Post a reflection on which strategies were effective and which were ineffective in the effort to provide social justice and equity for all students.
Post a description on how Findlay High School is a model of change leadership. Identify any strategies utilized by Findlay High School you have seen implemented in your school system (or one with which you are familiar) and describe which strategies are new to you. Explain whether any of the strategies presented could be implemented at your school system and why or why not.
PDF for discussion are attached
D:\findley high school document
D:\Organizations and Systems
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-
In this program, Mr. Craig Kupferberg, principal of Findlay High School, explains the impact of community demographics on student equity. He describes his vision for social change and discusses the leadership team’s goal to eliminate the general tracking system. Mr. Kupferberg also discusses the challenges the team encountered and how the findings of their action research study are guiding future plans.
The program concludes with his reflections and recommendations to other school leaders who are in the midst of change.
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: Findlay is a, really, a wonderful place to raise a family. Findlay just recently was awarded one of the 100 best communities in the United States of America for youth. Because of the opportunities we have here for youth.
Some of the culture with Findlay is probably most famous for Marathon Oil Company. It was founded here by the Donnell family whose name is still very prevalent here in Findlay. Matter of fact, one of our middle schools and our football stadium is named after the Donnell family. And the original Donnell homes are still a centerpiece of the community.
The south end of town, as you go down South Main Street, is some very large, beautiful restored Victorian homes. As you move out to the east part of town, you’ll find some very beautiful, large modern homes that are still being developed out on the east side. And then more in the central and northern part of Findlay is the part of the community where it’s more blue-collar worker in a lower socioeconomic families would be living.
To get a better understanding of our student population, go back to the description of the homes in the older restored Victorian homes and the newer homes out east. Those students come from a rather high socioeconomic family with tremendous support for education. These parents are involved.
We have a lot of booster organizations. We have the traditional athletic and music boosters. We also have academic boosters that just do a tremendous amount of legwork and other type of workforce around the building. We have a parent advisory counsels. We just have a lot of ways for parents to get involved.
At the other end of the scale, with more blue-collar jobs coming into the community. We’re finding more, or a higher percentage of our students, coming ©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 1 from a lower socioeconomic type of family. And the support that we receive from these families sometimes aren’t like the higher socioeconomic. It’s hard to get these families into the school to even conference with us about their students, let alone get them to volunteer on booster organizations and get involved in the school.
As I walk into Findlay High School today compared to when I arrived to Findlay High School back in 1989, one of the differences that I see in the student population is a bigger disparity in the student body itself. In that, when I arrived in 1989, the vast majority of the student population came from homes that were extremely supportive of education. The students were very much involved. And they still are very much involved.
One of things I feel very strongly about and believe in public education is that it is for everyone. It’s for every child. And one of things that I’ve observed and experienced throughout my professional career is people tend to categorize and try to label people differently. And I think it starts very young. In the elementary schools, you’ll see students pairing off, even in elementary schools. I think we continue that throughout our adult life, as well. In that, we for some reason see a need, even in a community like Findlay, that’s very homogeneous. To categorize and separate people into different classes or groups one way or another.
And one of the things that I noticed coming back to Findlay High School. One of the things that I wanted to challenge is that we had high expectations for all of our students. The Ohio Graduation Test that has been implemented in Ohio, even before Nickleby came about, really raised the bar for our student expectations.
And I was concerned, as the principal of Findlay High School, that our general classes and our general curriculum expectations for those students were not high enough to allow our general students to succeed.
Some of the things we did to come about and try to win some of the staff member and community members over is. I really went about it backwards to begin with. Because I really just made the decision unilaterally, on my own. After reading the research and my core beliefs, that the general track wasn’t being successful. Looking at the data here, and the number of failures that we were having in general classes. And I just unilaterally said we’re going to change.
Then I started to hear the complaints. And I started to realize no matter what the research says, and no matter what we do. If we don’t go about this change appropriately and get people on board, no matter how good the idea is and how good the change is, it’s going to fail.
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
So I started talking with different people. Matter of fact, one of the people I called first was the principal who was in this building prior to me, Doctor Kathleen Crates. She also, well she continues to work in the school district. So she was very easy to get a hold of. She’s been very supportive of me all along.
To get a little bit of history of how this has gone in the past. If this is something that she’s tried. And what I learned from talking to her is that this has been talked about in the past. But there has been a huge amount of dissension on the staff. That they were talking about eliminating the general track at one time, and she put a stop to it, because of it.
And at that point, it became very clear to me that we had to slow down the change process a little bit. And really just started to think about how can we move forward without creating such a controversy over this. That it couldn’t succeed. And talked with some of the teachers here that were involved in the decision. And also talked with some parents, kind of, on my own, informally, about some things. And came up with the idea of the experimental and control group.
I sat down with my administrative staff and brought to them the idea of the experimental and control group and started bouncing ideas off of them. Where we, as a group, really came up with the structure and idea of how we were going to work this experiment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
VICKI BRUNN: I’ve been concerned, for the last several years, even when I was a teacher in the classroom, about our general track here at the high school. It’s not a track where we have traditionally done a lot of intervention trying to move these students up to college prep. It became almost a holding area for kids who were not motivated enough to want to do school. But just to try to help them get through, especially with the OGT, or the Ohio Graduation Test coming on. I was very concerned about these kids being successful and being able to get a diploma. Because I don’t feel that the general track was preparing them to pass the Ohio Graduation Test.
The discipline problems in the general classes are. It’s probably 75% of our discipline issues that we have here at the high school, if not higher. Because when you put a group of students together who are all unmotivated, they really don’t want to be here. They tend to feed off of each other. And it creates issues where there wouldn’t be issues, if those students were with students who were motivated. So there are several things that we were looking at. And as a freshman principal, on the front lines, as far as the discipline. I had teachers coming to me almost daily saying, it’s impossible for me to teach this class. I’m dealing with discipline the whole period. I don’t have a chance to teach them anything.
And so that was a large concern of mine, also. So we began to look at ways to, without watering down the curriculum, bringing these kids into a college prep atmosphere. Keeping the bar high and motivate them to get through the material. I’ve never been a proponent of tracking any more than absolutely necessary. And so I want to do interventions with the students who are not getting the work done and get them to a point where they’re capable of doing the work that they need to do to graduate.
We just called it a pilot program to do away with a general track. Because we still have tracking at the high school. We have the honors AP track for advanced placement students. So if they were getting Cs or lower at middle school, they would probably think of putting them in a general track. I then took that list of students who had signed up for the general track and began phone calls. I would call the parents. And we randomly went with every fourth student so that we could have a random sample. And I would call. Ask the parent and ask the student if they would be willing to be part of this pilot project.
But we were concerned about the general track preparing them for the Ohio Graduation Test. So we wanted to form a class this year. Putting some of our general students in with our college prep students and see if they were successful. See if we could help them reach that bar that they would need to, in order to pass that test.
If the parent declined. And I did have two parents that said they would rather not because their student was struggling so much at the middle school level. They were concerned about them being successful. And so at that point, I would go on to the next student in the list and ask the same questions of that family. Until we got. We wanted to have six students in that class. The purpose of that was because we looked at the ratio of our general students to our college preparation students. And we wanted to maintain that same ratio in this pilot program. So out of 30 kids, we would generally have six that were general students and then the 24 that were college prep students.
We met with the staff, and we told them that we wanted to do this pilot project. Gave them the reasons why. We did not tell them who the teachers were going to be that would receive these general kids into their college prep classes. But they all were aware that we were doing the project. At that point, we had to spend time looking at these students and how they were progressing. And making sure that none of them were struggling and falling through the cracks. And then as the year progressed, we looked at several things. We looked at the academics of these students. We looked at the academics of the college prep students that were in the same pilot group.
BILL BARBAREE: We had general level students in our college prep level courses. We did not know which students were brought in from the general level in our courses, there. And they were using data. As far as our test results and our test scores that we were given throughout the year, as a means to measure whether or not those general students were able to stay up with the standards of a college prep level course. That’s the measurement that they were primarily using.
MANDI CROFT: They looked at mid-term grades. They looked at the exam grades and compared them to a general level class with all general kids and a college prep level class with all, what we would call college prep students. And they looked at the numbers to see what the percentages were and where people fell with certain grade levels and great ranges. And with that, they saw that the general kids who were in the CP class were doing a little bit better than the kids who were just in the general classes.
BILL BARBAREE: Besides the academic part of it, they also looked at behavioral issues. And they were tracking the number of detentions or behavioral problems from an all general class compared to a mixed college prep and general class to see if the social dynamics. If that helped out with the decrease of behavioral problems that we experience in the classroom.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: I really expected the firestorm to come from my general students’ parents. That we were putting them in a place that they couldn’t succeed. And we were setting them up for failure. I really didn’t hear from that segment of our community.
The segment of our community I heard from were the parents at the college prep level. They were concerned that these students would be coming into the class and pulling the expectations down and disrupting the classroom environment. I was also surprised to hear from some of my staff members. Both staff members that deal with the more challenging students as well as staff members that deal with some of our very bright students.
SUSAN DAVIDSON: Tom does very well in school. He’s a bright young man. And he, at the time, knew for certain that he was going to take honors level math, which would be algebra two and science. And we were considering whether or not he should do the honors route, honors track, for the English, which is honors English, and AP American history.
He’s a very self motivated young man. Very focused. He’s also a perfectionist. So I guess at that point, my husband and I had concerns that would it be too much if he would take all honors classes. We believe, of course, academics is very important. As a teacher here, that’s, of course, a main concern for my own children and my students.
And so I went to our principal, Craig Kupferberg, having these concerns about combining college prep and general students in the same class. I see them as being two diverse groups. These students have different abilities, interests, needs. Perhaps, we could say goals in life. Different levels of motivation. And so I was concerned. Because I thought if Tom went that route instead of the honors AP classes, would he be challenged enough.
In the end, through conversing with different teachers here. Thinking about it. Looking at the pros and cons of each. Our son went the route of the honors AP classes. So he had all four honors AP classes last year.
As a parent, I would hope that if a school is considering doing this, combining the general and college prep classes, I believe it’s very important to get different perspectives. From the teachers in the school, from parents of the children at the school, in the community, from students.
Because, I suppose you could say, that research could back up any point of view you have. Whether you believe the tracking isn’t good, you can find research to back that up. On the other hand, if you believe that tracking is good, you could also find research to back that up.
So I believe it’s important to listen to both sides, before a decision is made. And once that decision is made, whether you agree with it or not, to follow up. Which they will be doing here at Findlay High School with finding out if it really is working, of course, which would take time to determine if this new program is working. But I think it’s important to listen to all viewpoints in order to make a decision.
BARBARA BORMUTH: This is my 32nd year of teaching. I began my career at a small county school in Vanlue, Ohio. And then I transferred here. And I have been a teacher here since 1978. Here we had four tracks. Honors, college prep, general, basic. I have taught all the levels except honors. I’ve taught sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
The philosophy of tracking is the idea that you put students who are of a similar level into a classroom. So the teacher may be able to work one-on-one more often with them. Be able to address their needs. Because most of them will have the same needs.
By eliminating the tracking, we lose that perspective. When we put general students in with college prep students, we are creating a situation where you have a wider spectrum of student levels to work with.
Another concern that I have is the possibility of watering down the curriculum to meet the needs of these students. I know that we had to change the types of novels that we taught. We now are going to have students who are very academically oriented and those who are not.
The driving force behind this change was the Ohio Graduation Test. The administration was very concerned, as all of us were, about whether or not our students would be able to pass the parts of that test without having exposure to college prep material.
The bottom line is we did well. English did very, very well. I believe, 90-some percent of our students passed the reading. In the upper 80%, passed the writing. And that was without the changes. CRAIG KUPFERBERG: One of the things I feel very strongly about in handling dissentions, is that you really need to make the person understand that you are listening. That you are trying to hear their side of the issue, as well. And one very good way is by asking questions of the person. Because then not only are you hearing, but you’re trying to seek input from the person, as well.
We have some of the more traditional methods for teachers to voice their dissension or bring ideas to the table. In the faculty advisory council. Through the union. We have a faculty president that meets with the administration on a weekly basis. So they have these different ways to communicate and bring ideas to the table. But I wanted to expand on that.
One of the things that we’ve started here, since I’ve been here, is collaborative teams. Every Thursday morning, we delay school 15 minutes. We were able to work that out so that our academic classes are all the same length.
We have a homeroom period that’s 15 minutes in length. So all we really did was eliminate that. So we give that time to the teachers, as well as an additional half hour that they had anyway, to meet in collaborative groups that they determine. And different things that we’re experimenting with. What we called an input board.
And there’s four quadrants. There’s one for issues. There’s one for questions. There’s one for concerns. And there’s one for high-fives. And they can anonymously just put a note up on the input board. And I check it on a daily basis, if not two or three times a day.
And if I find a new response or a new question on the input board, I’ll take it. I’ll research it. Find the answer, if I need to. The issue on why fix something that isn’t broken. I’d like to go back one more year.
The first year that we gave the Ohio Graduation Test in reading and in mathematics, our scores were not very good. As matter of fact, we were placed ©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. on school improvement. This last year, we had a dramatic improvement. We’re now classified as an excellent, which is the top rating that you can receive from the state of Ohio.
I contribute a lot of different factors to that. The first time we took the test it didn’t count for our students, as far as whether they graduated from high school or not. They were still on the old Ohio proficiency test. They needed to pass that. That was part of it. Because the sophomore group last year needed to pass the test, in order to be able to graduate from high school.
So it was a high stakes test for this last year. But also, a lot what contributed to that, were the changes that we did make through the collaborative teams and the common assessments. And some other improvements that we have put in the building. And the direction that the building was going, with raising expectations. And I think that this fits in right along with that area. And when we looked at the very first test, where we didn’t do very well. The students that were not passing that test were the students, predominately, that were in our general track. So whether it was because they weren’t motivated to take the test or it was because curriculum wasn’t lined up. You can argue a lot of different factors. What matters to me is what our expectations are for the students. And I think eliminating the general track fits right in with that expectation.
So if the data shows that we need to eliminate the general track as we move along that curriculum, we’ll change. It will not be watered down because we’re moving the general students in, but it will change. It would also change if we kept the general track. We’re constantly looking at what our literature is going to be. And constantly making those changes.
One of the things, when I come into our English classes and observe what’s going on. I see students that are actively participating. You can’t tell which students are college prep students, which students are general students.
As a matter of fact, when we did our experiments. And one of the teachers accidentally found out that she was involved in an experiment. She tried to determine which were college prep and which were general students. And every time she thought someone was a general student, she wasn’t even correct.
And as I sit around the class and watch our students become actively involved. Because that is one of the expectations I set for our teachers. Is that I want to see students actively involved in the lessons. I see them all being actively involved. And I can’t tell which students would have been general students and which ones would have been college prep. They come together as a class.
VICKI BRUNN: One of the effects that this pilot project has had, which we really weren’t concerned about at the beginning. But it’s been a real positive experience for students socioeconomically, also and socially. We tend to have social tracking here, even though that’s not the intent.
And what we found is the students who are in our general track tend to be lower socioeconomic students. And what this has done is it’s intermixed those kids in with the college prep kids, who tend to be from a higher socioeconomic classes. And it gives them a chance to be together and make friends with each other. And I think that’s beneficial, also.
Which it also leads to self esteem, as far as not feeling like you can’t do it. Because you’re in the general track. And you’re in the dumb classes. And students know that that’s where they are. And then that one of the reasons that they tend to just give up. And they’re not motivated. It may not even be that they are thinking about, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want an education. But I’m in this class because I’m stupid. And I can’t do this. And so that has taken that barrier away for the students, also.
It’s also impacted the social climate with our staff here at the high school. I think it’s helped us to work together more closely, as a group. We’ve all always been a close-knit group, here in the freshman wing. Because we’re a building within a building. And we have approximately 20 to 25 staff members. And then me, as the principal in the freshman wing.
And so I like to think that we have a pretty good relationship. But this has even made it better. We’ve discussed issues like the discipline issues that are coming out of our general classes and not coming out of this pilot class. And we’ve also discussed how it’s important not to lower expectations. And it’s been a positive thing.
We’ve also discussed what’s going to happen if this doesn’t work. Because this is still in the trial stages. We’re still in our first year as a pilot, with the entire freshman wing. And so just meeting together and talking about that has created a collaborative feeling between the staff members and myself.
BILL BARBAREE: I was glad to be part of the pilot. To be honest, I was skeptical at the beginning. Because going through public education myself, I was in many classes that were what we would call general classes. Well, non-tracking. And it seemed like I didn’t get as much out of those classes as I thought I could. Because the course was watered down or geared towards the middle of the class, instead of being more challenging. And then as I took AP courses, and I was more challenged. And was able to further my education that away. So that was a fear that I had, just from my own experience. I didn’t want that to happen here at Findlay. I didn’t want the college prep child to be slighted, either. And having the course be lowered.
But I think, as educators, as long as we maintain our expectations and keep our requirements higher and our expectations higher, at the course. That I believe the students will have an opportunity and will rise up to that level of challenge and expectation.
MANDI CROFT: I’ve seen an impact on the social climate. Just because the kids that were in the general program and always traveling with those same general kids. If it was a group that was getting in trouble, that’s what they heard about. That’s what they knew about. So now they’re also hearing the positive things and seeing the kids who are involved in sports and other activities. We do have a negative result of having our classes mixed. And the honors program and the basic program still being in tact, the way that they were. Because we had parents who were fearful of a joint class. In our honors classes skyrocketed. We’ve got kids who probably should be in our general CP class, which is run as a CP class, instead of the honors program. And there needs to be some guidelines set, as far as how they get into the honors program.
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: As I look at the social climate around the building this year, one of things that we really stress with our freshman. As matter of fact, we bring our freshman in to meet with myself and the freshman principal about a week into the building.
One of things I really hit on is that they’ve come from different schools. And they had rivalries in those old schools. But now they’re Findlay High School Trojans. They’re on the same team. And I even use the example of the movie, The. Miracle And how they brought all these hockey players from all of these different colleges together. And they had to learn to play as team, before that they could win. And how important it is for the students to do that, not only to be successful as a class but to be successful individually, as well.
And I walk into our English classes, and I see our students. And they’re doing that. They’re working together. They work in groups. They volunteer answers. They support one another. They debate issues that they don’t agree on. But they come together. And they’re working together extremely well.
From here, we’re really still experimenting and taking a look at the data. Where we are going to go from here is. We’re going to continue taking a look at the data and see if it supports expanding this program. Last year we took a look at a very small group. It was one classroom in English and one classroom in social studies. And we looked to see how successful they are.
Organizations and Systems Program Transcript NARRATOR:
As a leader in education, having knowledge of both systems theory and change theory will be key in affecting change in your organization. Dr. Nancy Blair explains these theories and analyzes the structure, politics, and culture of organizations.
DR. NANCY BLAIR: It’s important for anybody who is interested in leadership to understand, first, organizations and what makes tick. Typically, when people go into leadership studies, they think of wherever they’ve been, their context. And usually, their context is a smaller context, an office or a classroom. And if you think about leadership in an organization, you have to telescope out from that and begin to think about the organization as a whole.
There’s been a long history of thinking about organizational development. Then in the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve had some good thinkers out there that have helped us understand how organizations are really a system. And therefore, we have to understand what a system is. Systems theory is relatively a new concept on the horizon as we think about organizations. So people like Edward Demming, Peter Senge, and most recently Margaret Wheatley, have helped us understand how systems work. And the best way I can explain it to you is to give you an analogy.
If you think about a mobile over a baby’s crib, and you think about all the pieces that hang down from that mobile to entertain the baby, if you were to come up and touch one piece of it, what would happen to the mobile? Well, what happens is that the whole thing starts to move and shift.
And that’s the way it is in a system. Whether it’s a school that is a system, or a school that is part of the district that is a larger system, when you affect one piece of it, it’s not just that one piece. That one piece is interconnected to all of the other pieces. So obviously, if you’re going to be a leader acting on that system, you need to understand how your one act doesn’t just affect that one thing. It could affect everything within the system. Luckily, because of our better understanding of how systems work, we have a better understanding of how to affect change in an organization. We have a body of knowledge called change theory that actually goes back to the early works of Kurt Lewin in the ’50s. But most recently, we have people like Michael Fullan, who are translating information about the change process into good knowledge base that we can use as we plan change in our organization.
So for example, if you’re going to initiate a change, you know that there are things you need to do at the beginning of the change that are practical and pragmatic to get the organization ready to change. You also know then, as you ©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. try to implement the change, that there are certain things you need to do to get the change underway. And most importantly, there are things you need to do as the change moves on into institutionalization so that the change lasts. It’s really the implementation of good change theory and research on change that allows us to take a great idea into action and into something that really has a long lasting impact in the organization.
So if we have a good systems theory and understanding of how systems work, and good change theory and understanding of how change occurs in an organization, and those theories are based on research in the field around what works, then those theories really should guide our practice. And that’s the benefit of having them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to understand what’s going on in an organization. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to make change. You have a theory that will guide your practice. And it’s important.
Lee Bolman and Terry Deal wrote a book several years ago called Reframing Organizations. And what they helped us do was take all of this stuff in organizations and think about how to categorize it. They came up with four pieces.
The first is the structural piece of organizations. And that’s where you tend to think about something called bureaucracy. Organizations are structured uniquely. You might have a school that is structured very hierarchically with a large urban district, a large management system, that then puts decisions down at the school level, and then down at the classroom level.
Understanding the structure of an organization is critical if you’re going to move that organization forward because it’s that structure that helps us understand how this place works, how the pieces work and fit together. But the structure alone is not enough. You have to have other perspectives as well.
So the second one they talk about is the human resource piece. And that’s the perspective of all the people in the organization. An organization isn’t just departments and divisions and layers. It’s the people that work within those departments and divisions and layers. And this is where we get into that balance of is the organization structured just to meet the needs of the organization or is the organization also structured to meet the needs of the human beings within it? So the human resource frame says we also better pay attention to the people. And we better pay attention to the value they have in this organization that they can contribute to it. So that’s the second piece of the puzzle.
That, again, is not enough. There’s a third piece, the political piece. This is an interesting one. Often, people new in leadership don’t like politics. But if you aren’t a good politician in a school district, you’re not going to get what you need for your organization. Politics is all about how we divide up scarce resources. It’s how I get the piece of the pie that I need to run my school. How I get the piece of the budget to run my department, for example. So you not only have to know the structure and understand the people, but you have to understand the political climate, so that you can get your hands on the resources to help you accomplish the goals of the organization.
And then, the last piece they talk about is not quite as concrete. It’s called the organizational culture. And culture is best described as the way we do things around here. Every organization is unique. And as you move into an organization it didn’t just exist in that moment of time when you moved in. It came from a long, rich history.
And one of the mistakes leaders often make is that they don’t find out about that history. They don’t honor that history. And they don’t respect that history as they try to move ahead.
I always tell people that when they go into a leadership of an organization, the thing they need to do is spend time living in it for a while, talking to people, listening to people. So in order to move ahead, you have to first look back. You have to understand the context of that the organization resides in. You have to understand the culture and where it came from. And you can only do that by talking with people and really listening to where this organization has been before you can begin to attempt to understand where this organization needs to go. Organizational culture is probably the piece that is the hardest to discover, but may be the most important to understand if you’re going to move an organization forward.
So it’s important to understand systems, that an organization is an interconnected system, and that what leaders often want to do is affect change in the system. But in order to do that, you really have to understand the puzzle that is the organization.
And that puzzle, then, is made up of the four pieces that we’ve talked about. The structural piece, how is it organized structurally? The human resource piece, which is who are the people in this organization? The political piece, which is how do we get the resources to do the job we want this organization to do? And then, the cultural piece, which is the whole undercurrent of how we operate in this organization. And a leader has to understand all four of those pieces, both from a historical perspective and in the current context before you can move your leadership forward into the future.
So far, we’ve talked about what’s happening within the organization, but of course, no organization operates in a vacuum. You are operating in the larger context. You can’t ignore what’s going on at the national level, at the international level that’s impacting education. It impacts the funding. It impacts the public’s understanding and the public’s desire.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. “No Child Left Behind” is this huge external context and pressure point for schools that’s going to impact the way schools organize, the demands they make on the people within schools, the political resources that they gather. So there’s always this interplay between what’s happening in this particular system and then the larger system that it lives in, which is the societal influences, the political influences on a much larger scale.
When we think about creating change in an organization, it often makes people uneasy. Roland Barth once said that the only people that like change are babies and then only when necessary. So people tend to resist change because it’s conflictive for them. It means I have to move from where I am to someplace different. And that’s uncomfortable.
But conflict in an organization is absolutely necessary to move the organization forward. If there was no conflict, there would be no change. And actually, that’s even a myth because there is no staying the way we are because the world around us is changing. And as we relate it to the four pieces that we talked about, any time you want to change a structure, or someone’s job description, or how we gather resources, or we have to cut resources-- which is all too often the case-- it creates tension and conflict. So the leader’s role is how do you productively take the point of conflict and turn it into an opportunity to see the value of where we’re going and how being there is going to be better overall for the goal of the organization than where we are now?
This can all sound overwhelming. There’s so much to think about leading within an organization. So what I often advise people to do is to start small and to go back into their organization with a new set of eyes and to begin to look at things.
For example, how are things interconnected? Look at a decision that the principal makes. Look at a decision that a department head makes. And begin to trace how that decision connects to someone way over there that you hadn’t even anticipated that it would, or how it affects you in the role that you play to try to understand all those connections. To understand how the structure might shift, how it might impact on an individual person in their role, how it might impact on the resources that we get the next time we go up through the budget process. It’s really an awareness, an awakening, to the complexity of an organization. And it’s only by opening your eyes and having that awareness that bit by bit by bit you’ll start to get that aha moment. And you’ll see, oh, I now start to get how all these pieces begin to fit together. And it’s not until you’ve had that aha moment that you can really be an effective leader in an organization and telescope out and look at the whole, not just all of the parts.
So once you’ve had that greater awareness and that moment of aha, I see how things fit together, it’s going to help you know where to start. It’s going to help you know where does my leadership begin to interconnect with this organization? Knowing the history, knowing the complexity, where’s a good entry point for me to begin to make the kind of change and have the kind of impact that I want in the organization? You’ll be able to start proactivel
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
-In this program, Mr. Craig Kupferberg, principal of Findlay High School, explains
the impact of community demographics on student equity. He describes his
vision for social change and discusses the leadership team’s goal to eliminate the
general tracking system. Mr. Kupferberg also discusses the challenges the team
encountered and how the findings of their action research study are guiding
future plans.
The program concludes with his reflections and recommendations to other school
leaders who are in the midst of change.
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: Findlay is a, really, a wonderful place to raise a family.
Findlay just recently was awarded one of the 100 best communities in the United
States of America for youth. Because of the opportunities we have here for
youth.
Some of the culture with Findlay is probably most famous for Marathon Oil
Company. It was founded here by the Donnell family whose name is still very
prevalent here in Findlay. Matter of fact, one of our middle schools and our
football stadium is named after the Donnell family. And the original Donnell
homes are still a centerpiece of the community.
The south end of town, as you go down South Main Street, is some very large,
beautiful restored Victorian homes. As you move out to the east part of town,
you’ll find some very beautiful, large modern homes that are still being developed
out on the east side.
And then more in the central and northern part of Findlay is the part of the
community where it’s more blue-collar worker in a lower socioeconomic families
would be living.
To get a better understanding of our student population, go back to the
description of the homes in the older restored Victorian homes and the newer
homes out east. Those students come from a rather high socioeconomic family
with tremendous support for education. These parents are involved.
We have a lot of booster organizations. We have the traditional athletic and
music boosters. We also have academic boosters that just do a tremendous
amount of legwork and other type of workforce around the building. We have a
parent advisory counsels. We just have a lot of ways for parents to get involved.
At the other end of the scale, with more blue-collar jobs coming into the
community. We’re finding more, or a higher percentage of our students, coming
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 1
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
from a lower socioeconomic type of family. And the support that we receive from
these families sometimes aren’t like the higher socioeconomic. It’s hard to get
these families into the school to even conference with us about their students, let
alone get them to volunteer on booster organizations and get involved in the
school.
As I walk into Findlay High School today compared to when I arrived to Findlay
High School back in 1989, one of the differences that I see in the student
population is a bigger disparity in the student body itself. In that, when I arrived in
1989, the vast majority of the student population came from homes that were
extremely supportive of education. The students were very much involved. And
they still are very much involved.
One of things I feel very strongly about and believe in public education is that it is
for everyone. It’s for every child. And one of things that I’ve observed and
experienced throughout my professional career is people tend to categorize and
try to label people differently. And I think it starts very young.
In the elementary schools, you’ll see students pairing off, even in elementary
schools. I think we continue that throughout our adult life, as well. In that, we for
some reason see a need, even in a community like Findlay, that’s very
homogeneous. To categorize and separate people into different classes or
groups one way or another.
And one of the things that I noticed coming back to Findlay High School. One of
the things that I wanted to challenge is that we had high expectations for all of
our students. The Ohio Graduation Test that has been implemented in Ohio,
even before Nickleby came about, really raised the bar for our student
expectations.
And I was concerned, as the principal of Findlay High School, that our general
classes and our general curriculum expectations for those students were not high
enough to allow our general students to succeed.
Some of the things we did to come about and try to win some of the staff member
and community members over is. I really went about it backwards to begin with.
Because I really just made the decision unilaterally, on my own. After reading the
research and my core beliefs, that the general track wasn’t being successful.
Looking at the data here, and the number of failures that we were having in
general classes. And I just unilaterally said we’re going to change.
Then I started to hear the complaints. And I started to realize no matter what the
research says, and no matter what we do. If we don’t go about this change
appropriately and get people on board, no matter how good the idea is and how
good the change is, it’s going to fail.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 2
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
So I started talking with different people. Matter of fact, one of the people I called
first was the principal who was in this building prior to me, Doctor Kathleen
Crates. She also, well she continues to work in the school district. So she was
very easy to get a hold of. She’s been very supportive of me all along.
To get a little bit of history of how this has gone in the past. If this is something
that she’s tried. And what I learned from talking to her is that this has been talked
about in the past. But there has been a huge amount of dissension on the staff.
That they were talking about eliminating the general track at one time, and she
put a stop to it, because of it.
And at that point, it became very clear to me that we had to slow down the
change process a little bit. And really just started to think about how can we
move forward without creating such a controversy over this. That it couldn’t
succeed. And talked with some of the teachers here that were involved in the
decision. And also talked with some parents, kind of, on my own, informally,
about some things. And came up with the idea of the experimental and control
group.
I sat down with my administrative staff and brought to them the idea of the
experimental and control group and started bouncing ideas off of them. Where
we, as a group, really came up with the structure and idea of how we were going
to work this experiment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
VICKI BRUNN: I’ve been concerned, for the last several years, even when I was
a teacher in the classroom, about our general track here at the high school. It’s
not a track where we have traditionally done a lot of intervention trying to move
these students up to college prep.
It became almost a holding area for kids who were not motivated enough to want
to do school. But just to try to help them get through, especially with the OGT, or
the Ohio Graduation Test coming on. I was very concerned about these kids
being successful and being able to get a diploma. Because I don’t feel that the
general track was preparing them to pass the Ohio Graduation Test.
The discipline problems in the general classes are. It’s probably 75% of our
discipline issues that we have here at the high school, if not higher. Because
when you put a group of students together who are all unmotivated, they really
don’t want to be here. They tend to feed off of each other. And it creates issues
where there wouldn’t be issues, if those students were with students who were
motivated.
So there are several things that we were looking at. And as a freshman principal,
on the front lines, as far as the discipline. I had teachers coming to me almost
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 3
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
daily saying, it’s impossible for me to teach this class. I’m dealing with discipline
the whole period. I don’t have a chance to teach them anything.
And so that was a large concern of mine, also. So we began to look at ways to,
without watering down the curriculum, bringing these kids into a college prep
atmosphere. Keeping the bar high and motivate them to get through the material.
I’ve never been a proponent of tracking any more than absolutely necessary. And
so I want to do interventions with the students who are not getting the work done
and get them to a point where they’re capable of doing the work that they need to
do to graduate.
We just called it a pilot program to do away with a general track. Because we still
have tracking at the high school. We have the honors AP track for advanced
placement students. So if they were getting Cs or lower at middle school, they
would probably think of putting them in a general track.
I then took that list of students who had signed up for the general track and
began phone calls. I would call the parents. And we randomly went with every
fourth student so that we could have a random sample. And I would call. Ask the
parent and ask the student if they would be willing to be part of this pilot project.
But we were concerned about the general track preparing them for the Ohio
Graduation Test. So we wanted to form a class this year. Putting some of our
general students in with our college prep students and see if they were
successful. See if we could help them reach that bar that they would need to, in
order to pass that test.
If the parent declined. And I did have two parents that said they would rather not
because their student was struggling so much at the middle school level. They
were concerned about them being successful. And so at that point, I would go on
to the next student in the list and ask the same questions of that family. Until we
got.
We wanted to have six students in that class. The purpose of that was because
we looked at the ratio of our general students to our college preparation students.
And we wanted to maintain that same ratio in this pilot program. So out of 30
kids, we would generally have six that were general students and then the 24
that were college prep students.
We met with the staff, and we told them that we wanted to do this pilot project.
Gave them the reasons why. We did not tell them who the teachers were going
to be that would receive these general kids into their college prep classes. But
they all were aware that we were doing the project.
At that point, we had to spend time looking at these students and how they were
progressing. And making sure that none of them were struggling and falling
through the cracks. And then as the year progressed, we looked at several
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 4
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
things. We looked at the academics of these students. We looked at the
academics of the college prep students that were in the same pilot group.
BILL BARBAREE: We had general level students in our college prep level
courses. We did not know which students were brought in from the general level
in our courses, there. And they were using data. As far as our test results and our
test scores that we were given throughout the year, as a means to measure
whether or not those general students were able to stay up with the standards of
a college prep level course. That’s the measurement that they were primarily
using.
MANDI CROFT: They looked at mid-term grades. They looked at the exam
grades and compared them to a general level class with all general kids and a
college prep level class with all, what we would call college prep students. And
they looked at the numbers to see what the percentages were and where people
fell with certain grade levels and great ranges. And with that, they saw that the
general kids who were in the CP class were doing a little bit better than the kids
who were just in the general classes.
BILL BARBAREE: Besides the academic part of it, they also looked at behavioral
issues. And they were tracking the number of detentions or behavioral problems
from an all general class compared to a mixed college prep and general class to
see if the social dynamics. If that helped out with the decrease of behavioral
problems that we experience in the classroom.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: I really expected the firestorm to come from my general
students’ parents. That we were putting them in a place that they couldn’t
succeed. And we were setting them up for failure. I really didn’t hear from that
segment of our community.
The segment of our community I heard from were the parents at the college prep
level. They were concerned that these students would be coming into the class
and pulling the expectations down and disrupting the classroom environment. I
was also surprised to hear from some of my staff members. Both staff members
that deal with the more challenging students as well as staff members that deal
with some of our very bright students.
SUSAN DAVIDSON: Tom does very well in school. He’s a bright young man.
And he, at the time, knew for certain that he was going to take honors level math,
which would be algebra two and science. And we were considering whether or
not he should do the honors route, honors track, for the English, which is honors
English, and AP American history.
He’s a very self motivated young man. Very focused. He’s also a perfectionist. So
I guess at that point, my husband and I had concerns that would it be too much if
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 5
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
he would take all honors classes. We believe, of course, academics is very
important. As a teacher here, that’s, of course, a main concern for my own
children and my students.
And so I went to our principal, Craig Kupferberg, having these concerns about
combining college prep and general students in the same class. I see them as
being two diverse groups. These students have different abilities, interests,
needs. Perhaps, we could say goals in life. Different levels of motivation. And so I
was concerned. Because I thought if Tom went that route instead of the honors
AP classes, would he be challenged enough.
In the end, through conversing with different teachers here. Thinking about it.
Looking at the pros and cons of each. Our son went the route of the honors AP
classes. So he had all four honors AP classes last year.
As a parent, I would hope that if a school is considering doing this, combining the
general and college prep classes, I believe it’s very important to get different
perspectives. From the teachers in the school, from parents of the children at the
school, in the community, from students.
Because, I suppose you could say, that research could back up any point of view
you have. Whether you believe the tracking isn’t good, you can find research to
back that up. On the other hand, if you believe that tracking is good, you could
also find research to back that up.
So I believe it’s important to listen to both sides, before a decision is made. And
once that decision is made, whether you agree with it or not, to follow up. Which
they will be doing here at Findlay High School with finding out if it really is
working, of course, which would take time to determine if this new program is
working. But I think it’s important to listen to all viewpoints in order to make a
decision.
BARBARA BORMUTH: This is my 32nd year of teaching. I began my career at a
small county school in Vanlue, Ohio. And then I transferred here. And I have
been a teacher here since 1978. Here we had four tracks. Honors, college prep,
general, basic. I have taught all the levels except honors. I’ve taught
sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
The philosophy of tracking is the idea that you put students who are of a similar
level into a classroom. So the teacher may be able to work one-on-one more
often with them. Be able to address their needs. Because most of them will have
the same needs.
By eliminating the tracking, we lose that perspective. When we put general
students in with college prep students, we are creating a situation where you
have a wider spectrum of student levels to work with.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 6
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
Another concern that I have is the possibility of watering down the curriculum to
meet the needs of these students. I know that we had to change the types of
novels that we taught. We now are going to have students who are very
academically oriented and those who are not.
The driving force behind this change was the Ohio Graduation Test. The
administration was very concerned, as all of us were, about whether or not our
students would be able to pass the parts of that test without having exposure to
college prep material.
The bottom line is we did well. English did very, very well. I believe, 90-some
percent of our students passed the reading. In the upper 80%, passed the
writing. And that was without the changes.
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: One of the things I feel very strongly about in handling
dissentions, is that you really need to make the person understand that you are
listening. That you are trying to hear their side of the issue, as well. And one very
good way is by asking questions of the person. Because then not only are you
hearing, but you’re trying to seek input from the person, as well.
We have some of the more traditional methods for teachers to voice their
dissension or bring ideas to the table. In the faculty advisory council. Through the
union. We have a faculty president that meets with the administration on a
weekly basis. So they have these different ways to communicate and bring ideas
to the table. But I wanted to expand on that.
One of the things that we’ve started here, since I’ve been here, is collaborative
teams. Every Thursday morning, we delay school 15 minutes. We were able to
work that out so that our academic classes are all the same length.
We have a homeroom period that’s 15 minutes in length. So all we really did was
eliminate that. So we give that time to the teachers, as well as an additional half
hour that they had anyway, to meet in collaborative groups that they determine.
And different things that we’re experimenting with. What we called an input
board.
And there’s four quadrants. There’s one for issues. There’s one for questions.
There’s one for concerns. And there’s one for high-fives. And they can
anonymously just put a note up on the input board. And I check it on a daily
basis, if not two or three times a day.
And if I find a new response or a new question on the input board, I’ll take it. I’ll
research it. Find the answer, if I need to. The issue on why fix something that
isn’t broken. I’d like to go back one more year.
The first year that we gave the Ohio Graduation Test in reading and in
mathematics, our scores were not very good. As matter of fact, we were placed
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 7
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
on school improvement. This last year, we had a dramatic improvement. We’re
now classified as an excellent, which is the top rating that you can receive from
the state of Ohio.
I contribute a lot of different factors to that. The first time we took the test it didn’t
count for our students, as far as whether they graduated from high school or not.
They were still on the old Ohio proficiency test. They needed to pass that. That
was part of it. Because the sophomore group last year needed to pass the test, in
order to be able to graduate from high school.
So it was a high stakes test for this last year. But also, a lot what contributed to
that, were the changes that we did make through the collaborative teams and the
common assessments. And some other improvements that we have put in the
building. And the direction that the building was going, with raising expectations.
And I think that this fits in right along with that area.
And when we looked at the very first test, where we didn’t do very well. The
students that were not passing that test were the students, predominately, that
were in our general track. So whether it was because they weren’t motivated to
take the test or it was because curriculum wasn’t lined up. You can argue a lot of
different factors. What matters to me is what our expectations are for the
students. And I think eliminating the general track fits right in with that
expectation.
So if the data shows that we need to eliminate the general track as we move
along that curriculum, we’ll change. It will not be watered down because we’re
moving the general students in, but it will change. It would also change if we kept
the general track. We’re constantly looking at what our literature is going to be.
And constantly making those changes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the things, when I come into our English classes and observe what’s
going on. I see students that are actively participating. You can’t tell which
students are college prep students, which students are general students.
As a matter of fact, when we did our experiments. And one of the teachers
accidentally found out that she was involved in an experiment. She tried to
determine which were college prep and which were general students. And every
time she thought someone was a general student, she wasn’t even correct.
And as I sit around the class and watch our students become actively involved.
Because that is one of the expectations I set for our teachers. Is that I want to
see students actively involved in the lessons. I see them all being actively
involved. And I can’t tell which students would have been general students and
which ones would have been college prep. They come together as a class.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 8
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
VICKI BRUNN: One of the effects that this pilot project has had, which we really
weren’t concerned about at the beginning. But it’s been a real positive experience
for students socioeconomically, also and socially. We tend to have social tracking
here, even though that’s not the intent.
And what we found is the students who are in our general track tend to be lower
socioeconomic students. And what this has done is it’s intermixed those kids in
with the college prep kids, who tend to be from a higher socioeconomic classes.
And it gives them a chance to be together and make friends with each other. And
I think that’s beneficial, also.
Which it also leads to self esteem, as far as not feeling like you can’t do it.
Because you’re in the general track. And you’re in the dumb classes. And
students know that that’s where they are. And then that one of the reasons that
they tend to just give up. And they’re not motivated.
It may not even be that they are thinking about, I don’t want to be here. I don’t
want an education. But I’m in this class because I’m stupid. And I can’t do this.
And so that has taken that barrier away for the students, also.
It’s also impacted the social climate with our staff here at the high school. I think
it’s helped us to work together more closely, as a group. We’ve all always been a
close-knit group, here in the freshman wing. Because we’re a building within a
building. And we have approximately 20 to 25 staff members. And then me, as
the principal in the freshman wing.
And so I like to think that we have a pretty good relationship. But this has even
made it better. We’ve discussed issues like the discipline issues that are coming
out of our general classes and not coming out of this pilot class. And we’ve also
discussed how it’s important not to lower expectations. And it’s been a positive
thing.
We’ve also discussed what’s going to happen if this doesn’t work. Because this is
still in the trial stages. We’re still in our first year as a pilot, with the entire
freshman wing. And so just meeting together and talking about that has created a
collaborative feeling between the staff members and myself.
BILL BARBAREE: I was glad to be part of the pilot. To be honest, I was skeptical
at the beginning. Because going through public education myself, I was in many
classes that were what we would call general classes. Well, non-tracking. And it
seemed like I didn’t get as much out of those classes as I thought I could.
Because the course was watered down or geared towards the middle of the
class, instead of being more challenging.
And then as I took AP courses, and I was more challenged. And was able to
further my education that away. So that was a fear that I had, just from my own
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 9
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
experience. I didn’t want that to happen here at Findlay. I didn’t want the college
prep child to be slighted, either. And having the course be lowered.
But I think, as educators, as long as we maintain our expectations and keep our
requirements higher and our expectations higher, at the course. That I believe
the students will have an opportunity and will rise up to that level of challenge
and expectation.
MANDI CROFT: I’ve seen an impact on the social climate. Just because the kids
that were in the general program and always traveling with those same general
kids. If it was a group that was getting in trouble, that’s what they heard about.
That’s what they knew about. So now they’re also hearing the positive things and
seeing the kids who are involved in sports and other activities.
We do have a negative result of having our classes mixed. And the honors
program and the basic program still being in tact, the way that they were.
Because we had parents who were fearful of a joint class. In our honors classes
skyrocketed. We’ve got kids who probably should be in our general CP class,
which is run as a CP class, instead of the honors program. And there needs to be
some guidelines set, as far as how they get into the honors program.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CRAIG KUPFERBERG: As I look at the social climate around the building this
year, one of things that we really stress with our freshman. As matter of fact, we
bring our freshman in to meet with myself and the freshman principal about a
week into the building.
One of things I really hit on is that they’ve come from different schools. And they
had rivalries in those old schools. But now they’re Findlay High School Trojans.
They’re on the same team. And I even use the example of the movie, The.
Miracle And how they brought all these hockey players from all of these different
colleges together. And they had to learn to play as team, before that they could
win. And how important it is for the students to do that, not only to be successful
as a class but to be successful individually, as well.
And I walk into our English classes, and I see our students. And they’re doing
that. They’re working together. They work in groups. They volunteer answers.
They support one another. They debate issues that they don’t agree on. But they
come together. And they’re working together extremely well.
From here, we’re really still experimenting and taking a look at the data. Where
we are going to go from here is. We’re going to continue taking a look at the data
and see if it supports expanding this program. Last year we took a look at a very
small group. It was one classroom in English and one classroom in social
studies. And we looked to see how successful they are.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 10
Case Scenario: Leading in an Organization
This year we’re going to take a look at the entire freshman class. And see how
successful it is compared to our previous freshman class and their success, as
far as their grades, their discipline, their attendance. And if we see and if the data
points out what I think it will. That this class is being more successful than the
previous classes, when it comes to those three areas. Then we’re going to
expand this program to the sophomores next year.
We’ll continue to look at the data. If it continues to support it, we’ll continue
moving it forward. Probably the best piece of advice I could give anybody came
from a secretary that I met when I first came to Findlay. They were taking me
around the building and introducing me to everybody. And I got back to the
guidance office, and they introduced to the guidance secretary. And she looked
at me. And she just shook her head, and she says I hope you have a good sense
of humor.
And that is so important in the job that we do. We can’t take what people say
personally. We’ve got a keep our sense of humor. We’ve got to make sure we’re
enjoying our job and the people around us are enjoying our job.
We’re working with the most valuable resource, that not only our country have,
but these parents are giving us. They don’t hold the best students back. They are
sending us their children. And it’s the most important, most precious resource
that these parents can have. And they come to us angry. And they come to us
frustrated, sometimes. But it’s an emotional situation. We’re talking about their
kids. And we need to understand that. That they get angry with the situation. It’s
not with us. And we need to work through that and keep our sense of humor. And
love what we’re doing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 11
Organizations and Systems
Organizations and Systems
Program Transcript
NARRATOR: As a leader in education, having knowledge of both systems theory
and change theory will be key in affecting change in your organization. Dr. Nancy
Blair explains these theories and analyzes the structure, politics, and culture of
organizations.
DR. NANCY BLAIR: It’s important for anybody who is interested in leadership to
understand, first, organizations and what makes tick. Typically, when people go
into leadership studies, they think of wherever they’ve been, their context. And
usually, their context is a smaller context, an office or a classroom. And if you
think about leadership in an organization, you have to telescope out from that
and begin to think about the organization as a whole.
There’s been a long history of thinking about organizational development. Then
in the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve had some good thinkers out there that have
helped us understand how organizations are really a system. And therefore, we
have to understand what a system is.
Systems theory is relatively a new concept on the horizon as we think about
organizations. So people like Edward Demming, Peter Senge, and most recently
Margaret Wheatley, have helped us understand how systems work. And the best
way I can explain it to you is to give you an analogy.
If you think about a mobile over a baby’s crib, and you think about all the pieces
that hang down from that mobile to entertain the baby, if you were to come up
and touch one piece of it, what would happen to the mobile? Well, what happens
is that the whole thing starts to move and shift.
And that’s the way it is in a system. Whether it’s a school that is a system, or a
school that is part of the district that is a larger system, when you affect one
piece of it, it’s not just that one piece. That one piece is interconnected to all of
the other pieces. So obviously, if you’re going to be a leader acting on that
system, you need to understand how your one act doesn’t just affect that one
thing. It could affect everything within the system.
Luckily, because of our better understanding of how systems work, we have a
better understanding of how to affect change in an organization. We have a body
of knowledge called change theory that actually goes back to the early works of
Kurt Lewin in the ’50s. But most recently, we have people like Michael Fullan,
who are translating information about the change process into good knowledge
base that we can use as we plan change in our organization.
So for example, if you’re going to initiate a change, you know that there are
things you need to do at the beginning of the change that are practical and
pragmatic to get the organization ready to change. You also know then, as you
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 1
Organizations and Systems
try to implement the change, that there are certain things you need to do to get
the change underway. And most importantly, there are things you need to do as
the change moves on into institutionalization so that the change lasts. It’s really
the implementation of good change theory and research on change that allows
us to take a great idea into action and into something that really has a long
lasting impact in the organization.
So if we have a good systems theory and understanding of how systems work,
and good change theory and understanding of how change occurs in an
organization, and those theories are based on research in the field around what
works, then those theories really should guide our practice. And that’s the benefit
of having them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to
understand what’s going on in an organization. And you don’t have to reinvent
the wheel every time you want to make change. You have a theory that will guide
your practice. And it’s important.
Lee Bolman and Terry Deal wrote a book several years ago called Reframing
Organizations. And what they helped us do was take all of this stuff in
organizations and think about how to categorize it. They came up with four
pieces.
The first is the structural piece of organizations. And that’s where you tend to
think about something called bureaucracy. Organizations are structured uniquely.
You might have a school that is structured very hierarchically with a large urban
district, a large management system, that then puts decisions down at the school
level, and then down at the classroom level.
Understanding the structure of an organization is critical if you’re going to move
that organization forward because it’s that structure that helps us understand how
this place works, how the pieces work and fit together. But the structure alone is
not enough. You have to have other perspectives as well.
So the second one they talk about is the human resource piece. And that’s the
perspective of all the people in the organization. An organization isn’t just
departments and divisions and layers. It’s the people that work within those
departments and divisions and layers.
And this is where we get into that balance of is the organization structured just to
meet the needs of the organization or is the organization also structured to meet
the needs of the human beings within it? So the human resource frame says we
also better pay attention to the people. And we better pay attention to the value
they have in this organization that they can contribute to it. So that’s the second
piece of the puzzle.
That, again, is not enough. There’s a third piece, the political piece. This is an
interesting one. Often, people new in leadership don’t like politics. But if you
aren’t a good politician in a school district, you’re not going to get what you need
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 2
Organizations and Systems
for your organization. Politics is all about how we divide up scarce resources. It’s
how I get the piece of the pie that I need to run my school. How I get the piece of
the budget to run my department, for example. So you not only have to know the
structure and understand the people, but you have to understand the political
climate, so that you can get your hands on the resources to help you accomplish
the goals of the organization.
And then, the last piece they talk about is not quite as concrete. It’s called the
organizational culture. And culture is best described as the way we do things
around here. Every organization is unique. And as you move into an organization
it didn’t just exist in that moment of time when you moved in. It came from a long,
rich history.
And one of the mistakes leaders often make is that they don’t find out about that
history. They don’t honor that history. And they don’t respect that history as they
try to move ahead.
I always tell people that when they go into a leadership of an organization, the
thing they need to do is spend time living in it for a while, talking to people,
listening to people. So in order to move ahead, you have to first look back. You
have to understand the context of that the organization resides in. You have to
understand the culture and where it came from. And you can only do that by
talking with people and really listening to where this organization has been before
you can begin to attempt to understand where this organization needs to go.
Organizational culture is probably the piece that is the hardest to discover, but
may be the most important to understand if you’re going to move an organization
forward.
So it’s important to understand systems, that an organization is an
interconnected system, and that what leaders often want to do is affect change in
the system. But in order to do that, you really have to understand the puzzle that
is the organization.
And that puzzle, then, is made up of the four pieces that we’ve talked about. The
structural piece, how is it organized structurally? The human resource piece,
which is who are the people in this organization? The political piece, which is
how do we get the resources to do the job we want this organization to do? And
then, the cultural piece, which is the whole undercurrent of how we operate in
this organization. And a leader has to understand all four of those pieces, both
from a historical perspective and in the current context before you can move your
leadership forward into the future.
So far, we’ve talked about what’s happening within the organization, but of
course, no organization operates in a vacuum. You are operating in the larger
context. You can’t ignore what’s going on at the national level, at the international
level that’s impacting education. It impacts the funding. It impacts the public’s
understanding and the public’s desire.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 3
Organizations and Systems
“No Child Left Behind” is this huge external context and pressure point for
schools that’s going to impact the way schools organize, the demands they make
on the people within schools, the political resources that they gather. So there’s
always this interplay between what’s happening in this particular system and then
the larger system that it lives in, which is the societal influences, the political
influences on a much larger scale.
When we think about creating change in an organization, it often makes people
uneasy. Roland Barth once said that the only people that like change are babies
and then only when necessary. So people tend to resist change because it’s
conflictive for them. It means I have to move from where I am to someplace
different. And that’s uncomfortable.
But conflict in an organization is absolutely necessary to move the organization
forward. If there was no conflict, there would be no change. And actually, that’s
even a myth because there is no staying the way we are because the world
around us is changing.
And as we relate it to the four pieces that we talked about, any time you want to
change a structure, or someone’s job description, or how we gather resources, or
we have to cut resources-- which is all too often the case-- it creates tension and
conflict. So the leader’s role is how do you productively take the point of conflict
and turn it into an opportunity to see the value of where we’re going and how
being there is going to be better overall for the goal of the organization than
where we are now?
This can all sound overwhelming. There’s so much to think about leading within
an organization. So what I often advise people to do is to start small and to go
back into their organization with a new set of eyes and to begin to look at things.
For example, how are things interconnected? Look at a decision that the principal
makes. Look at a decision that a department head makes. And begin to trace
how that decision connects to someone way over there that you hadn’t even
anticipated that it would, or how it affects you in the role that you play to try to
understand all those connections. To understand how the structure might shift,
how it might impact on an individual person in their role, how it might impact on
the resources that we get the next time we go up through the budget process. It’s
really an awareness, an awakening, to the complexity of an organization.
And it’s only by opening your eyes and having that awareness that bit by bit by bit
you’ll start to get that aha moment. And you’ll see, oh, I now start to get how all
these pieces begin to fit together. And it’s not until you’ve had that aha moment
that you can really be an effective leader in an organization and telescope out
and look at the whole, not just all of the parts.
So once you’ve had that greater awareness and that moment of aha, I see how
things fit together, it’s going to help you know where to start. It’s going to help you
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 4
Organizations and Systems
know where does my leadership begin to interconnect with this organization?
Knowing the history, knowing the complexity, where’s a good entry point for me
to begin to make the kind of change and have the kind of impact that I want in the
organization? You’ll be able to start proactively thinking about change in the
organization, which is quite powerful.
©2015 Laureate Education, Inc. 5