The Consulting BOOM - schools use outside help for their improvements

School Administrator, Feb, 1998 by Donna Harringion-Lueker

He adds: "It's like going to the doctor when your knee hurts and the doctor says, 'What about your elbow?' The next thing you know, you're on the table with a knife pointing at you.

The dynamics of the marketplace concerns others. Consulting is a difficult business that relies on networking, word-of-mouth and sometimes savvy marketing. Web pages, newsletters, speeches at major education conventions, even a presence on an Internet listserv are ways consultants increase both their visibility and their client base. And having a special niche they can fill, whether it be technology integration, chaos theory or total quality management, is simply a smart business strategy.

Still, some argue, the entrepreneur's need to build a business has flooded the market with niche products and programs that have undermined sound educational practice.

Rodenhauser agrees. Many times consultants develop a product first and then look for clients who will buy it. It's called "the hammer looking for a nail," the newsletter editor says.

Outside or Inside View?

Finally, some observers suggest, the outsider may not bring that different perspective so many schools say they're seeking. "Consultants are hired with an agenda in mind," says Laurence Cohen, executive director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy Studies in Glastonbury, Conn. "And given their need to be hired--and stay hired--their findings can drift toward the conclusion that school districts are looking for." What that results in, Cohen continues, "is year after year of giddy good news."

Many outside experts are also former insiders--superintendents, principals, technology directors and others. And some are wary of the closeness of their connections. "I see it as a form of prostitution," says Tice simply. "They're trading on their past and their connections."

Often, too, some say, the money spent on consultants should instead be directed at the schools themselves. "Consultants come in here and tell us we'd be doing a better job if we used more handouts," says Gary Latman, an English teacher and department chairperson at William Rainey Harper High School, one of the seven high schools to be reconstituted in Chicago. "But the fact is, I can only make 200 copies a month and I see 125 students or more every day."

Latman's alternative: "With the hundreds of thousands [the district's] giving him, hold off and give us a Xerox machine instead."

"There's a value to the in-service we're receiving," he says. "But we have master teachers here. Why not use them?"

It's a question, some say, that schools should always ask first.

Donna Harrington-Lueker is a free-lance education writer based in Newport, R.I.

The Case for Change Agents

It's become an axiom of school reform: To make sweeping changes in a district's practices, it's often necessary to enlist the aid of an outsider. After all, the explanation goes, outside experts come without baggage. They bring new perspectives to a problem and, perhaps most important, they don't have to deal with the crushing weight of administrivia that takes up so much of a school administrator's time.