| Abstract: |
This paper is the first in a series of working papers on change. The creation of a public education system that aspires to educate all of this nation's children is a great achievement. Yet today this bedrock American institution is at risk. The system continually falls short of its aspiration, and the achievement gap, the drop-out rate, chronic absenteeism, low morale among teachers, and the sense of disconnection between schools and communities are evidence of some of the ways the system falls short of its goals. The public education system is at risk today less because of its performance than for two other reasons: (1) Public education is under unprecedented pressure to change, and change quickly, in response to rapid and sweeping changes happening across our society; and (2) Public sector institutions differ from private sector ones in fundamental ways, yet the paradigm of leadership which is being put forward by the current round of education reformers is drawn from the private sector and is fundamentally mismatched with the reality of the public. The result is that public education leaders are being asked to bring about rapid change and to do it using a toolkit that will not get the job done. The model of leadership needs to be changed to match the system, not change the system to match the model of leadership. This paper seeks to put forward such an alternative approach to leadership. Pivot Learning Partners calls this approach "Change Design." Change Design is a unique approach to the intentional, application of practices, tools, and processes to define, sequence, communicate, and manage activities that bring about change. This approach to Change Design melds more traditional ideas about leadership with ideas from the private sector discipline of "design thinking," ideas from the field of organizational development, and the practice of community organizing. It is a structured process for engaging groups of people in both planning and also bringing about change which is teachable, replicable and scalable. In this way Change Design leverages, rather than ignores, the very aspects of public education that private sector leadership models find to be confounding. |