Team Work?

So I'm reading about two different models (GSTE, SUTE) for implementing change at an organizational level (e.g. school district), and for the most part it's all theoretical. So I found myself trying to make connections to what's going on or has gone on in the past in my own school district. Currently the San Diego Unified School District has a new superintendent, Terry Grier, who is still in his first year. He is the third superintendent we've had since I began teaching. By far the most infamous of the three is Alan Bersin, whose sweeping reforms angered many teachers.

Bersin definitely was shooting for systemic change; there was nothing piecemeal about what he was doing. I had a discussion with my current principal, who was my vice principal during the Bersin era. At the time Bersin took over, overall district test scores were dismal, so the school board hired him to bring about change quickly. "Bersin is a sledgehammer," my principal described. This really goes against these models of change I have been reading about. Both models describe lots of team forming. GSTE describes Starter Teams, Leadership Teams, different levels of Design Teams. SUTE describes Community Forums, Strategic Leadership Team, Cluster Improvement Team, Site Improvement Team. All these TEAMS! Collective effort of teams. These models do seem to be rather lengthy processes, in fact a continuous ongoing process. But the average life span of a superintendent is about three years. That's not a lot of time when you are charged with getting immediate results. Also, one of the necessary conditions for the SUTE model to be successful is "Senior leaders who act on the basis of personal courage, passion, and vision; not on the basis of fear or self-survival." I'm sure that many of our senior leaders do exhibit some of the first three qualities, but since school board members are also elected officials, I'm not sure self-survival can ever truly be removed form the equation.

Another condition for success was "Senior leaders who conceive of their districts as whole systems; not as a collection of individual schools and programs." Bersin was treating the district as a whole system, but this was also one of the things that most angered people. Many of the failing schools had large English Learner populations, so he felt needed longer periods of literacy instruction (to his credit, Bersin did not come up with his ideas all on his own -- he relied on studies and experts). Thus the 3 hour Literacy Block was born and ALL schools in the district were expected to implement it -- even the schools that were high-achieving. I have doubts that an entire district really can be treated the same, any more than a classroom of children can all be taught the same way. Decentralizing the district has actually been suggested recently.

One thing Bersin was very good at was soliciting funds for his programs which included extensive professional development for teachers, which I personally benefited from being a new teacher at the time. Even though test scores did go up, Bersin was constantly criticized for his top-down management style. Curiously enough, Terry Grier is not also starting to receive the same criticism. Grier so far has only made piecemeal changes; their is an emphasis on analyzing student assessment data to direct instruction. Teachers are now saying that they are having to give too many tests. Instructional Leadership Teams is another thing he has put into place. These teams are made up of a teacher from each grade level, which meet together once a month to go over student progress and come up with ways to improve. But since most teachers don't volunteer to be on the ILT, the principal ends up asking the teachers s/he thinks will be willing to do it. Many of the other teachers simply see the ILT as a vehicle for the principal to implement the changes s/he wants to make. Again, top-down. Mostly I think teachers just do not like to be told what to do. This is where all those teams come in to play. The teachers are the major stakeholders in systemic change, and they need to be on board for any change to be successful. But then again, trying to get a room full of teachers to agree on anything can be a formidable task as well.