School Committee and Organizational Management
This is truly a difficult area to get a handle on and almost certainly is quite a bit more complicated than is visible on the surface.
Achieving lasting organizational change is the subject of countless business books. I’m sure that I am not alone among the citizens of Newton in having read quite a few and in having led or participated in achieving such change in private and public companies. Things are made even more challenging in the public sector when politics, elections and union contracts are involved. This, however, does not abdicate responsibility for tackling the tough problems.
There seems to be general consensus that there are leadership, management or administrative weaknesses in the Newton Public Schools. Unfortunately, at that point the consensus seems to end. Is it the School Committee not providing clear enough priorities and objectives to the Superintendent? Is it the Superintendent marching to his own agenda? Is it the Curriculum Coordinators out of touch with the teachers or underfunded? Is it the Principals taking too much (or not enough) independent initiative? Is it the teachers resisting change? Is it too little (or too much) uniformity between the schools? Is it the overall lack of money at every turn?
Accepting the fact that most of these theories and observations are coming from people outside the system and that a formal assessment of input from those within the system might yield different data, let’s proceed to work with what we have. The one clear theme that runs through the various hypotheses is “not me”.
In business we often call this the victim mentality and it is an easy trap to fall into and is fairly insidious once it starts. It is a symptom of a lack of both accountability and empowerment. When individuals do not feel accountable it is easy for them to pass the buck, either literally or figuratively. When individuals do not feel empowered it is difficult for them to maintain a sense of accountability – if they feel they cannot control the outcome how can that outcome be their responsibility? When accountability and empowerment are both absent the result is malaise.
Breaking this cycle is not easy and requires strong leadership. It also requires clear and constantly reinforced objectives. Without clear objectives to rally around it can be very difficult to maintain the focus needed to establish the accountability at every level of the organization that is needed to cement lasting change. Fortunately, in the presence of clear objectives and a commitment to accountability, empowerment often follows naturally.
I certainly do not want to imply that I think everyone within the Newton Schools is exhibiting victim mentality and does not hold themselves accountable. I suspect that most of the organization in fact does feel accountable. However, it doesn’t take too much of a minority to have a significant impact on the results of a large organization. Focused effort to improve in this area is never a wasted investment and can have surprisingly good results, often in a short time.
I do have some specific thoughts and I’ll start at the top.
School Committee – You are the top and the buck stops with you. You have a difficult job, a huge responsibility to the community and it is part-time on top of your other professional and personal responsibilities. That being said, the School Committee has the opportunity to set the clear priorities for the organization and to constantly reinforce those priorities by asking at every opportunity how each action will help to achieve the objectives. There are many good ideas and many worthy priorities. The key is identifying the vital few and getting success around those before adding others.
There is a popular story (likely urban myth) about John F Kennedy touring NASA during the space race. In the story he stops a janitor who is mopping a hallway and asks what he is doing and the janitor answers, “I’m putting a man on the moon, sir!”
In this, I think the School Committee could be doing more. The FY2010 budget guidelines, for example are nearly three pages long and in only one case (class sizes) is anything truly measurable proposed. This is not the three to five clearly stated objectives around which the organization could rally. Once the objectives are agreed, the School Committee needs to hold itself accountable for the regular measurement and achievement of the objectives as well as holding the rest of the organization accountable – starting with the Superintendent.
Superintendent – You are the leader of the 1,700 (FTE) strong Newton Public School team. It is up to you to turn the clear priorities from the School Committee into action and your professional expertise and that of your staff is key in determining the best paths to take to achieve the objectives. It is also up to you to lead the organization by demonstrating your own accountability and holding each member of your extended team equally accountable while simultaneously providing the support, commitment and flexibility to empower each part of your organization to function to the highest level of performance and efficiency. This is a difficult and challenging job requiring not only the educational background necessary to evaluate approaches, but also the charismatic leadership required to keep the organization focused and motivated.
Curriculum Coordinators – Your role, compared to some others, is refreshingly clear. It is up to you to monitor the constantly changing environment such as State frameworks, commercially available curricula, etc. and work with teachers to provide the foundational learning tools that they will use. This is not an academic (sic) exercise though and it is critical to get real-time feedback from your customers (the teachers) on what is working and what is not working and to make rapid adjustments. You must also support the empowerment of the teachers by looking for individual innovation and understanding how positive innovations can be institutionalized across the organization. Failed innovations also provide learning opportunities and as such should be objectively analyzed to extract organizational knowledge (not blame) from the attempt.
Principals – You are the middle managers critical to achieving the individual successes in each school that create the whole. Your role is similar to that of the Superintendent in that you must both reinforce the clear objectives of the organization as well as determine the best path to success for your school. You should have the empowerment to act independently, but are also responsible to the larger organization to share the knowledge, both positive and negative, you gain through innovation. You must maintain the focus and motivation of your staff while still holding each individual accountable for their contribution to achieving the objectives.
Teachers – You are obviously the most important part of the educational organization. You must teach our children effectively and efficiently. You should feel supported by the organization at every level, but in return for that support need to listen to input and look for opportunities to improve. You should be given room to experiment, but should have a clear definition of success provided to guide such innovation. Your success defines the success of the organization.
Clearly there are many other roles involved, but the themes would be the same. Clear goals and objectives agreed to up front. Accountability demonstrated by proactive measurement of progress against the goals at every level. Empowerment to innovate, with a commitment to share lessons learned by that innovation (both positive and negative) across the organization so appropriate innovations can be institutionalized. Strong leadership to constantly reinforce the goals and keep the organization focused and motivated.