There are some terrific school restructuring efforts going on across the country, but whenever you find radical change, you're likely to find someone trying to sabotage it. This is only natural because many people hate change and will do almost anything to avoid it.
I encountered an excellent example of this phenomenon soon after New York City teachers got collective bargaining and we signed our first contract. I started getting calls from parents who said that they had tried in vain to set up meetings with their kids' teachers. The principals, they said, informed them that these meetings were not allowed by the new contract. Of course, there was nothing of the sort in the contract. But the principals, who were annoyed at having to deal with teachers in a new way, were engaging in a little freelance sabotage.
This was many years ago and it's an extreme case, but you'll find examples of it any time people are courageous enough to try making a big change. And maybe this principle explains some of the problems people in Los Angeles are having with school restructuring.
It was just last year that LA' s 800 schools started their restructuring effort with shared decision making in school councils composed of parents, teachers and school principals. But the ink was hardly dry on the contract when there was talk of evaluating the school councils' success. A little premature? That's what Helen Bernstein, the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, told the school board president. She was assured that the study would be limited to base-line data collecting -- evaluation or recommendations would be premature -- and available only to the school board.
So imagine the surprise of the people involved in the school councils when they turned on the TV news last month and found out that restructuring in the LA schools was a mess. The commentator knew this because he'd read the confidential report. So had reporters for local and national newspapers. And before any of the people in the schools had seen this report, headlines seen around the country proclaimed that school restructuring in LA was in trouble: "Board Report Shakes Confidence in Program" (Washington Post); "Report Cites Trouble in Plan" (Los Angeles Times); " Report Raps Shared-Decisionmaking Effort in Los Angeles" (Education Week).
The people who had been working to make a success of school councils and shared decision making felt shaken and betrayed by the way that a collection of data gathered for school board members turned out to be such a full-scale "evaluation" for all the world but them to see. Was it sabotage? Stupidity? In any case, it was a rotten move.
Preliminary data can be a help in assessing early successes and problems, but it's absurd to draw conclusions about a different enterprise like school restructuring when it has barely started. Everyone who's ever put in a new kitchen knows all about this. For awhile things get worse than they ever were in your old kitchen. It's like living in chaos. And if, in the middle of the process you were to invite somebody to evaluate the success of your kitchen remodeling, you know what he'd say: "Look at the mess. It was better before."
Any major company trying to bring about a change in its culture will tell you that it takes at least 10 years. And they'll tell you, too, that you can't go around evaluating something that has barely started because that's a good way of ruining nay chance that it will work. It's hard enough to get people to take risks and to devote time and energy to change. And something like the LA report is a quick and dirty way to squelch these qualities.
Was there anything to be learned from the school board report? The researchers' methods were unbelievably sloppy, and you couldn't miss their bias in favor of the principals ( or against the teachers). But what they discovered is not very surprising: Principals, like other human beings, are resistant to change. Having become more accustomed to unilateral power, they are uncomfortable about sharing it with parents and teachers. And they clearly think shared decision making should be redefined to give principals the last (and perhaps the first) word in running the schools.
The school board researchers obviously heard a lot of complaints -- the same kind they would have heard in a business that had just gotten rid of middle management or otherwise reorganized. But complaints are not necessarily a sign that a radical change is not going to work -- just that it's painful. So it's odd that instead of considering them evidence of resistance to change, the researchers accepted these complaints as solutions.
School restructuring in LA is making some people very unhappy. The principals evidently feel nervous and put upon. And some of the teachers are probably wondering what's the point. Is the school board sending them some kind of message with this report? Are they dumb to go on trying?
The LA school board made a wise move when they committed to restructuring. Nobody said it would be easy. Or quick. Everybody knew it would require patience and trust -- and both these virtues have been violated. But if we can't expect the school board to put Humpty Dumpty together again, the least they can do is turn him into an omelette.