value of building a culture of continuous improvement,
one of four challenges we face in transforming the Minneapolis
Public Schools. Other challenges include: seeing information as
a resource, building leadership throughout the organization, and
being accountable for results. What we are really doing in the
Minneapolis Public Schools is teaching an educational system how
to learn. Ironically, it seems the system which teaches kids how
to learn everyday in the classroom is a system which is far from
reaching its potential as a learning environment.Whether we change
that depends on how we meet the challenges of which I spoke.
Seeing Information as A Resource - Not
A Tool of Power
The first challenge, seeing information
as a resource, not a tool of power, will not be easy. In the bureaucratic
tradition that built all of our public schools, information is
like money. It's finite, it's meant to be controlled, and having
more of it means having more power. That's why all the best information
in bureaucracies is shared after meetings, not during them, in
the hallways or in the bathrooms.
In the Minneapolis Public Schools, there has been a constant tension
between using information for power and using information as a
resource which can be shared and multiplied. Ideas, once discussed
aloud by the superintendent or district administrators, were usually
seen as edicts. Even the word "draft" meant "final."
And in a system with archaic telephone technology and limited
access to voice or electronic mail, the rumor mill was in its
heyday. This was a stark contrast for members of our company,
who openly share information. I can't count how many times we
were accused of having some secret plan which we were supposedly
going to foist on the district.
Today there are still power struggles over information, but to
a lesser degree. In many ways over the past two years, the district
has become more public, openly telling the truth about how well
our kids are doing and how we're acting as stewards of taxpayer
dollars.
To fully use this resource, however, we have to build an infrastructure
that improves access to the information we already have as well
as to that in cyberspace. Bringing the district into the 21st
century technologically is a challenge of millions of dollars.
But we can no longer expect students to function as well-trained,
capable adults if they do not have access to today's technology
in our classrooms.
Building Leadership Throughout The Organization
The second major challenge for the district
is building leadership throughout the organization, not just at
the top. History shows that, as the leadership in our district
has changed, so has its direction. Without the strong grounding
in purpose, without a commonly held belief that we exist to ensure
that all students learn, the District has suffered regular changes
of course as the person at the helm was rotated. The residual
impact we're still fighting in this culture is that of the "survival"
motivation. Employees subject to dismissal with the entrance of
a new superintendent learned that in order to survive you had
to just keep on doing what you'd been doing for years. It's a
motto I've heard before: "Lay low, go slow."
Today, we are trying to broaden and strengthen the concept of
district leadership from the superintendent, one individual, to
that of the superintendency, a team of leaders. The superintendency
in Minneapolis today includes the superintendent and 11 other
district leaders whose job is to pursue strategies which ensure
that all students learn. As a group, they are becoming stronger
in their capacity to lead and manage as a team.
In the schools themselves, principals, too, have taken on the
challenge of building their leadership capacity. Their focus is
on meeting all the demands in a site-based environment: being
instructional leaders; team builders among parent, teacher, student
and community constituents; financial managers; school operations
managers; and more. Each principal has a development plan that
addresses the many educational and management skills required
to build a school site that excels in student achievement. Our
job at the central office is to support these plans and then get
them created with assistant and interim principals.
Our leadership is only as strong as our
bench. Today, it's pretty thin; roughly 60% of our principals
have five or fewer years of experience. Nevertheless, I believe
these leaders and those we'll recruit to the district are capable
of building the depth of leadership necessary to stabilize the
course of the district.
Building A Culture of Continuous Improvement
Building a culture of continuous improvement
is the third challenge. By and large, in public organizations,
employees believe there is only one right answer and that innocent
mistakes can become morning headlines. We could have fired the
transportation director in 1994, for example, but that only would
have reaffirmed the old message that the system doesn't tolerate
any mistakes.
Instead, we and the transportation director together asked, "How
will transportation be improved so that kids are transported safely
each day?" The problems were many. The department had a new
computerized scheduling system which, unfortunately, only a few
knew how to use. The communication system between the department,
its drivers, and route supervisors didn't work. New bus drivers
were wholly unfamiliar with the city of Minneapolis. Perhaps most
astounding, our transportation director learned while charting
the scheduling of bus routes that his employees had 10-12 working
definitions of "bus stop." That was just the beginning
of a full year spent improving every facet of a large transportation
system. Today that system performs wonders.
Our employees don't yet fully embrace the idea of continuous improvement.
But our motto is "progress, not perfection." What has
characterized progress thus far is that people are involved in
improving their own work and seeing how it connects with the district's
mission, to ensure that all students learn.
Be Accountable for Results
The biggest challenge we face in the
Minneapolis schools, however, is being accountable for results,
not activity. Two years ago, The Public Strategies Group asked
to be held accountable for results, including student achievement.
We wanted people to understand that accountability means being
in the position to experience the consequences of your actions,
not blaming others or ducking for cover.
Initially, this drew much skepticism. People asked: "Why
should we pay you for student achievement when the real work happens
in a classroom between teachers and students?"
Our answer? Until we all become accountable for each of our actions,
the students will bear the consequences, not us. If we don't become
accountable, students will continue to struggle to achieve, and
we will fail in living up to our mission to ensure that all students
learn.
Fortunately, we are making headway. This year, the district and
the teachers' union agreed to a contract that requires teachers
to assess their development against "principles of effective
instruction." It provides incentives for teachers who excel
and also provides outplacement for teachers who cannot meet those
expectations. Our teachers, arguably the group with the most impact
on students, are putting themselves on the line for delivering
on student achievement.
Another example of accountability comes from operations. Each
month, just like you and I, the district pays its bills. Last
year, a vendor payment went unpaid for 6 months -- all $1.6 million
of it. (Yes, I wondered too how a vendor could let $1.6 million
go by for 6 months but that's another story.) What interested
me was that a person made a mistake. She just forgot to cut the
check. She found that by admitting her mistake she eliminated
any opportunities to blame someone else. Because of that, she
gave herself and others the opportunity to engage in a conversation
focused on learning, not blaming; a conversation in which the
central question was not, "Who did it?" but "How
can we improve our accounting and payment systems to avoid this
in the future?"
Being accountable for results is not easy, and some of our toughest
challenges lie ahead. We are learning that teaching to learn is
a very difficult task and becoming more so every day. The stakes
for our children are incredibly high, and our employees know it.
Teachers and school professionals deserve all the support we can
give them, particularly if they are parents, too. There is not
a more important job than theirs.
Laurie Ohmann is CEO of The Public Strategies Group.
In 1996 she lead the firm's efforts to reform educational systems and
supports Minneapolis school executives in their improvement efforts.
This article appeared in Education Week
(Volume 15, Issue 33; May 8, 1996)
© 1996 Editorial Projects in Education,
Inc.
|
