High-Performance, Low Fault-Tolerant Schools

1. High-Performance, Low Fault-Tolerant Schools Ensuring Quality Education for All Students Developed by David T. Conley Julie Alonzo University of Oregon

2. By the end of today’s class, you should: • Understand how administrators can improve the effectiveness of their schools by applying lessons from high reliability organizations, fostering the development of their schools as learning organizations, and acting as transformational leaders. • Be able to identify, explain, and apply the qualities of high performance schools and contrast these qualities with those of more traditional maintenance-oriented schools. • Know where to look for additional information on the key areas covered in today’s lecture.

3. What is the administrator’s role? Your knowledge and skills will determine how effective you are as a school leader. Leithwood, Jantzi, and Steinbach (1999) identified 16 qualities important for educational leaders to possess.

4. Essential Leadership Qualities • Appropriate problem interpretation skills • Skill in collaborative goal development • Value knowledge and role responsibility • Ability to anticipate obstacles and constraints • View obstacles as minor impediments rather than failure • Ability to learn and build on the perceptions of teachers • Flexibility in dealing with constraints • Skill in group process • Open to new information • Ability to keep groups focused

5. Essential Leadership Qualities (cont.) • Remembering to check for consensus • Commitment to planning follow-up for group discussion • Confidence • Strong, reflective disposition • Ability to learn from experience • Use of humor in tense situations --Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D. & Steinbach, R. (1999). Changing Leadership for Changing Times. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

6. Contextual Factors That Support Organizational Learning • Structures for collaboration • Time • Personnel • Funds • Support for professional development • Performance standards and expectations • A culture of caring and support in all classrooms and the school as a whole

7. Contextual Factors for Organizational Learning (cont.) • Outside networks, resources, and community services • District and state support of local efforts • Support for site-based management • A clear and consistent focus on student learning outcomes as opposed to models primarily concerned with efficiency • Offering high-quality professional development opportunities --Cibulka, J., Coursey, S., Nakayama, M., Frice, J., & Stewart, S. (2000). Schools as learning organizations: A review of the literature. The Creation of High Performance Schools Through Organizational and Individual Learning. Washington, DC: National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching.

8. High-Performance School Consistent use of data to inform decision making. Concentrated effort to ensure that all students are learning. All staff dedicated to the mission of educating all students. Student learning drives decisions about curriculum, instruction, scheduling, resource allocation, etc. Maintenance-Oriented School Decisions are made based on tradition and/or to appease special interest groups. Focus on discipline and activities, sometimes at the expense of academic learning. Staff take responsibility only for the students specifically assigned to them. A certain amount of failure is expected and accepted. High-Performance versus Maintenance-Oriented Schools

9. High-Performance School Stakeholders (parents, students, community members) are meaningfully involved; they contribute to decisions and provide regular feedback about ways to improve the school. The ‘best’ teachers work with the students most in need of intensive instruction. Additional help (volunteers, peer tutors, etc.) is sought for students who need it. Maintenance-Oriented School Stakeholders hold token positions on committees and Site Councils, but these groups have little or no effect on decisions at the school. The ‘best’ teachers work with the most advanced students. Students who struggle in school continue to fall further behind their peers every year; if staff meets about them, the meetings focus on discipline rather than academics. High-Performance versus Maintenance-Oriented Schools

10. How do you move a school from being maintenance-oriented to focusing on high-performance? If recent high school graduates working on Navy aircraft carriers can safely land a plane every 45 to 60 seconds in high seas on slippery flight decks where mistakes mean almost sure death, shouldn’t we be able to more reliably provide quality learning for all students?

11. Qualities of High Reliability Organizations • Preoccupation with failure • Reluctance to simplify • Sensitivity to operations • Commitment to resilience • Deference to expertise --Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

12. Preoccupation with Failure • In HROs: The study of failures and small warnings that not everything is progressing as hoped is a regularly scheduled and highly valued part of ‘business as usual.’ • School application: Regular staff meetings are called to examine the cases of students who are not progressing as quickly as they should be. Staff members are rewarded (praise, recognition) for bringing the needs of particular students who might benefit from a concerted effort on the part of the staff to the group’s attention.

13. Reluctance to Simplify • In HROs: Leaders take deliberate steps to create more complex understandings of the context in which they operate. These complex understandings help HROs manage for the unexpected. • School application: If a student is not making sufficient progress in reading, staff try to understand the ‘big picture’ behind this failure to learn adequately. They involve people with diverse perspectives (including parents and support staff) and avoid simplistic explanations. As a result, the possible solutions they suggest have a greater likelihood of meeting the student’s needs.

14. Sensitivity to Operations • In HROs: Leaders maintain close contact with ‘front line’ workers, encouraging them to report potential problems and speak up when they see issues that need to be addressed. There is a focus on maintaining positive relationships throughout the organization and fostering a feeling of trust and partnership. • School application: Support staff can share insights with administration that might provide the key to improving parts of the educational program or better meeting the needs of particular groups of students.

15. Commitment to Resilience • In HROs: Leaders develop capabilities to detect, contain, and rebound from the inevitable errors that occur. They understand the need to have a deep knowledge of the system, the workers, and ways to work around problems rather than be incapacitated by them. • School application: When progress monitoring data indicate that a particular teacher is having difficulty with a group of students, the principal might mobilize another teacher with expertise in this area to serve as a mentor while at the same time investigating other ways to meet the teacher’s needs.

16. Deference to Expertise • In HROs: Decisions are made by the people with most expertise--regardless of rank--in a fluid manner, depending on context. • School application: School reading specialists--those with a track record of improving student reading performance, not simply a degree--provide instruction to other staff members on key components of reading instruction. They, rather than district personnel, make decisions about curriculum and instruction appropriate at the site.

17. You are now going to read a case study and apply the information you have learned from the readings and this lecture to a fictitious school setting. Read the case study on your own. Work with a partner to analyze the components of high-performance, low fault-tolerant organizations you see in the case study.