Changing Schools from the Ground Up

Partnering with HGSE's Change Leadership Group [caption id="attachment_8994" align="alignleft" width="185" caption="Meehan Professor Robert Kegan, one of the codirectors of the Change Leadership Group (© 2003 Andrew Brilliant)"] [/caption] Superintendent Michael Ward, C.A.S.'93, never imagined that he was keeping his good schools in West Clermont, Ohio, from becoming great. After all, achievement-test scores and graduation rates in the middle-class suburb were already surpassing state averages. But Ward, along with other school administrators in West Clermont, longed for more than just high scores or good attendance. "We wanted to create schools where the learning is so engaging that students don't want to leave at the end of the day," he says. The goal of transforming their schools led Ward and Assistant Superintendent Mary Ellen Steele-Pierce to HGSE's Change Leadership Group (CLG). They learned about CLG's "ecological" change model, a professional development program that simultaneously addresses issues of school culture, professional competencies, and work conditions. But, what is more, says Meehan Professor and CLG codirector Robert Kegan, the school leaders began to see that they would have to reinvent their own roles before they could reinvent their schools.

“We wanted to create schools where the learning is engaging that students don't want to leave at the end of the day.”

An Ambitious Agenda for School Reform In partnership with CLG, the West Clermont team came to recognize that an effective and sustainable reform plan could come about only if it was initiated by those doing the school's work at the ground level, namely, teachers and administrative staff. "After years in the superintendent's office, it was a tremendous challenge to let go and give traditional leadership duties over to the staff," Ward says. "What we learned had to change most was us, as leaders." With the help of teachers and principals, Ward and Steele-Pierce led the district to identify two core reform goals: fostering a vigorous academic setting and ensuring that every student is known well by at least one adult. The group then assembled teams of teachers to investigate new ideas and practices in school design and to formulate an ambitious agenda for school reform. "For the first time, teachers took charge of inventing their schools' scope and mission," says CLG codirector Tony Wagner. "As you can imagine, this dramatically increased the teachers' investment in their schools' success." Encouraged by its work with the West Clermont schools, CLG has now turned its attention and effort toward creating a new leadership role in America's public schools. "The organization-wide 'change coach' will be a senior administrator who serves as the day-to-day driver of districtwide change," explains Kegan. Last fall, 16 budding change coaches from school districts across the country embarked on a two-year training program to learn how to implement CLG's strategies. The pioneering program combines face-to-face and distance-learning techniques and draws on CLG's experiences in West Clermont and in a second district in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that is working to reverse high dropout rates, raise flagging test scores, and make the best possible use of dwindling resources. The CLG team will guide change coaches as they forge their new roles. Going forward, CLG plans to follow each participating district's progress years into the future, evaluating how the change-coach model affects school culture and student achievement. "We are teaching the change coaches, but at the same time they are teaching us," says Kegan. "Together, we are working out the nature of this new professional role." About the Article A version of this article originally appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For More Information More information about Robert Kegan is available in the Faculty Profiles.