Systemic learning and acting: an up-close observer finds a Maryland school district behaving as if it were a system

School Administrator, May, 2003 by Lew Rhodes

I had gone to bed frustrated ... and woke up thinking of elephants.

That's not surprising because elephants are my favorite metaphor--both for the continuing presence we can't see, as in the ancient Sufi parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant," and for the presence we choose not to see, as in the "elephant on the dining room table" that has been there so long that everyone ignores it, even though they must continually work around it.

That night I fell asleep more frustrated than usual with what was happening to schools and the people I knew in them.

First, an old friend was moving on from (or out of) the superintendency of a major school district. I guess from his occasionally glazed eyes I should have seen it coming. (I had seen this look in others when their internal commitment to make a difference was confronted by continuously disempowering systemic pushback from all sides of the elephant-like "system" for which they were accountable.)

Compounding my distress was that my work over the years had revealed the frustrations of not only education's s frontline practitioners, but also those who for several decades have been helping them from the outside: foundations, government agencies and business groups. Now all the major foundations were threatening to get out of the systemic change business and leave the elephant at the center of the dining room table for someone else to deal with.

While many of their efforts to improve education were considered successful in the short-term, none had created sustained differences. School systems had been unable to integrate proven, effective ways of working into the daily business of schooling. And, most seriously, the foundations did not really know why.

Based on their present beliefs about the nature of schooling, their search for understanding how to apply their resources more effectively led them to conclude two things:

* The district as unit-of-change is too large and complex. For some frontline practitioners and outsiders this meant focus resources on

smaller units such as buildings where they at least could see some differences ... even if their experience told them changes couldn't be sustained for long.

* A connection seems to exist between the superintendent's role and the sustainability of improvements in the school system's work. Noting that most of their funded efforts withered away when superintendents changed, some began to protect their investments by reserving the right to halt funding if top leadership turned over.

Accountable for Learning

Even more frustrating was the fact that four years earlier I had taken note of a large school district that was having unexpected successes. Outside observers described these successes as "unusual," even as "miracles" because of their broad systemwide scope and relatively short time to bring about in such a large, complex school system. Some of those same foundations and reform groups even sent researchers to poke and probe the whats and the hows of particular changes.

I observed from a unique inside-outside vantage point this large urban school district, with most of the learning and teaching problems of other major school districts, acting as if it knew something the other districts did not. This was the Montgomery County, Md., Public Schools, and as a district it was addressing the seemingly intractable cultural conditions others blamed for the failures of systemic change. Educators in this district were performing as if a disconnect between future visions and current system wide practice did not have to exist.

If I applied today's accountability logic model to this school system's performance-the notions that performance is the result of learning and learning is the product of teaching-I had been observing a learning organization. Society expects and wants effective teaching for all children, not just some. Judging by their systemic performance and actions that would affect all children, this school system was getting smarter at a faster rate than I had ever experienced. Why and how were so many people within this community and school district getting so smart so fast? Was there a connection between the ways the organization and the individuals in it were learning?

If organizational actions that influence all children are the measure of organizational learning, then who and what was the teacher?

And what was it that those seeking the secret of this district's systemic learning and acting could not see and therefore did not understand about the fundamental nature of this learner, the school system? Apparently, the scope and nature of this district's performance was so outside the box of accepted belief about what is possible-and therefore can be expected from school districts- that it couldn't be seen.

By using educational research developed from documenting the whats and the hows of isolated changes to discover what made the district different, reformers and researchers were missing what made them the same: the context of district actions that answered the larger question-why?