The Consulting BOOM - schools use outside help for their improvements

School Administrator, Feb, 1998 by Donna Harringion-Lueker

"The very first thing you should do is carefully define the work to be done," counsels David Bennett, former superintendent of the St. Paul Public Schools and now a desegregation consultant. "If you're vague, you're asking for problems."

Tom Rodenhauser, editor of Consultants News, agrees. "You've got to describe the scope of the mission and set the terms of engagement. You don't want them to just come in and turn the meter on."

Deciding on measurable results and scheduling time for periodic updates are also essential, he says. Businesses have even begun taking accountability one step farther and ask for contingency billing--that is, rather than paying a straight hourly or per-diem rate, some businesses pay consultants according to the success of the project. If a consultant meets a goal of a 10 percent increase in sales, for example, he or she gets one fee; if not, the fee goes down.

No. 4: Give the consultant your support.

Consultants are adamant on this point. Once you hire them, they say, make sure they have access to all the information they need to do their jobs. ("I've been a lot of places where I've wondered when I left which boxes people didn't let me see," observes one consultant.) And don't hire a consultant to study your schools if you're only going to shelve the results, consultants, counsel.

"It's really a question of leadership," says Bennett. "Without strong leadership from the top, my job is almost impossible."