The Consulting BOOM - schools use outside help for their improvements

School Administrator, Feb, 1998 by Donna Harringion-Lueker

"You just need someone who is not mired down in the day-to-day operations of schools," says Nancy Sulla, a New Jersey-based consultant. "You need someone who can keep the focus on the initiative. ... When you're inside the system, there are just so many mundane things pulling at you."

If they are to be effective, though, outside experts have to approach their roles carefully. In the influential "Rand Change Agent Study 10 Years Later: Macro Perspectives and Micro Realities," issued in 1989, researchers revisited an earlier study in which they concluded that so-called "external change agents" were not successful in promoting lasting innovations in schools precisely because they were outsiders. (The original study looked at four federal programs in the late 1960s and early '70s.)

Ten years after the initial study, the researchers revised their view: Outside change agents could be effective in local efforts to improve practice, they found, provided such consultants adapted their programs to local conditions and modified their advice to "suit the local setting"--something the consultants in the earlier study had failed to do.

A Variety of Roles

Jesse Goodman, a professor of education at Indiana University, offers another caution to consultants hired to bring about change. Writing in the Winter 1994 issue of the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Goodman identifies three roles that change agents play:

* the role of merchant, in which schools identify what teachers need and then hire an expert to provide that information;

* the role of medical examiner, in which an outside expert is called in to diagnose a problem and recommend treatment; and

* the role of informed participant, in which the consultant works closely with teachers, principals and administrators to help them identify problems and possible solutions for their own schools.

For Goodman, the role of informed participant is more in sync with the kinds of bottom-up reforms that many schools are undertaking. But even when a consultant plays this role, challenges remain. For one thing, Goodman wonders whether it's possible for an informed participant to be neutral and objective in his or her advice, allowing teachers and principals to make their own choices about their schools. For another, Goodman says, it isn't clear whether teachers and principals accept a certain course of action because they truly believe it's best for their schools or because they believe the consultant who suggested it has more authority than they do.

Further, Goodman says, there's the question of a consultant's commitment to grassroots reform. Most outside consultants, he says, spend little time in a specific school. The fieldwork he has done, though, indicates that "substantive school reform requires extended periods of time" and substantial commitment from a consultant.

Not a Viable Option

Still others reject the idea of an external change agent out of hand.

"You're basically saying that some person can come in and over a relatively short period of time introduce profound structural changes, and I don't know of any research that supports that view," says Alex Molnar, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.