Best Practices to Next Practices: A Different Kind of Thinking

Ray McNulty, President

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Best Practices to Next Practices:A Different Kind of Thinking

Raymond J. McNultyPresident

International Center for Leadership in EducationFebruary, 2011

Setting the stage for the content of this webinar…..

The Boston Globe

Ray, reading the paper on your “Kindle” or online just

isn’t the same!

Almost everyone wants schools to be better,

but almost no one wants them to be different.

Teacher – Student Comparisons

T – I make learning exciting for my students.

86%

S – My teachers make learning fun.

41%

“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we (you) are creating. The paths are not found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”

-John Schaar

WE all need to become the AGENTS of change.

The Horse

The Automobile

First different then better.

Henry Ford quote…

• “If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

Current System

Something Different

Transformation # 1• Leadership today requires a balance of

traditional skills mixed with innovation skills

• Stability, control and standardization mixed with uncertainty, ambiguity and disruptive thinking

Transformation # 2• Making a better 20th Century School is not

the answer

• It is about becoming different not just better

• Using researched based best practices important, but for true transformation you need a mixture of BEST and NEXT practices.

• 70 – 30 or 80 - 20

Transformation # 3• Collaboration is essential for success today

• Cooperation won’t get you the results you need

• Collaboration is mutual engagement to solve the challenge (21st Century)

• Cooperation is a division of labor approach (20th Century)

So what’s stopping us?

How do we get ahead?

THEMES• Change

• Strategic Plan and Strategy

• Empowerment

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

• Closing Thoughts

THEME• Change

• Why is it so hard to change?

Mental Locks

• We don’t need to be creative for most of what we do (driving, shopping, business of living). So staying on routine thought paths enables us to do many things without having to think about it.

Why is it so hard to change?

• The more successful a system is, the more difficult it is to recognize when it must change. By example, market leaders are the last ones to transform.

• The American Education System, “The market leader during the industrial era!”

Market Leader Thinking• Dominant logic: “That’s the way we do

things here.”

• The Right Answer

The Second Right Answer

• What is the answer?

• What are the answers?

• The Right Answer

• That’s not logical

• SOFT • HARD

• Logic• Dream• Reason• Precision• Humor• Consistency• Ambiguity• Play• Work• Approximate

• Focused• Fantasy• Reality• Diffuse• Analysis• Hunch• Generalization• Specifics• Child• Adult

• SOFT• Dream• Humor• Ambiguity• Play• Approximate• Fantasy• Diffuse• Hunch• Generalization• Child

• HARD• Logic• Reason• Precision• Consistency• Work• Reality• Focused• Analysis• Specific• Adult

• SOFT

• Shades of gray

• Hard to pick up

• Many answers

• Flood light, diffused

• HARD

• Black and white

• Easy to pick up

• Right answer

• Focused like a spot light

Cat - Refrigerator

THEME• Strategic Plan and Strategy

Just because you have the word strategic in your plan, it doesn’t mean you have a strategy.

The work becomes more difficult.

• Education improvement is a process of uncovering and solving progressively more difficult challenges around student learning

(low hanging fruit theory)

This requires new learning from the adults.

Detecting improvement

• Changes in student performance lag behind changes in the quality of instructional practices. Changes in the classrooms are visible before you see them in external measures.

Strategic Planning v. Strategy

• Strategic plans are designed around large numbers of goals and initiatives. (usually too many)

• Strategy is a set of actions an organization chooses to pursue in order to achieve its objectives.

Strategic Planning v. Strategy

• Strategic planning is intended to be the vehicle for developing strategy.

• Strategy is about filtering the noise in these complex systems and deciding what must be done on behalf of the students and learning.

Strategic Plan -- -- Strategy

• Takes a broad incremental approach

• Includes discrete, unrelated initiatives

• Addresses an external audience

• Focuses on doing a few things well

• Integrates a few key initiatives

• Addresses an internal audience

THEME• Empowerment

We live in a world obsessed with science, predictability and control.

Some people believe if we can’t measure something, it must not count!

We must consider the possibility that if we can’t purely measure something, it might be the very most important thing!

Talking with kids…

It’s not us against them!

CULTURE DRIVES STRATEGY

THEME

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

AYP

Research Based Successful PracticesTight Tight

Critical PointRemain Tight TightEmpowerTight Loose

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing a little better.

Best Practices

• Research Based

• Replication

• 70 to 80 % of all activity should be

“Research Based Best Practice”

NEXT PRACTICES

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing a little better,

while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never

done before.

AYP

AYP

AYP

College and Career Readiness Defined• Cognitive strategies: Intellectual openness; inquisitiveness;

analysis; interpretation; precision and accuracy; problem solving; and reasoning, argumentation, and proof.

• Content knowledge: Understanding the structures and large organizing concepts of the academic disciplines, resting upon strong research and writing abilities.

• Academic behaviors: Self-management, time management, strategic study skills, accurate perceptions of one’s true performance, persistence, ability to utilize study groups, self-awareness, self-control, and intentionality.

• Contextual skills and knowledge: Facility with application and financial-aid processes and the ability to acculturate to college.

David Conley

Common Core State Standards• In ELA… literacy will be a shared responsibility• In ELA… students will read more complex text• In ELA… more informational text will be read• In ELA… more writing and research• In ELA… speaking and listening

• In Math… focus on conceptual understanding• In Math… more modeling of math in real world

Expertise (the way we do things around here) can sometimes be a road block to problem solving and the development of “Next Practices”.

System Innovation

Sustaining Innovation

Next Practice

Disruptive Innovation

Marshmallow Challenge

NEXT PRACTICE THINKING

• The Iterative Process

• Versions

• Create a disciplined, managed space for development of new ways to accomplish difficult tasks

THEME• Closing Thoughts

ADULT LEARNING

TEXAS STORY

We can rationalize the failures of the past -----

or we can learn from them.

We can complain about the troubling inadequacies of the present ----

or we can face them.

We can talk and dream about educating our children for the future ---

OR TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT!

That takes having educators developing next practices that will lead us to “new and different” best practices.

Q & A with Ray McNulty

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For more information www.LeaderEd.com

19th Annual Model Schools Conference

From Theory to Reality:

Creating the Schools We Need Now

NASHVILLE

June

26-29

2011www.modelschoolsconference.com

International Center for Leadership in Education is honored to collaborate with NASSP

to support and empower school leaders.

Join Bill Daggett, Ray McNulty, ICLE senior consultants

and other national education leaders at

The NASSP Annual ConferenceFebruary 24-27San Francisco

http://www.nasspconference.org/

Join NASSP executive leadership and Breaking Ranks® schools for the

official launch of:

Breaking Ranks®A Comprehensive Framework for

School Improvement

19th Annual Model Schools Conference

June 26-29, Nashvillewww.modelschoolsconference.com

Breaking Ranks® is owned by NASSP

Best Practices to Next Practices:A Different Kind of Thinking

Raymond J. McNultyPresident

International Center for Leadership in EducationFebruary, 2011