Organizational Change
Introduction
to
Systems Thinking
and
Learning Organizations
Key Idea 1: Understanding
School Culture
According to Roland Barth, the nature of
relationships among the adults within a
school has a greater influence on the
character and quality of that school and
on student accomplishment than anything
else. Relationships among the educators
define all relationships within a school’s
culture (2006).
School Culture
The Various forms of relationships within a
school can be categorized in four ways:
Parallel Play
Adversarial Relationships
Congenial Relationships
Collegial Relationships
Traditional School Culture
Parallel Play
• Primitive play of 2 and 3 year olds.
Children play near each other, even with
same toys, but never with each other – no
interaction
• “we’re all in this – alone”
Traditional School Culture
Adversarial Relationships
Most often enacted by withholding ‘craft
knowledge’ about discipline, parent interactions,
staff development, child development,
leadership, curriculum
Also enacted through competition for scarce
resources and recognition
“We educators have drawn our wagons into a
circle and trained our guns - on each other”
Traditional School Culture
Congenial Relationships
Personal and friendly, interactive and
positive. Congenial relationships help us
get out of bed in the morning.
Precondition for collegial relationships.
Progressive School Culture
Collegial Relationships
Educators talking with one another about practice.
Educators sharing their craft knowledge.
Educators observing one another while they are
engaged in practice.
Educators rooting for one another’s success.
“Getting good player is easy, getting them to play together
is the hard part.” - Casey Stengel
How do we create a collegial
culture?
Culture is a powerful, latent, and often
unconscious set of forces that determine
both our individual and collective
behavior, ways of perceiving, thought
patterns, and values.
School Culture
The way we do things around here
The rites and rituals of our school
The school climate
The reward system
Our basic values
Key Idea 2: Leaders create the
conditions for healthy cultures
One of the most significant factors that
influences the degree of effectiveness in
schools is the principal
Key Idea 3: Discovering School
Culture
According to Schein, there are three levels
of culture:
1. Artifacts
2. Espoused Values
3. Basic underlying assumptions
Read More! The Corporate Culture Survival Guide
Three Levels of Culture
Artifacts
Espoused
Values
Basic underlying
Assumptions
ARTIFACTS
Easiest to observe: what you see, hear and
feel
Note observations and emotional reactions
What is the décor? Climate? What are
people doing? What do you hear? Are
doors opened or closed? How do people
talk to each other? How is time spent?
(Difficult to decipher what it means)
EPOUSED VALUES
What do people tell you about the things
you see?
What do the people say the values, goals,
mission of the school are?
(Are the espoused values congruent with
the artifacts?)
BASIC UNDERLYING
ASSUMPTIONS
Need to take a historical perspective. Where
do the espoused values come from? What
are the assumptions that have been
learned and are taken for granted?
(Ex. Strong student discipline makes for an
effective learning environment)
4 COMPONENTS OF SCHOOL
CULTURE
Vision & Mission
Instructional
Program
Personnel
Environment
VISION and MISSION
Vision Statement: All students will
engage in meaningful educational
experiences that will prepare them
for future challenges. MLK, Jr School
will provide a student-centered,
VISION and MISSION
nurturing environment in which all
students are challenged to think and
perform at high levels, to take risks,
to explore new ideas and
experiences, and to make choices
that will aid them in achieving
healthy self-actualization.
PERSONNEL
Characteristics of Effective Administrative
and Teaching Staff
-Community Minded
-High Expectations
-Assertive Instructional Role
-Goal and Task Oriented
-High Verbal & Conceptual Ability
-Concern for Upgrading Prof. Skills
-Knowledge of Content Taught
-Understand Principles of Learning
PERSONNEL
Characteristics of Effective Administrative
and Teaching Staff
-Understand Characteristics of Students
-Active Teaching/High Amount of “On Task Time”
-Assigned Less busy work
-Generated motivating Learning Activities
-Strong Support Network
-Adept Communicators
-Well Organized
ENVIRONMENT
-ORDERLY CLIMATE
-CLEAR, FIRM, CONSISTENT DISCIPLINE
-RITUALS (CLASSROOM AND SCHOOL)
-COOPERATIVE, FAMILY ATMOSPHERE
-FEW CLASSROOM INTERRUPTIONS
-PARENT INVOLVEMENT
-POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS
INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM
DATA DRIVEN INSTRUCTION
“Backwards Design” or “END IN MIND” Curricular
Planning
-FOCUSED LEARNING OBJECTIVES
-PARTICULARISTIC ASSESSMENTS
-MOTIVATING TEACHING STRATEGIES
-CONSISTENT FOLLOW UP
-FOCUS ON MEETING STUDENT NEEDS
Name that School: Ineffective and
Effective Models:
Conventional, Congenial, and Collegial
schools
Conventional schools – dependency, hierarchy,
professional isolation
Congenial schools – friendly social interactions and
professional isolation
Collegial schools – purposeful adult interactions
about improving teaching and learning
Conventional, congenial or collegial
approaches to instructional
supervision
Conventional: scientific management (1900’s/late
20th century): efficiency: measurement: control:
“teacher proof” curricula: High stakes testing
Congenial: Human Relations Theory (1950s)
interpersonal relationships: emphasis on
individuals over organizations: could be artificial
and manipulative
Collegial Supervision
Collegial relationships between teachers and
supervisors
Supervision is done by teachers and administrators
Focus on teacher growth rather than compliance
(formative vs. summative)
Teacher collaboration (structural provisions made
to promote this activity)
Reflective inquiry and practice
Barriers to Effectiveness: Why schools are
they way they are The Legacy of the one room schoolhouse
Isolation: physical and psychological
Psychological dilemma: 2000+ interactions
PER DAY!
Frustration
Routine
Poor Induction
Inadequate Resources
Barriers to Effectiveness: Why schools are
they way they are The Legacy of the one room schoolhouse
Difficult work assignments (newest teachers get
most difficult children, worst classrooms, etc)
Unclear expectations
Sink or Swim mentality
Reality Shock (loss of idealized vision)
Effects of environmental difficulties: stress
emotional difficulties, nearly 50% of new
teachers leave the profession within 5 years
Barriers to Effectiveness: Why schools are
they way they are The Legacy of the one room schoolhouse
Unstaged career: no apprenticeship in
teaching
Lack of dialogue about teaching
(congeniality and isolation)
Lack of schoolwide decision making
(curriculum and instruction)
Lack of shared technical culture: no
modeling, discussion, lab sites
Key Idea 4: Learning
Organizations
The Way Schools Could Be
Learning Organizations
The Way Schools Could Be
Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline:
“The ideas presented in this book are for destroying the
illusion that the world is created of separate, unrelated
forces. “In Learning Organizations people continually
expand their capacity to create the results they truly
desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking
are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and
where people are continually learning how to learn
together.”
Five Vital Dimensions of Learning
Organizations
• Systems Thinking
• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Building Shared Vision
• Team Learning
Systems Thinking
Systems Thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of
knowledge and tools designed over the past 50 years to help
see full patterns more clearly
Businesses and other human endeavors are systems. They
are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions.
Since we are part of the system, it makes seeing the whole
difficult. We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of
the system and never solve the actual problem.
Systems Thinking
1. Structure Influences Behavior
Different people in the same structure tend to
produce qualitatively similar results.
Most often, systems cause their own crises, not
external forces or individual mistakes.
To begin Systems Thinking, one must look beyond
the individuals toward the underlying
structures that shape actions and create
conditions where types of events become
likely.
Systems Thinking
2. Structure in human systems is subtle.
Structure means the basic interrelationships
that control behavior.
Structures include how people make
decisions: the “operating policies”
whereby we translate perceptions, goals,
rules, and norms into actions.
Systems Thinking
3. Leverage comes from new ways of
thinking. Need to refocus on the wider
influence of the decisions we make rather
than the individual decisions.
Systems Thinking
Systems structure (generative)
Patterns of Behavior (responsive)
Events (reactive)
Systems Thinking
Seeing interrelationships rather than linear
cause-effect relationships
Seeing processes of change rather than
snapshots
Building a Learning Organization
• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Shared Vision
• Team Learning
Personal Mastery
• Grounded in competence and skills
• Continually expanding one’s own ability to
create the results in life one truly seeks
• Approaching one’s own life as a “creative
work”, living life from a creative rather
than reactive standpoint
Mental Models
• Determine how we make sense of the
world
• Determine how we take action
• Affect what we see
• Requires reflection and inquiry to identify
and develop
Shared Vision
• Not an idea but a “force in people’s hearts
• A vision that many people are truly
committed to because it reflects their own
personal vision
• Uplifts people’s aspirations
• Deepens people’s relationships
Team Learning
• Need to think insightfully about complex
issues
• Need innovative, coordinated action
• Role of team members on other teams.
Team learning fosters more learning
teams
Team Learning
SYNERGY
Key Idea 5:Professional
Learning Communities
Integrating Systems thinking, Personal
Mastery, Mental Models, Shared Vision
and Team Learning in a school community
Professional Learning
Communities
• What do we want to do?
• How are we going to do it?
• What are we going to do if not everybody
achieves it?
Systems Thinking: Personal Mastery: Mental
Models: Shared Vision: Team Learning
Characteristics of Professional
Learning Communities
Dialogue and Discussion
Focus on Data
“Bigger Picture” View Point
100% Commitment
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
“…the most promising strategy for
substantive school improvement
is developing the capacity for
school personnel to function as a
professional learning community
(PLC).”
Robert Eaker, Richard DuFour, and Rebecca DuFour, Getting Started:
Reculturing Schools to Become Professional Learning Communities
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
A Professional Learning Community is NOT:
• A program to be implemented
• A package of reforms to be adopted
• A step-by-step recipe for change
• A sure-fire system borrowed from another
school
• One more thing to add to an already
cluttered school agenda
A PLC IS A PROCESS THAT WILL CHANGE A
SCHOOL’S CULTURE!
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
In traditional schools:
• The focus is on teaching
• Teaching is done in isolation
• Teachers think of the themselves as
autonomous, independent contractors
• Most teachers have little input into the
school’s vision and mission statements
• The school’s mission statement is generic
and tangential to classroom work
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
In traditional schools (continued):
• The principal makes the decisions and
teachers do what (and only what) they are
told to do.
• The curriculum and the textbook are one
and the same.
• Assessments are norm-based.
• Test results are used for grading purposes
only.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
“Decades of research and reform have not
altered the fundamental facts of teaching.
The task of universal, public education is
still being conducted by a woman [or
man] alone in a little room, presiding over
a youthful distillate of a town or city.”
Tracy Kidder as quoted on page 17 in the book On Common Ground
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
In an era in which cable
television and the Internet
routinely broadcast almost
every imaginable human
activity…
teaching may be the last
private act in America.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
The Charles Darwin School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn –
based upon their ability.
• Student aptitude is fixed and not
subject to influence by teachers.
• As a result, we create multiple
programs or tracks to address differing
ability levels.
• Tracking gives students the best chance
of mastering the content that is
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
The Pontius Pilate School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn…if
they take advantage of the opportunity we
give them to learn.
• It is the teacher’s job to provide all
students with an opportunity to learn by
presenting lessons that are clear and
engaging.
• It is the student’s job to learn, and if they
elect not to do so, we must hold them
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
The Chicago Cub Fan School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn
…something, and we will help all
students experience academic growth in
a warm and nurturing environment.
• A student’s growth is determined by a
combination of his/her innate ability and
effort.
• Since we have little impact on either, we
will create an environment that fosters
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
The Henry Higgins School (Pygmalion effect)
- My Fair Lady
Motto: We believe that all students can and
must learn at relatively high levels of
achievement, and our responsibility is to
work with each student until our high
standards have been achieved.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
Educators who are committed to working
COLLABORATIVELY in ongoing processes
of COLLECTIVE INQUIRY and ACTION
RESEARCH in order to achieve better
RESULTS for the students they serve.
Dufour, Dufour, Eaker, & Many (2006)
3 Big Ideas of PLC’s
•
•
•
We accept learning as the fundamental purpose of
our school and therefore are willing to examine all
practices in light of their impact on learning
We are committed to working together to achieve our
collective purpose. We cultivate a collaborative
culture through the development of high performing
teams.
We assess our effectiveness on the basis of results
rather than intentions. Individuals, teams, and schools
seek relevant data and information and use that
information to promote continuous improvement.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
The Essential Elements of a PLC are:
1. A PLC is a collaborative venture.
2. A PLC is always focused on student
learning.
3. A PLC distributes leadership
responsibilities.
4. A PLC narrows the curriculum to its
essence.
5. A PLC shares best practices as a means
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
1. A PLC is a collaborative venture.
“Quality teaching requires strong professional
learning communities. Collegial interchange,
not isolation, must become the norm for
teachers. Communities of learners can no
longer be considered utopian; they must
become the building blocks that establish a new
foundation for America’s Schools.”
National Commission on Teaching, 2003
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
1. A PLC is a collaborative venture.
“Isolation is the enemy of learning.
Principals who support the learning of
adults in their school organize teachers’
schedules to provide opportunities for
teachers to work, plan, and think
together.”
NAESP, Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
2. A PLC is always focused on student
learning.
“In a professional learning community…attempts
at school improvement are judged on the
basis of how student learning is affected.”
Robert Eaker, Richard DuFour, and Rebecca DuFour, Getting Started: Reculturing
Schools to Become Professional Learning Communities
“…ultimately, a learning organization is
judged by results.”
Peter Senge, Schools that Learn
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
2. A PLC is always focused on student learning.
Each of the DuFour books identifies the same four
questions as critical to the PLC work.
1. Exactly what is it that we want all students to learn?
2. How will we know when each has acquired the
essential knowledge and skills?
3. What happens if students already demonstrate
mastery of the skills and knowledge we plan to
teach?
4.What happens in our school
when students do not learn?
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
2. A PLC is always focused on student
learning.
“Our objective in writing this book is not to help schools
raise test scores and avoid sanctions. We
should…promote high levels of learning for every
child entrusted to us, not because of legislation or
fear of sanctions, but because we have a moral and
ethical imperative to do so…test scores will take care
of themselves if educators commit to ensuring that
each student masters essential skills and concepts in
every unit of instruction…”
Whatever It Takes, page 27
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
3. A PLC distributes leadership
responsibilities.
“In professional learning communities,
administrators are viewed as leaders of
leaders. Teachers are viewed as
transformational leaders.”
Getting Started, page 22
“The norms of behavior for any organization
are shaped by what the leaders tolerate.”
Whatever It Takes, page 145
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
4. A PLC narrows the curriculum to its essence.
“In a professional learning community,
time is viewed as a precious resource,
so attempts are made to focus our
efforts on less, but more meaningful
content. The time that is saved allows
the teaching of more meaningful
content at a greater depth.”
Getting Started, page 19
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
5. A PLC shares best practices as a means of improving
instruction.
“The PLC concept is specifically designed to develop the
collective capacity of a staff to work together to
achieve the fundamental purpose of the school: high
levels of learning for all students. Leaders of the
process purposefully set out to create the conditions
that enable teachers to learn from one another as part
of their routine work practices. Continuous learning
becomes school based and job embedded.”
On Common Ground, page 18
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
6. A PLC uses “assessment for learning” in
addition to the usual “assessment of
learning.”
The traditional approach of using classroom
assessments solely as a grading tool fails
to utilize the enormous potential of such
assessments to identify students who
need additional support and to inform
the teacher regarding effective and
ineffective elements of his/her practice.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
6. A PLC uses “assessment for learning” in addition to the usual
“assessment of learning.”
“…I have used the analogy of physicals and autopsies. Without
putting too fine a point on the metaphor, physicals at a certain
point in life can be an uncomfortable ordeal but, on the whole,
they are preferable to and less intrusive than autopsies. The wise
physician does not use the annual physical only to evaluate the
patient, but also to recommend improvements in lifestyle. From
the best of our family doctors, we receive not the hieroglyphics of
lab results, but also candid advice to replace candy with carrots
and the television with a treadmill. The keys to assessment for
learning – the physical rather than the autopsy – are consistency,
timeliness, and differentiation.
Douglas Reeves as quoted in On Common Ground, page 53
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
6. A PLC uses “assessment for learning” in addition to the usual
“assessment of learning.”
Research reveals that significant improvement occurs in student
learning when the following classroom assessment practices are
in place.
• Sharing clear and appropriate learning targets with students from
the beginning of learning.
• Increasing the accuracy of classroom assessments of the stated
targets
• Making sure that students have continuous access to descriptive
feedback
• Involving students continuously in classroom assessments,
record keeping, and communication processes.
Rick Stiggins as quoted in On Common Ground, page 67
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
6. A PLC uses “assessment for learning” in addition to the
usual “assessment of learning.”
Working as a team, PLCs typically:
• Develop common assessments.
• Develop a common rubric.
• Examine student work.
• Strategize common interventions.
• Provide objective feedback to one another.
• Use student results to revise assessment instrument.
So, What is a Professional
Learning Community…?
Special
education
placement
Case Study Evaluation
Ombudsman Placement
Child Review Team
Mentor Program placement
Guided Study Program
Itinerant Support Program
Insight Class
Student Assistance Team Referral
SST and Teacher Conference with Parent
Doctor Verification
Social Work Contact/Peer Mediation
Student Placement on Weekly Progress Reports
Counselor Conference with Student and Parent
Good Friend Program
Counselor Phone Calls to Parents
Counselor Meeting with Student
Counselor Watch/Survival Skills for High School
Freshman Advisory/Freshman Mentor Program
Adlai E. Stevenson High School Pyramid of Interventions
Key Idea 6: Social Costs of
Ineffective Schools
What Happens when Students
don’t Learn?
Never in our nation’s history have the demands on our
educational system been greater or the consequences of
failure as severe. Beyond the high-stakes school
accountability requirements mandated by state and
federal laws, the difference between success and failure
in school is, quite literally, life and death for our
students.
What Happens When Students
Don’t Learn?
Today, a child who graduates from school with a mastery
of essential skills and knowledge is prepared to compete
in the global marketplace with numerous paths of
opportunity available to lead a successful life. Yet, for
students who fail in our educational system, the reality is
that there are virtually no paths of opportunity.
Poverty
The likely pathway for student who struggle
in school is an adult life of poverty,
incarceration, and/or dependence on
society’s welfare systems.
Poverty
Dropouts on average earn about $12,000 per year, nearly 50 percent
less than those who have a high school diploma
-- 50 percent less likely to have a job that offers a pension plan or
health insurance
-- They are more likely to experience health problems
--Rouse/Muenning, 2005: www.centerforpubliceducation.org
Poverty
According to a US government report, The
State of Literacy in America,
over 90 million US adults,
nearly one out of two,
are functionally illiterate or near illiterate,
without the minimum skills required
in a modern society.
Larry Roberts, Illiteracy on the Rise in America http://www.wsws.org
Poverty
44 million cannot read a newspaper
or fill out a job application.
Another 50 million more cannot read or
comprehend above the eighth grade level.
Poverty
43 percent of people with the lowest literacy
skills live below the
government's official poverty line
Incarceration
Russia and the U.S. are now the
world leaders in incarceration,
with imprisonment rates 6 to10 times that
of most industrialized nations.
Incarceration
Across the United States,
82% of prison inmates are dropouts
Ysseldyke, Algozzine, & Thurlow 1992
Incarceration
According to the report,
Literacy Behind Prison Walls,
70 percent of all prison inmates are
functionally illiterate or
read below a fourth-grade level.
Incarceration
85% of juvenile offenders have
reading problems.
Incarceration
Youth in Correctional Facilities
Average age: 15
Average Reading Level: 4th Grade
(30% below this level)
Social Costs
75% of those claiming welfare
are functionally illiterate.
Social Costs
One study conducted by a
University of California, Berkeley economist found that a
10 percent increase in the graduation rate would likely
reduce the murder and assault arrest rates by about 20
percent
Social Costs
The same study found that increasing the high school
completion rate by just
one percent for men ages 20-60
would save the United States up to
$1.4 billion per year in
reduced costs from crime.
Key Idea 7: Adults must work
together in a systematic way
“The issue is not that individual
teachers and schools do not innovate
and change all the time. They do.
The problem is with the kinds of
change that occur in the educational
system, their fragile quality, and
their random and idiosyncratic
nature.”
Consortium on Productivity in Schools, Using What We Have to Get the Schools
Adults must work together in a
systematic way
“In times of drastic change, it is the
learners who inherit the future.
The learned usually find
themselves beautifully equipped
to live in a world
that no longer exists.”
Eric Hoffer as quoted in Failure is Not an Option, page 1
How to Help Adults Achieve:
Theories of Adult Learning
Androgogy (Malcolm Knowles, 1980)
Adults have a psychological need to be selfdirecting
Adults have a large reservoir of experience that
should be tapped
Adults readiness to learn is influenced by a need to
solve real problems
Adults are performance oriented – need to apply
what has been learned
Adults are intrinsically motivated
Why PLC’s Make Sense in Schools: Theories
of Adult Learning
Transformational Learning (Jack Mezirow,
2000)
-Changes in how we know (transforming our
deeply held beliefs)
Informative Learning (Kegan, 2000)
-Changes in what we know (not necessarily
belief altering)
Why PLC’s Make Sense in Schools: Theories
of Adult Learning
Experience as key to adult learning
Adults learn in experience as they act in
situations and are acted upon by
situations (as opposed to learning FROM
experience). Fullan, 2011. Change Leader
Why PLC’s Make Sense in Schools: Theories
of Adult Learning
Stage Theory:
Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete and
formal
Concrete – Formal Operations – Postformal
Operations
Why PLC’s Make Sense in Schools: Theories
of Adult Learning
Stage Theory
Conceptual Development:
Low
Moderate
Moral Development:
Preconventional Conventional
High
PostConventional
Teacher Concerns:
Self-Adequacy Teaching Tasks Teaching Impact
Motivation Theory
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:
Physiological (food, clothing, shelter)
Safety (comfort, security, dependability)
Love and Belonging (relationships)
Esteem (status, prestige)
Self-Actualization (following one’s own
beliefs)
Problem Solving Cycle
Identify the Problem
Improve the
Process
Describe Hunches
and Hypotheses
Evaluate
Implementatio
n
Identify Questions
and Data
Implement
Action Plan
Analyze Multiple
Measures
Develop Action
Plan Resolution
Analyze Political
Realities and Root
Causes
What does the data tell us?
What does THIS tell
us?
What does the data tell us?
What does THIS mean?
What does the data tell us?
How do you
account for THIS?
What does the data tell us?
What are the
implications here?
How can you make sense of these differences?
What does the data tell us?
What can you say about the state of education in NY? What about
the impact of NCLB and RTTT?
Planning for Organizational Change – Focus on what matters m
Instructional core: The core includes three interdependent components: teachers' knowledge and skill,
students' engagement in their own learning, and academically challenging content. Need to bind these
through CFAs.
Strategy: A coherent set of actions a district deliberately undertakes to strengthen the instructional core with the
objective of raising student performance district-wide. Gaining coherence among actions at the district, school,
and classroom levels will make a district's chosen strategy more scalable and sustainable.
Stakeholders: The people and groups inside and outside of the district - district and school staff, governing
bodies, unions and associations, parents and parent organizations, civic and community leaders and
organizations.
Culture: The predominant norms, values, and attitudes that define and drive behavior in the district.
Structure: Structures help define how the work of the district gets done. It includes how people are organized,
who has responsibility and accountability for results, and who makes or influences decisions. Structures can be
both formal (deliberately established organizational forms) and informal (the way decisions get made or the way
people work and interact outside of formal channels).
Systems: School districts manage themselves through a variety of systems, which are the processes and
procedures through which work gets done. Systems are built around such important functions as career
development and promotion, compensation, student assignment, resource allocation, organizational learning, and
measurement and accountability. Most practically, systems help people feel like they do not have to
"reinvent the wheel" when they need to get an important, and often multi-step, task done.
Resources: Managing the flow of financial resources throughout the organization is important, but resources
also include people and physical assets such as technology and data. When school districts carefully manage their
most valuable resource--people--and understand what investments in technology and data systems are necessary
to better support teaching and learning, the entire organization is brought closer to coherence.
Environment: A district's environment includes all the external factors that can have an impact on strategy,
How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep
Getting Better
(McKinsey & Company, November 2010)
Six Interventions Common Across All Journeys
• Revising curriculum and standards;
• Reviewing reward and remunerations
structure;
• Building technical skills of teachers and
principals, often through group or
cascaded training;
• Assessing student learning;
• Utilizing student data to guide delivery, and
• Establishing policy documents and
education laws
How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better
(McKinsey & Company, November 2010)
Improvement
Reform/Improvement
Coherence Developed Over Time
Professional
Development/
Curriculum/
Accountability
Systems/
Leadership
Frames
Data Analysis and Accountability
Why Use Data?
-Replace hunches with hypotheses
-Know where the gaps are
-Identify root causes
-Understand the impact of processes on students
-Target services to greatest needs
-Measure progress toward goals
-Predict and prevent failures
-Ensure success
(Bernhardt, Ch. 1)
Barriers to using data
• Barriers to Using Data:
-work culture in education does not value
data
-little training
-poor processes for systematically gathering
and using data
HOW IS DATA CURRENTLY USED IN YOUR INSTITUTION?
(What data? What level?)
Data Analysis and Accountability
Data is collected to:
Improve Instruction
Gain Instructional coherence
Provide feedback to students and teachers
Develop common understanding of quality
Measure effectiveness
Prevent students from falling through the
cracks
Data Analysis and Accountability
• Must begin with fundamental questions:
-What is the purpose of school?
-What do we expect students to know and
do?
-How well will students be able to perform
what they know and can do?
-Why do we get the results we get?
-What would the school look like if we were
getting the results we wanted?
Data Analysis
Plan
Improve
-Guiding
Principles
-Vision
-Mission
-Purpose
-Values and
Beliefs
-Standards
Evaluate
Implement
Data Analysis
Multiple Measures of Data (school level)
Demographics
School
Processes
Perceptions
Student Learning
Read P. 21
Demographic data
“statistical characteristics of human
populations”
#’s of students in the school
Ethnicities
Special needs
Graduates
Economic background
perceptions
Beliefs about the way the world works
“It is what teachers think, what teachers
believe, and what teachers do at the level
of the classroom that ultimately shapes
the kind of learning that young people
get.”
Hargreaves & Fullan
Assessing perceptions
• Common collection methods include interviews,
focus groups and questionnaires
Designing Questionnaires: What do you want to
know? What is your purpose? How will you use
the data? Does the data you seek already exist?
Who will you solicit? How will you collect data? –
Likert Scale; open-ended response?
How will you disaggregate?
See p. 71 for question types
Student learning data
Any measure that can help an individual know what
and if a student is learning
-Standardized tests
-norm referenced tests
-criterion referenced tests
-authentic assessments
-teacher-made tests
Teacher assigned grades
Performance assessments
Standards-based assessments
School processes
• As educators, we directly control
processes (only domain of the four we
have direct control over)
School Processes refers to the way schools
“do business”
What do we do to promote (or inhibit)
student learning? Is there congruence
among processes?
Intersection analyses
• 10 Levels
• Snapshot vs. overtime
• Single domain vs. multiple domains
Data Analysis
Levels of Analysis
Level 1: Snapshot of measures
Level 2: Measures over time
Level 3: Two or more variables within
measures
Level 4: Two or more variables within 1 type
of measure, over time
Level 5: Intersection of two types of
variables
Data Analysis
Level 6: Intersection of two measures, over
time
Level 7: Intersection of three measures
Level 8: Intersection of three measures,
over time
Level 9: Intersection of four measures
Level 10: Intersection of four measures,
over time.
Data Analysis
Intersection Analyses: Two way intersections
Demographics by student
learning
Do subgroups perform
differently?
Demographics by perceptions
Do subgroups experience
school differently?
Demographics by school
processes
Are subgroups participating
in similar courses?
Student learning by school
processes
Do cohorts in different
classes achieve at similar
levels?
Student learning by perceptions
Do students believe that the
environment impacts their
achievement?
Perceptions by school processes
Do parents have positive
feelings about the school
curriculum?
Data Analysis
Four-Way Intersections:
Demographics by student learning What are students’
by perceptions by school
perceptions about the
processes
programs that have the
greatest impact on different
subgroups’ learning?