Creating a Learning System

“Most school districts provide the best education their school systems are designed to produce,” say Paul Ash (superintendent of schools in Lexington, MA) and John D’Auria (president of Teachers21) in this Journal of Staff Development article. What keeps districts from doing better is design limitations. In the same way that a six-year-old cannot run a four-minute mile, an archaically designed school district cannot produce very high levels of student achievement. Ash and D’Auria suggest four keys for high-functioning systems:

• Trust – District leaders can foster this vital ingredient by (a) genuinely caring about teachers’ professional growth and success in the classroom; (b) modeling vulnerability and showing openness to continuous learning; (c) working through conflict to achieve common goals; and (d) showing a willingness to make unpopular political decisions that address student needs. Trust “provides a safety net that supports ongoing experimentation and research,” say Ash and D’Auria. “Trust also increases the system’s capacity to address unanticipated problems and obstacles that arise from the inevitable misunderstanding and conflicts that are part of complex communities… Most importantly, trust provides the psychological safety that educators need to take risks and create ventures that lead to breakthrough ideas.” 

• Collaboration – Professional learning communities within schools are the essential starting point, but teamwork must extend beyond the school, say Ash and D’Auria – to students, other schools, central-office leaders, parents, and the broader educational community via the Internet and social media.

• Capacity-building – Traditional ways of developing talent (hiring and firing, supervision and evaluation, PD) are seldom robust enough to close achievement gaps, say Ash and D’Auria. “In a learning organization, the entire school system must be designed to promote continuous adult learning that is likely to increase student learning.” They suggest forming a K-12 teacher/administrator professional learning committee to conduct a thorough needs assessment, oversee development of in-district courses and multi-day workshops aligned with school and district goals, and support teachers in becoming continuous learners about their own teaching. 

• Leaders at all levels – “To break through the current limitations of schools, administrators need to shift their leadership from ‘I’ to ‘we’ and promote a constant flow of new ideas and inventive thinking from everyone,” say Ash and D’Auria. “In a learning system, everyone can contribute to and advocate for change. Everyone can provide leadership within his or her work group to implement the new plan… In a learning system, everyone can find his or her passion to improve student learning.” Mistakes should be welcomed as learning opportunities and teachers must feel safe to learn, re-learn, and explore new ways of working with students and with each other.

“Blueprint for a Learning System” by Paul Ash and John D’Auria in Journal of Staff Development, June 2013 (Vol. 34, #3, p. 42-46), www.learningforward.org; the authors can be reached at pash@sch.ci.lexington.ma.us and Jdauria@teachers21.org; this article is adapted from their book, School Systems That Learn: Improving Professional Practice, Overcoming Limitations, and Diffusing Innovation (Corwin, 2013). 

From the Marshall Memo #491