With Dr. Mike Jones, Assistant Superintendent, Riverside County Office of Education; and Dawn Walsh, Project Consultant for Riverside County Office of Education’s Special Education Management Services
“I cannot change what you believe, but I can change how you behave.” Mike Jones likes this line. Draconian? You might think so at first. But you don’t have to spend much time talking with Jones and his colleague Dawn Walsh before you start thinking otherwise. Both are administrators at the Riverside County Office of Education. Both are seasoned educators. Both are committed and passionate about improving schools, and both know the importance of effective change.
How to introduce major change to schools and their structures is not a matter of idle speculation these days. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and California’s accountability system are demanding that schools have high standards for all students, regardless of how they’re labeled: gifted and talented, Title I, English language learners, or special education. “It’s a new game now because of accountability and the need to be more effective with all kids,” says Jones. “A teacher can no longer be brilliant in front of the class and, when a student doesn’t get the material, simply say ‘too bad. I gave it my best. You must not have tried hard enough.’”
The new demands being placed on schools represent a huge shift, says Jones. “It’s requiring us to rethink the traditional model of schools where the kid who was having trouble learning was someone else’s problem”—special education’s. This approach, according to Jones, “created in many places a school culture that perpetuates the attitude that students in special ed. can’t handle the general curriculum, that they aren’t capable of academic rigor. Now we need to figure out ways to get students in special ed. proficient—or above—on the state standards.”
And how do you discover those ways? It’s not always easy. And Walsh believes that “attitudes get in the way as much as structures.” She is particularly vocal about the importance of finding a commonly held philosophy if any kind of change is going to happen. She is convinced that if every staff member at a school is able to recognize and embrace the belief that “we are all accountable,” then, in her experience, what needs to happen next becomes evident.
Jones and Walsh both agree that, in the day-to-day workings of a school, the new culture of accountability requires of teachers a new kind of behavior in the classroom. Jones notes that “what principals now look at and evaluate when they go around to classrooms is no longer the teacher and the lesson plans and how brilliantly the teacher performs. At the end of the lesson, at the end of the day, at the end of the student’s tenure at school, the only important thing is how many of the students have learned and how much they have learned. So, when a principal comes around to view a classroom, what he’s looking for is evidence that the teacher is tracking achievement and is focused on the learning of each student. When I go in, I don’t want to see polished lesson plans. I want teachers to tell me how they know their kids are learning.” Jones insists that “the independent, ‘go-it-alone’ teacher is becoming a thing of the past, because taking responsibility for all students in your grade or class requires greater collaboration.”
When asked how he starts to introduce significant changes into a school system, Jones has a ready answer: “With the assumption that all teachers want to be successful and want students to learn. We’re relying on that heart.” And he builds from there. He insists that the key to affecting significant change among teaching staff is to change the structure of the school. “What has worked particularly well for us is the creation of professional learning communities (PLCs). The structure of these requires that every teacher in a school is asked very specific questions: What do we want students to learn; how do we know that they’ve learned it and how do we evaluate the results; and what do we do when they don’t learn and what do we do when they do? And teachers need to work with their entire department and grade level to answer these questions collaboratively.”
As he thinks back over his years of helping schools change, Jones regrets one thing: “We didn’t focus enough on helping principals better understand their system as it exists and why schools are organized the way they are. In order to successfully change, it helps enormously to understand what you’re changing from, as well as what you’re changing to. This historical knowledge provides a strong underpinning for why you’re changing in the first place—both what you’re moving away from and what you’re moving toward. This gives you a better grasp of the reasons for the change, why you’re leaving a model that may have served at one point in time, but that no longer serves. It helps to make a case for change, and it especially helps in sustaining the change. This kind of self-awareness makes a leader stronger and more resolute; it provides a depth and breadth of understanding that allows you to articulate not just why it is you’re supporting the change, but what this new model will look like when you get there. Structural change can take place only after you truly understand both the outcomes that you want and the restraining patterns. Just changing structures without new outcomes based on a compelling vision guarantees that you’ll just reinforce the status quo.”
While change of this magnitude can be “top down” or “bottom up,” Jones insists that schools with the greatest rates of success typically have two characteristics: They exist inside of supportive districts, and they have strong leadership from their principals. He goes on to give an example: “In order to support any kind of collaborative model, time needs to be set aside for training, for coaching, for department or team meetings every week. Class schedules need to be changed. A school also may need help with the bus schedules, with union leadership, sometimes with money. This is all infinitely more manageable if the district supports it.”
Walsh agrees that, for this or similar structural changes to take place, staff members need time: to collaborate, to design systems, and to evaluate results. And they especially need ongoing support. She is particularly passionate in her insistence on mentoring as crucial to any fundamental change. “Given the entirely new direction in how [collaborative models] require teachers to conduct themselves, supports are critical. In our experience, these take the shape of resources that are made available to help mentor people through the process. In the RCAT model [Riverside County Achievement Teams (RCAT) is a project that supports schools in their efforts to increase achievement of all students through a process of staff mentoring.] that we’ve developed, mentors come in to serve as coaches with the content and the ongoing information about current approaches and strategies; and then they help people through the process itself, facilitating them in actually doing things in a new way—not just learning how to do them. Collaboration is not easy, and it’s not simply a matter of sitting around sharing good ideas. It’s much more sophisticated and challenging. Very few people are instinctive, effective collaborators just naturally. Most of us have to learn how to do it in a way that supports everyone—ourselves, other teachers, and, of course, the students.”
There are many great schools in California. And there is always room for improvement. How does a good school get better? Jones believes that it has to do with staying tuned to your “markers”: things like drop-out rates, attendance patterns, grade distribution, ethnic enrollment in AP classes, degrees of student engagement, the number of violent infractions and discipline referrals, and so on. According to him, “You start by identifying markers that are specific to how your system is functioning. Look especially at those things that create barriers and reflect the way your system is not working. Those specific elements will determine where to put your next round of energy. They’re different in every school, and this is why it’s so hard. There’s no rulebook. People have to think creatively and adjust.”
According to Walsh, this “is why the change in philosophy is so important, because that commonly held conviction can guide those next steps. It tells you where to look and how to address whatever it is that is keeping your school from being as effective as it might be. If the commonly held philosophy is the belief that all kids can learn and that every teacher is responsible for every student, then it’s not hard to figure out what to do next if you look carefully at those markers. And when you’re talking about successful schools, it’s that philosophy of access and inclusion and responsibility for every student that builds the internal capacity of people within a system to look at themselves, to look honestly and carefully at the scores, the markers, and the barriers. Teachers can then go on and successfully address how they will make it work for all.”
Initially, both Walsh and Jones admit that the kind of dramatic change they’re talking about is frightening. But they insist that most of the fear and complaints occur only initially. In their experience, most teachers, regardless of age, end up embracing collaborative models of education, in part because they take teachers out of their isolation and give them a system of support. Jones insists that, “Once teachers learn about assessment, collaboration, and shared results, once they are given the real meat of this effort, they learn what it means to be a true professional. And their work becomes much easier.” Jones continues, “When you get people behaving in new ways through PLCs, they have new experiences and get results. The results reinforce changes in attitude, and their attention then often shifts from what’s wrong to what they can do to build on improvements in the future.” When changes in behavior result in positive outcomes, it makes sense that the behavior shapes and strengthens attitudes.
“I cannot change what you believe, but I can change how you behave.” This doesn’t sound at all draconian now. It just sounds smart.
For more about RCAT, go to http://rcat.rcoe.k12.ca.us/rcat_description.html; about PLCs, go to www.allthingsplc.info/.