In 1993, Seymour Sarason wrote the book, The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It’s Too Late? The question resonates (well, actually, it’s like standing in the belfry as the matins bells are rung, that is, it’s deafening) these days as I read more and more stories of districts that got federal money to restructure their comprehensive high schools into smaller learning communities, botched the effort, and often before the end of the grant, had their communities storming the walls of the district office and school board meetings to demand return to the status quo. Why should that be the case? What are we all doing so terribly wrong? I don’t think it’s all about the football team.

The research on effective small schools is overwhelmingly positive. Even the less autonomous SLC’s in many places have had success in personalizing teaching and learning, reducing absenteeism and disruptive behavior, and increasing graduation rates and college attending rates, even if not showing some gains on state and NCLB mandated tests. So, I repeat, why the predictable failure rate?

I’ll stick my neck out here. It’s simple. Poor leadership that lacks a real understanding of the why’s and wherefore’s of the conversion process (signing on to the latest fad), poor efforts at community (and union) engagement early in the process and continuing throughout implementation, bad communication planning and execution, poor design process, lack of attention to existing research on successful efforts and failure modes, no effort to visit existing successful districts that have model small school and/or SLC’s to show off, a complete and utter lack of understanding of the complexities of the transition from design to implementation, and horrible to non-existent implementation planning and support. And I have to say, the feds certainly could be more directive here. I know of some districts that got money for “wall to wall” SLC conversions whose design was nothing more than advisories, and advisories that meet 20 minutes once or twice a week. The comprehensive high school of the 1960’s with homeroom.

So, what could we be doing better, other than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater and starting from scratch? How might a school district avoid these obvious pitfalls? I think all of this is avoidable. I think the simplest answer is to find (and commit to working with over the long haul) a consultant/coach, or better yet a team of them, who know more than how to coach a leader to develop his or her personal leadership style and be a better instructional leader, or how to coach a teacher to teach better. Coaching and consulting skills and experience with systems change, not just leadership coaching and instructional coaching, is essential for SLC or small school conversion efforts to succeed. Districts need outside assistance (better yet, they need to develop inside assistance systems) to plan and manage a conversion effort so it’s research-based, coherent, engaging of the community from the start, based on an understanding of successful practice, understood as more than a change in curriculum, that is, as an organizational change effort, thorough as to its design planning, even more thorough as to its implementation planning, focused at the district level, with policy changes that are necessary to support the new configurations at the schools, develops district capacity to engage in continuous improvement, and provides skill development coaching for all the new roles and responsibilities. Not to mention a radically different understanding of teaching and learning that is more than advisories once or twice a week, that permeates the intimate relations between teachers and students, and among teachers, and among students.

What does such coaching look like? I’ve begun that discussion here before. Now I’d like to add some thinking from my own research reviews and experience. The next post will lay out what I see the research on effective systemic coaching as involving. I hope you will read what is here and add your own perspective and insights. Let’s build the dialogue about coaching’s role in successful school and district change.

John

 This diagram shows the structural relations of cross school and district teams that support SLC conversion/implementation in FUSD.  It accompanies the post below by Robert Curtis describing the work in FUSD.

 FUSD SLC District Leadership Network Diagram

Robert Curtis wrote this for the blog at my request.  Here he describes how he is combining coaching strategies with networked systems of learning groups to support SLC conversions in Fremont Unified School District, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In addition, I am attaching a diagram he sent that shows the structural relation of the various teams supporting the SLC conversion.  What I see is how using networks of teams and coaches across school sites and traditional district “silos” is creating a new culture of learning and innovation…  Read further… 

 School Leadership Networking, Coaching and School Reform

Robert F. Curtis

School Reform Project Director FUSD

In Fremont Unified School District we have received our third SLC grant as a district and currently have three comprehensive high schools of about 2000 students each working together to implement these SLC reforms.  My role is as district project director to help bring the schools together to identify areas where we can work together to support leaders and build leadership capacity for this reform work.  Each school has a leadership team and has created positions for leaders such as a site coordinator, data coordinator and interdisciplinary team’s coordinator. We have attempted to create a networked learning community model (See: National College for School Leadership in the UK) for these leaders from across the district and have used coaches from a local organization to lead help facilitate these meetings and workshops.

A few of the challenges in doing this work and developing leadership capacity is finding the right coaches who have the right skills and knowledge that the leaders need.  Coaches take quite a bit of time to get a sense of what the school and leaders need and often never quite “get it”.  In addition when doing work as a district, often a coach may be good for one school or set of leaders but not another.  Yet you also don’t want too many coaches who are coming at this in an uncoordinated way that adds confusion to the process. 

My job has been to work with leaders to set up structured formal meetings and workshops on a regular basis for them to meet, learn and work together.  Working collaboratively with the leaders we have finally found a set of coaches that we think are working well with our leaders and school sites.  However this didn’t come without some serious effort and costs and mistakes by me.  We were initially using coaches from one organization that was not local and did some large workshops with them, but because they were not local and could not be available regularly this lead to them not understanding the needs of the leaders and schools and me having to spend much time attempting to get them up to speed. These coaches because of their distance never developed real relationships and connections with the staff but more so with me.  This lack of connection lead staff and leaders at these schools to see this as a “district thing”.  In addition coaches and support organizations often come in with a template and many assumptions which may or may not be relevant to our situation. The importance of coaches and support organizations developing in depth knowledge about the real issues that are currently being faced or may be coming down the road is critical. This requires the development of relationships.

Relationships have been critical for our leaders and their meetings and workshops. One of the most important things leaders have mentioned is how great it is getting to know each other on both a professional and personal level by having regular meetings.  Initially most of our meetings were “check in” type meetings of just sharing out what was going on and sharing a few ideas. By using coaches and particularly having 2-3 coaches that we use as a district has really helped move us to deeper work.  For example we have a coach who works with our data coordinators and has helped give them some tools and strategies for collecting and using data.  They have taken these strategies such as a “score board” or “dashboard” and have adjusted them to their particular sites or issues but have also shared out with each other and served as critical friends to help further develop this tool and sharing strategies of how to use it.  For our site coordinators we now use a consultancy protocol each meeting for part of the meeting to allow one leader to share a particular issue and to get some concrete feedback from the other leaders.  Coaches have been crucial in providing these tools and strategies that are allowing our leaders to do more in depth work and that are surely building up our leadership capacity.

However problems still persist when trying to do larger workshops together because the three schools are at such different stages of development in terms of the SLC reforms. It has been difficult helping the more advanced schools see the benefit of working together with the school just beginning the reform work. In addition, the school just beginning doesn’t want to always feel like they are being mentored and taught and not contributing to the learning of others. There needs to be an openness to learning from one another that historically has not existed between schools in our district.  There is a history of competition between the sites and not a culture of collaboration as a district.  We are starting to change this but it has been a very slow process.  Lastly coaches are seen as “outsiders” and obviously cost money. This makes it important for sites to be able to see that coaches are helping with the issues they are currently facing and not just coming in with their own agenda and “formulas” for success.  Coaches need to spend a lot of time listening before they can begin coaching and this has not always been the case and has lead to some doubts about the usefulness of coaches. It has also been important to have someone who can point to what organizations or coaches might fit the school or district and who can organize and find areas that make sense for schools within a district to work together. In my role as district SLC project director, I have been able to have the same coaches who are coaching our teacher leaders also provide coaching to the administrators during their principals meetings and this has also brought in other schools who did not have the SLC grant. This alignment and coherence has often been lacking in our district and has lead to many coaches coming through our schools who have had little or no lasting impact on leadership or teaching and learning. However this new structure seems to be making some in roads in part thanks to the exceptional coaches we now have working with us.

• What is whole system coaching?
• What do whole system coaches do?
• What do high quality coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective?
• What sorts of professional learning systems do coaches need to be effective?
• What results in schools and districts constitute “being effective?”
• What kinds of communities of practice, or professional learning communities, or coach collaborations currently exist and how do they support coaches to be effective?
• What sorts of communities of practice and networks can you imagine creating that would enhance existing ones and enable greater shared learning and innovation in coaching?
• What sorts of organizational arrangements best support effective coaching, both in schools and districts and in outside providers?
• What kinds of knowledge management systems best support effective coaching?

As our work in Small Learning Communities now recedes, we have learned much. I am hoping what we have learned can provide good questions for those who are now engaged in the work.Six years ago, when we began the work, we assumed too much about high schools and change. We assumed that the opportunities presented by SLC grants (both Federal and Gates) would be received in a much different way. We assumed that scrutiny in the high schools would be welcome.I almost giggle now when I think of my naivete, considering I taught in a high school for 30 years.We focused far too much on structure and far too little on instruction. I believe that if we have 15 teachers in an SLC located in a hallway, but that they don’t know how to talk to each to each about student achievement, little can happen. I believe that without focused conversations in buildings for which time and support are provided, little will change.Little will even change with the conversations without expectations and goals, monitoring and evaluation.Ah, yes, we have learned. If we were entitled to a second go round, the focus would be on student learning, measured, discussed and adjusted.I have hopes for the professional conversations, but we have a very long way to go there, too. 

Question:  We discuss school reform strategies all the time on various lists, blogs, etc., with an aim to share our work, agree and disagree, and learn from one another.  Why is there no substantive discussion of coaching, one of the major strategies we all use to support it?

Across the nation, schools, school districts, and support organizations employ many strategies to support urban school improvement.  Among the most often used in more successful efforts, and least often used in less successful efforts, is coaching, and in particular, coaching that focuses not just on instruction or leadership, but on the whole school or district as a system.  Organizations such as BayCES, CCE, the Small Schools Project, the Small Schools Workshop, NSRF, CES National, and many more continually discuss their methods internally, and increasingly these organizations are developing research and evaluation approaches to study the efficacy of their particular approach to coaching.  Yet little or no national dialogue exists across these organizations and the organizations that employ their services, and no meta-analysis, that I am aware of, of coaching effectiveness.  I am creating this blog to stimulate that discussion and analysis.

Assertion:  We need a national dialogue and we need a national professional coach network and community of practice.   We might even find ourselves developing an emerging consensus, while valuing the diversity of our differing approaches, about effective high quality coaching, and what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective.  That could lead to a dialogue about an emerging set of professional standards of practice for coaching.  All of this could make coaching better and of more value to those doing it and seeking its benefits to their reform work.

This blog hopes to start an ongoing national examination of whole school/ whole system coaching.  Such a national dialogue could result in a larger learning community of practice and network among coaches, one that might enable coaches to share and learn from each other, one that might result in some national consensus about what high quality whole systems coaching is, and what such coaches do.  While valuing the diversity of experience and opinion about the topic among coaches and those employing them as part of a reform strategy, some increasing clarity about these questions could help to develop innovative understanding about what coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective at supporting whole school/ whole system change.  Networks of diverse practitioners working on similar problems innovate at a much higher rate than individual organizations; larger networks innovate at an exponentially higher rate.  This blog herein begins such a dialogue that will continue beyond this space into the creation of a web-based coaching network and community of practice, where we will engage together in “critical friendship,” dialogue, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge management.

Some Questions for Discussion on this Blog:

• What is whole system coaching?
• What do whole system coaches do?
• What do high quality coaches need to know and be able to do to be effective?
• What sorts of professional learning systems do coaches need to be effective?
• What results in schools and districts constitute “being effective?”
• What kinds of communities of practice, or professional learning communities, or coach collaborations currently exist and how do they support coaches to be effective?
• What sorts of communities of practice and networks can you imagine creating that would enhance existing ones and enable greater shared learning and innovation in coaching?
• What sorts of organizational arrangements best support effective coaching, both in schools and districts and in outside providers?
• What kinds of knowledge management systems best support effective coaching?

Stay Tuned:  Your contributions to discussing these questions, and generating others, will fuel future topics, and help build the network…

I hope to see you all here.

 John