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| ac | things to avoid | |||
| language is power good schools for everyone making alliances working and learning together finding a focus trying out new ideas how schools are organized how are we doing? opening the school doors  things to avoid |
SCHOOLS OFTEN suffer from a hodgepodge of programs and policies they have adopted as funds or fashion dictate. Under pressure to show results fast, they select and implement a program (or several) from a shelf full of possibilities, sometimes replacing one with another as people change at the top or a new mandate comes along. Such "project-itis" can't be cured with an injection of funds. It's more like a degenerative disease that causes people to forget who they are, what they wanted, and why they are filling out one more form in the office. |
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| These Christmas -tree reforms" may sparkle like shiny ornaments, but they can cause trouble if schools don't exercise caution, and can even prevent teachers from developing and using their own knowledge and expertise. |
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| People in schools experience a feeling of fragmentation when new ideas or policies come at them in disconnected, contradictory, or haphazard fashion. They experience coherence, on the other hand, when all their actions connect to a common vision the school community has developed. |
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| ac | ||||
No matter how appealing a reform program, the Challenge believes, it will not help unless a school community first gathers information, thinks through its experience together, identifies the specific problems to which change is the answer, and comes up with a plan that all agree to help with. * HISTORICALLY SPEAKING: The ""school improvement"' wave of the 1960s and early 1970s shared many goals with today's Challenge, but it was driven more by policies issued from above, and less by local attempts by school people to come to their own understanding and action. |
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