Paradigm Lost: Reclaiming America's Educational Future.

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 420 116 EA 029 092

AUTHOR Spady, William G.

TITLE Paradigm Lost: Reclaiming America's Educational Future.

INSTITUTION American Association of School Administrators, Arlington,

VA.

ISBN

ISBN-0-87652-232-0

PUB DATE

1998-00-00

NOTE 168p.; Foreword by Paul D. Houston.

AVAILABLE FROM AASA Distribution Center, 1801 N. Moore St., Arlington, VA

22209 (Item No. 236-001; $24.95, nonmember; $19.95, member;

$4.50 postage and handling; quantity discounts).

PUB TYPE

Books (010) Reports Descriptive (141)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS *Educational Attitudes; Educational Change; Educational

Innovation; *Educational Strategies; Elementary Secondary

Education; *Empowerment; Models

IDENTIFIERS Paradigmatic Responses

ABSTRACT

The ways in which a paradigm of empowerment can be adopted

in schools are explored in this book. The book is divided into two

sections--the importance of being a paradigm pioneer and the Future

Empowerment Paradigm--and focuses on four points: (1) The systemic inertia

that keeps schools tied to a familiar, comfortable, unproductive, and

self-reinforcing legacy of old practices and structures; (2) the history and

defining elements of the Future Empowerment Paradigm of educational reform

that was driven underground in the early 1990s; (3) the major losses

educators have suffered as individuals, as a profession, and as an

institution because of the lost paradigm; and (4) what local educational

leaders can do to establish the learning success and life performance

elements of the Future Empowerment Paradigm. The chapters focus on the power

of paradigms, the lost ideal of education, how to establish an empowering

learning community, how to design student empowerment outcomes, and how to

chart a course toward future empowerment. (Contains 34 references.) (RJM)

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PARADIGM LOST

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' I

PARADIGM LOST

Reclaiming America's Educational Future

WILLIAM C. SPAR

LEADERSHIP

FORFOR LEARNING

American Association of School Administrators

1801 N. Moore St.

Arlington, VA 22209

(703) 528-0800

http: / /www.aasa.org

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,

recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in

writing from the American Association of School Administrators.

Executive Director, Paul D. Houston

Deputy Executive Director, E. Joseph Schneider

Editor, Ginger R. O'Neil, GRO Communications

Copy Editor, Liz Griffin

Designer, Vanessa Spady

Printed in the United States of America.

AASA Stock Number: 236-001

ISBN: 0-87652-232-0

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 97-74947

To order additional copies, call AASA's Order Fulfillment Department at

1-888-782-2272 (PUB-AASA)

or, in Maryland, call 1-301-617-7802.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to five close friends and colleagues who

shared my vision for America's schools, stood by me during my most

discouraging hours, inspired and challenged my thinking, and

provided deep and joyful connection in all aspects of my life.

Ronald Brandt

Arnold Burron

Charles Schwahn

Karolyn Snyder

Bruce Wenger

William Spady

PARADIGM LOST

Reclaiming America's Educational Future

Acknowledgments

vii

Foreword

Prefaces

Section I: The Importance of Being a Paradigm Pioneer

The Power of Paradigms 1

The Paradigm We Lost

What Went Wrong

Assessing Our Loss 55

Personal Consequences and Insights 75

Section II: The Future Empowerment Paradigm

Establishing the Bases of an Empowering Learning Community . . .97

Charting Your Course Toward Future Empowerment 113

Designing Empowering Student Outcomes 127

Aligning an Empowering Instructional System 143

Bibliography

155

About the Author

158

PARADIGM LOST

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The encouragement and direct assistance of many friends and col-

leagues led to the ultimate development and production of this book.

First, I want to deeply thank AASA's key administrators, Paul Houston

and Joe Schneider, for their understanding of the many dilemmas facing

public education today and for their courage and willingness to sponsor

this endeavor. Without their initial encouragement and continuing sup-

port, it is highly unlikely that I would have written Paradigm Lost. I

hope that its substance does justice to their confidence in me.

Second, I am deeply indebted to a host of friends and family members who

took the time to scrutinize the multiple drafts of this manuscript. Their

candid and perceptive views of its accuracy, readability, fluency, and rel-

evance helped me enormously. Chaim Adler, Ron Brandt, Arni Burron,

Karen and Larry Gallio, Kandace Laass, Chuck Schwahn, Sha Spady,

and Bruce Wenger get gold stars and deep gratitude for their extremely

helpful comments at all stages of this work. Without Arni's insights and

feedback from "The Right," and his enormous support and encourage-

ment during my darkest hours, this book wouldn't have happened.

Third, the extraordinary collaboration I have had with Chuck Schwahn

over the past dozen years has contributed immeasurably to my growth

and success as a professional. He has never wavered in his exceptional

devotion to quality, honesty, and professionalism, and he has been the

consummate contributor always managing an inspiring level of new

ideas, constructive criticism, insightful advice, and deep affection. His

influence on this work has been profound.

Finally, one could not hope to find a better editor than Ginger O'Neil.

Ginger offered the perfect balance between insightful critic, informed

expert, and enthusiastic supporter. Her warmth, openness to novel pos-

sibilities, and win-win orientation made writing and rewriting incredibly

easy. Thanks also to Vanessa Spady. She always brought her original

and highly professional touch to her Dad's most commonplace ideas

about the layout of diagrams and figures. Deepest thanks to both.

PARADIGM LOST

vii

FOREWORD

Much of Bill Spady's life's work has involved going out on a limb. While

that's a dangerous place to be, it's also where one finds the sweetest fruit.

In Paradigm Lost, Bill once again forges into new territory by attempting to

pull together the key pieces related to educational improvement for educa-

tors. The result is a book that every educator and board member should

read and take to heart. Paradigm Lost portrays a unique, rich, and pene-

trating picture of four key things:

The systemic inertia that keeps our schools tied to a familiar, comfort-

able, unproductive, and self-reinforcing legacy of old practices and

structures that resists all attempts at systemic change;

The history and defining elements of a powerful Future Empowerment

paradigm of educational reform that America was on the verge of

embracing until we let the forces of reaction drive it underground in

the early 1990s;

The major losses we have suffered as individuals, as a profession, and

as an institution because of the lost paradigm; and

What local educational leaders can strategically do to establish the

learning success and life performance elements of this badly needed

Future Empowerment paradigm in their communities.

This is more than a lament about the loss of outcome-based education by

the man who is universally regarded as the concept's leading advocate. Bill

Spady gives us an extremely comprehensive, insightful, and personal look

at the much larger picture of major educational reform over the past

quarter century; the key ideas and players that challenged our "Iceberg

Paradigm" of schooling and defined the push for greater learning success

in all of America's schools; the issues underlying the attacks we have

experienced for the past several years on virtually everything remotely

connected to learning outcomes for students; and a powerful and practical

set of future-focused strategic design and strategic alignment tools that

local districts can use to get their schools and communities on the road to

genuine future empowerment.

I challenge those who think they've been there and done that with either

OBE, curriculum reform, or performance assessment to tackle the double

paradigm shift described in Chapter 2. At its core is Spady's unique insight

about the educentric perspective that we educators all share, a perspective

PARADIGM LOST

that results in all of our attempts to reform and improve schools starting

with the way schools are (and how they've always been) the

essence of

educentrism instead of with a clear picture of the future

our students

face and must shape. As the saying goes, "If

you always do what you've

always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten." But if

we would

start with the future, Spady compellingly argues in Chapters 7, 8, and 9,

we'd never invent the kinds of learning systems

we have inherited from

past generations and seem determined to preserve.

Not surprisingly, then, Paradigm Lost is filled with powerful and practical

insights about the systemic nature of schools and the beliefs and

assump-

tions on which they operate; the conditions of

success that must be

enhanced to ensure greater learning success for

our students; the fears and

motivations of those who attack progressive reforms; the status of various

local, state, and national reform efforts today; and most of all insights

about what local leaders can do to establish true learning communities

based on future-focused thinking, planning, curriculum design, instruction,

assessment, and improvement strategies in their schools.

Paradigm Lost is a great gift to education leaders from

a man who has

risen above professional and personal loss and stigmatization in

recent

years to give us a masterful portrayal of an educational future we should be

proud as leaders to reclaim and even prouder to achieve.

Paul D. Houston

Executive Director

American Association of School Administrators

PARADIGM LOST

PREFACES

"This man has been described as a socialist, a communist, a globalist, a

one-worlder, a new-ager; as anti-Christian, anti-traditional values, anti-

family, unamerican, diabolical, duplicitous, subversive; and with a host of

other pejoratives."

With these words, I introduced my then-colleague-now-friend Bill Spady to

an audience of several hundred public school professionals who had come

to hear about a new, common ground movement upon which Bill and his

erstwhile adversary Bob Simonds, of Citizens for Excellence in Education

notoriety, had embarked.

Glancing down at Bill, I continued, "Did I leave anything out?"

"Yes," Bill replied, to the delight of the audience. "You forgot to mention

that I'm bald!"

But there was also much more that was left out of the description that day:

That the man who had been the unfair target of more pejoratives than any

other education reformer since John Dewey could more accurately have

been described as an honest, caring, open-minded professional. That he

was sincerely interested in achieving the best education possible for all of

the constituents of the public schools. That he was willing to defend his

ideas in fair and open debate with his critics. That his visionary perspec-

tives had been appropriatedhighjacked would be a more accurate

termby a cadre of social engineers who had contaminated and perverted

his sound ideas in pursuit of their own agendas and forced him to unfairly

"take the rap" for their misapplication of the principles of outcome-based

education. And that he had not tried to blame others for the widespread

attacks on OBE when he could accurately have done so.

What also could have been said was that Bill Spady's openness and willing-

ness to listen to people like meTraditionalist Christiansattested to his

personal and professional integrity and honestyqualities that will carry the

day in what may well turn out to have an even greater impact on the public

schools of America than his original work in systemic reformthe achieve-

ment of common ground among America's contending constituencies.

In many ways, this book is a "handbook" toward achieving that end.

Arnold Burron

Director, Center for Constructive Agreement

University of Northern Colorado

Greeley, Colorado

PARADIGM LOST

A Superintendent's Take on Paradigm Lost

"The way we DO SCHOOLS used to make sense. It doesn't anymore.

But we're still doing it anyway.

"Our schools made sense when we didn't know that all students can

learn

. . .

but now we know better.

"Our schools made sense when we knew little about how the brain works

and how students learn

...

but now we know much more about both.

"Our schools made sense when sorting students for the job market could

still ensure the good life for all but it doesn't anymore.

"Our schools made sense in the Industrial Age but they don't in the

Information Age.

"The way we DO SCHOOLS used to make sense... it doesn't anymore."

I would welcome anyone to challenge Bill Spady to a debate on this point

of view. Anyone able to put aside tradition, political bias, and fear long

enough to be logical would have to agree that schools are implementing

only a fraction of what we know about students and learning, about teach-

ers and teaching, and about effective schools and effective organizations.

You just can't do for students what we know they need to function success-

fully in a highly competitive and rapidly changing world, while insisting

that schools and school districts retain the structures, policies, and prac-

tices of the Industrial Age. Period.

I first met and heard Bill Spady in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the

mid '70s. He explained a simple matrix for education that put time on one

axis and outcomes on the other. As he spoke, I came to realize that schools

were structurally set with time as the constant and student learning as the

variable. Bill argued, rather emotionally as I recall, for a reversal of that

priority, which would make student learning the constant and time the vari-

able. It hit me. I got it. I have not been the same since.

Since that time, Bill has gone on to describe and define an approach to

schooling The Future Empowerment Paradigm

that allows and

encourages our profession and professionals to implement the very best

that we know about students and learning, teachers and teaching, and

effective organizations. Our profession does not have another model or

approach that can make that claim. True, the Effective Schools movement

has been a bright light, but it tinkers with, rather than systematically

PARADIGM LOST xIII

changing, the system. It still gives in to structures, policies, and

processes

that restrict students, teachers, and schools. The same can be said about

Accelerated Schools, about the Coalition of Essential Schools, and about

numerous other reform movements and organizations. Transformational out-

come-based education (Oops, Oops... Can I say those words?) is the only

PARADIGM SHIFTER. And I strongly believe that it is the only paradigm

that will allow me to confidently call education a "profession."

We lost our profession in 1994. We educators, we educational leaders,

educational associations, we superintendents caved in. We let a relatively

small group of people who were ill-informed, dishonest, mean spirited,

and paranoid stop a movement in its tracks that held great promise for

empowering learners and bringing education into the Information Age.

It was a sad time for me and I have not yet recovered. I was forced to

admit that what I had called my profession was no more than a politically

directed bureaucracy, True professions (1) act on their client's needs,

(2) promote and use their own research to improve their services, and

(3) embrace accountability. At present, our system of schools does none of

the three The Future Empowerment Paradigm Bill describes in this

book totally nails them all.

Now you don't have to establish Bill's Future Empowerment Paradigm to

be professional, but you do have to focus on clients rather than politics,

you do have to follow your own research rather than be told how to teach

by groups of political paranoids, and you do have to be honest about and

take credit or blame for student learning.

I'm an eternal optimist. And when I read Paradigm Lost, I got "pumped"

again. Bill has spelled out a clear and somewhat complex approach

that we can take if we wish to regain our lost paradigm.

My advice to today's superintendents

those who believe that the

Future Empowerment Paradigm is critical and who believe education

must become a profession

is to make Paradigm Lost must reading for

principals, teachers, board members, and any community members who

could be of support. (I would especially target those YUPPIES who

know the Information Age through their businesses and professions, but

do not seem to believe that schools deserve the same paradigm transfor-

mations that have allowed their businesses to compete in today's global

market.) Superintendents are called upon to be the lead learners and to

create learning organizations. This is our chance to model the values

xiv

PARADIGM LOST

and principles of your district and our profession to colleagues, staff,

and the community.

I also encourage superintendents to create a true dialogue about the Future

Empowerment Paradigm throughout their entire systems. I would have

everyone come to know what the paradigth is, how it is aligned with what

we know about learning, and how it compares to present practices.

It won't be easy, but it will be satisfying, It won't be pleasant, but it will be

a professional response. It won't be quick, but it will add meaning to your

work days. Education is the most important work of the world and I believe

that the Future Empowerment Paradigm must start with the leader, the

CEO, the lead learner, the visionary leader... the superintendent.

Chuck Schwahn

Schwahn Leadership Associates

PARADIGM LOST

THE IMPORTANCE

OF BEING

A PARADIGM PIONEER

CHAPTER

THE POWER OF PARADIGMS

Paradigms are fundamentally about how we view and perceive our

world and what we allow ourselves to see as true, possible, or desirable.

When shared and endorsed, they shape the thinking patterns, beliefs,

and cultures of family groups, friendship networks, formal organiza-

tions, professional associations, and even entire societies. These

patterns of thought help us understand, interpret, and

make sense of

what we later do and experience. Some people think of paradigms as

governing beliefs we use to determine true from false, relevant from

irrelevant, important from unimportant, and safe from dangerous.

Others describe them as systems of screens and filters we use to block

out or disregard that which we don't readily recognize or agree

with.

Clearly, paradigms are powerful. But there is more, and it's even more

important. Paradigms also determine how we behave; our paradigms

shape our habits of behavior and decision making. What we do and the

alternatives we allow ourselves to consider and choose are governed

that is, are limited and constrained

by what we allow ourselves to

"see" as possible or desirable. When we make decisions and act in

ways consistent with those familiar and

comfortable patterns of thinking,

we confirm their validity and usefulness

for us, which further reinforces

their influence on our way of viewing and dealing with the world.

Paradigm Paralysis

Joel Barker, who has written extensively on the power of paradigms and

the problems of paradigm paralysis, uses the example of the wristwatch

in his 1990 videotape "Discovering the Future" to explain the need to

thoughtfully reevaluate paradigms. Until the 1980s, the Swiss were the

recognized masters of making clocks and watches and controlled the

world market. Their paradigm: A watch is a tiny clock, requiring the

same components as a clock springs, gears,

and hands

but all in

miniature. Because of this viewpoint, the Swiss rejected using the quartz

crystal technology that their own researchers pioneered because they

PARADIGM LOST

saw no connection between it and timepieces. But Texas Instruments

did, and so did the Japanesewith enthusiasm! The

rest is history.

As a result of this paradigm paralysis, the Swiss watch

industry

almost collapsed. Today,

as Barker points out, the Swiss are selling

beautiful jewelry that also keeps time, and the Japanese

are selling

nearly all of the world's watches.

Systemic Paradigm Shifts

What this Swiss watch example illustrates, and Thomas

Kuhn's

(1970) pioneering work asserts, is that paradigms apply

to and affect

not only our individual patterns of thought and action, but entire

sys-

tems of thinking and behavior in organizations, industries, fields of

endeavor, countries, and cultures. Changes in the thinking

and

actions of single individuals

usually those recognized as innovators,

pioneers, or even revolutionaries

can, if sound and compelling

enough, eventually shift the operating paradigms of

organizations,

institutions, and entire societies. Shifts of this potential magnitude

and impact are called "systemic" because they affect the

fundamen-

tal functioning of major social and organizational

entities. Such shifts

in education are reliant

upon school leaders willing to thoughtfully

examine the paradigm of schooling.

Systemic paradigm shifts change the

way major systems work, the

goals they pursue, and the structures they

create, including the:

Knowledge base on which the system depends,

Techniques and technologies used,

Roles and responsibilities people

assume,

Status and influence people acquire,

Expectations and standards that shape individual and

group performance,

Outcomes and results the system achieves,

Nature and patterns of human interaction and relationships,

and

Ultimate meaning and value attached to everything.

PARADIGM LOST

Systemic paradigm shifts are inherently transformational that is,

they change the fundamental nature of everything known and done

previously. By comparison, everything else we do amounts to techni-

cal tinkering a term I explain in Chapter 4.

For example, we all recognize the writing of the Magna Carta, the

invention of the printing press and telescope, circumnavigation of

the globe, the discovery of electricity, the invention of the automo-

bile, and the development of radio, television, and satellite

communications as a few of the truly transformational developments

that have radically changed humanity's "vision of the possible" and

way of living. In retrospect, we are comfortable with

these particular

transformations and recognize that they have changed the nature of

human understanding and the course and character of human histo-

ry. But for the people who directly experienced

them, these

transformations represented a huge threat to their investment in the

prevailing paradigm. For, as Barker notes in his video, "When the

paradigm shifts, everything goes back to zero."

"Going back to zero" means that those people or organizations with

all the "points," successes, and advantages lose them and must rede-

fine themselves and compete anew. This displacement of the familiar

by the new engenders uncertainty, fear, mistrust, reaction, and, at

times, strident appeals for sticking to the tried and true. Those with

the most to lose try the hardest to make the old work, elaborating

rhetorically on its inherent merits, and placing deliberate obstacles

in the way of the new

often causing short-term setbacks in what

appears to be an inevitable pathway to change.

This natural pattern of resistance and reaction to paradigm change is

exactly what has happened recently in the United States when fun-

damental educational changes have been introduced. What seemed

to be an impending systemic paradigm shift in thinking, policy, and

practice toward educational change in the early '90s lies largely lost

today under an avalanche of political reaction and reforms that tin-

ker rather than transform. Whether that paradigm is rediscovered or

remains a casualty of societal fear and reaction rests in your hands

today's educational leaders

and in the hands of the constituents

you influence and serve.

PARADIGM LOST

The Paradigm We Share

The paradigm that is now lost evolved during the 30

years following

WWII in direct response to the paradigm of schooling that

middle-

aged Americans all share. Almost all of today's U.S. education

leaders attended school in the United States in

or shortly after the

1940s. This was the Golden Era of what is

now recognized as the

Industrial Age, and our schools embodied

many of the key elements

that define that era: They were highly structured with time-regulated,

assembly-line movement of students through

programs, hierarchical

relationships, and so on. Knowing what

we did then, this all made

sense, but it doesn't anymore because the Industrial Age is over.

I can state with confidence that, for almost all of today's education

leaders, the schools we attended

were buildings with many enclosed

rectangular rooms, each with four walls and

one doorway. Usually one

of those walls contained a bank of windows that

gave us a glimpse of

the world outside, and the difference between

our elementary school

and our high school was mainly

one of size, not structure.

Elementary School

When we were very young, everything about school

was very new,

very big, and often very confusing. We thought the rooms to which

we were assigned for 9 months belonged to a given teacher because

it had her name on the door. The students who

were assigned to that

room with us were almost all our own age. Our group was called

"class," and both our room and

our class were called "grades" the

specific levels into which our work

was divided. Most of what we and

"our" teacher did during the day happened in that particular

room,

and many of our books had

a number on them that matched the

grade we were in.

One very new thing was called "report cards." Our teachers

gave them

to us to take home every few months. These complicated-looking

pieces of paper had all kinds of long words like "deportment"

them and little spaces for teachers to make marks

or write in letters

and numbers. At first we had

no idea what this card and all its

marks and spaces meant, but

we soon observed that our teachers and

parents took them very seriously.

PARADIGM LOST

After a while, we learned more about the marks our teacher was

putting on the report card. Some of them were "good" and some of

them were "bad" just like we learned about the marks she had

been putting on our papers in red pencil.. We also learned that one of

the best ways to stay out of trouble was to avoid getting bad marks

put on anything, but especially on our report cards. To get good

marks we had to promptly do what our teacher asked, not get into

trouble with other kids, and not make mistakes on our papers.

Because most of us educated adults liked school as kids, got along

with our classmates, and learned fairly quickly, we usually got good

marks on our report cards.

One thing we did every day in those early years at school was to

have reading. Almost right away our teacher put us in three different

groups the Robins, Blue Birds, and Parakeets. Those of us in the

Robin group read faster and better than many of our classmates.

Nine years later we Robins ended up in the same classes in high

school, which our teachers called "college prep." The kids in the

Parakeet group had trouble reading so we rarely had them in our

classes in high school. Their classes were called "remedial," and

most of them didn't go to college like we did.

The most serious thing we did in school was to take special tests,

which were printed nicely in big pamphlets. Our teachers told us not

to worry about these tests, but they themselves seemed concerned.

When we took them we all had to begin at the same time, remain

absolutely silent, and finish when we were told, rather than when we

were done.

Just as summer came along we got the most important mark of the year

on our report cards. It told our parents whether we would be promoted

or retained. At first we had no idea what these fancy words meant, but,

as before, we soon learned that "retained" meant that you were

"dumb" and couldn't learn what was going to be in next year's books.

Only a few of the kids we knew were ever retained. The rest of us got

to go on to a new room, a new teacher, and new books in September.

The older we got the more important "points" became. We learned

that everything we did was worth 100 points: homework, quizzes,

papers, tests, projects. It didn't take long for most of us to learn that

PARADIGM LOST

our goal was to get as many points as we could because points had

clearly replaced those various marks

on our earlier report cards as

the indicator of how good and smart

we were.

About this time we also observed that

our books had gotten thicker

and contained fewer pictures. This, we

were told, showed that we

were getting smarter and doing more grown-up work. That was nice

to hear, but it didn't compensate for the fact that our favorite thing

recess had disappeared from our daily schedule, though it did get

replaced by something called "gym."

In addition, it appeared that the smarter

we became the shorter our

report cards got. After the first several grades, the card no longer had

spaces on it for things like "gets along well with others." It just had

spaces for words that matched the names of our books

things like

arithmetic and social studies, our subjects. To make it

worse for

those of us who liked getting a good mark in the "gets along"

space,

the spaces next to each subject were pretty small. At first

we weren't

sure if that meant there wasn't much to learn in that subject, or there

wasn't much to report, or both.. But it only took

a couple of report

cards to reveal that those small spaces

were just large enough for our

"grade" a letter or number our teacher devised after averaging all

of the different things we had been doing during that "grading peri-

od." Yes, everything we did and everything that the teacher wanted

our parents to know about us in school somehow got squeezed into

those tiny spaces next to the names of the subjects.

Knowing what we did then, this all made

sense, but it doesn't any-

more because the Industrial Age is over.

Nonetheless, we were told all of this was getting

us ready for high

school

a place where everyone was grown up and the work was

much harder than anything we could imagine.

High School

High school had several familiar things from the later

years of ele-

mentary school, but it was a world unto itself. At first, everything

about it seemed new, big, and confusing. Bells

were always ringing,

the hallways were mobbed, and you

were just supposed to know:

PARADIGM LOST

20.

What all the bells meant; what a "schedule" was; what "elec-

tives" were; what "tracks" were; what your seven different

teachers' names were; what the administrators' names were;

what counselors were and what their names were; where the

cafeteria was and how long you had to eat; where lockers were;

what pep rallies were; the school song; what "varsity" meant;

what "semesters" were; what terms like "freshman" and "sopho-

more" meant; what "GPA" meant

namely, life or death; what

"the curve" was; what "Carnegie units" were; what "college-

prep" meant; what class rank meant; what SATs and ACTs

were; what "recommendations" were; that all grading was in

permanent ink (so that all mistakes counted against you forever);

and how to spell physics and Shakespeare.

And that was just for starters in this strange and unique institution.

But to dispel our confusion, we were continually told that all of this was

getting us ready for college

a place where everyone was very grown

up and the work was much harder than anything we could imagine.

Today's education leaders not only shared many of these educational

experiences, we internalized and mastered their meaning and impor-

tance and negotiated our way through this maze successfully. For we

"succeeded" in this paradigm

and ranked high enough among our

peers to be accepted to college. Once there we again succeeded in a

similar system with a similar way of doing business for at least

another four years and received a degree. And beyond that, those of

us who are educators found the experience of being in and around

schools so congenial that we then devoted our career lives to it. For

as my colleague Kit Marshall often observes: Educators have been in

school since they were five.

And to that I can only add: It's so familiar we've made it our comfort zone.

The Systemic Character

of the Paradigm We Share

Comfort zone or not, the more time I have spent with educators dur-

ing the past 20 years, the more I have become aware of the highly

personal and particularistic rather than organizational view they held

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of their schools, their work, their problems, and their achievements.

How things operate, what people do, or what problems they face

are

attributed either to the intentions, capabilities, and behaviors of

par-

ticular individuals, or to the unique characteristics of particular

situations. If only this person had done this rather than that, or

because this person did such and such, or because this particular

thing happened to be placed in that particular location,

we now are

faced with this (usually negative) situation; the unstated assumption

being that everything would be running smoothly if it weren't for this

certain behavior or circumstance.

As someone with a strong organizational perspective about schools,

I always feel uncomfortable about addressing issues this

way

especially after reading Tom Peters' and Robert Waterman's (1982)

classic In Search of Excellence; becoming thoroughly enamored of

Joel Barker's work on the nature and power of paradigms; studying the

work of W. Edwards Deming; and having my paradigm perspectives

blown by Robert Theobold's (1987) extremely perceptive book The

Rapids of Change. These non-educational sources compelled

me to

look even more deeply than I had at two key things about education:

(1) the future it and its students face, and (2) the fundamental character

of how education was constituted and how it operates

as a system.

The result of this deep analysis was literally a picture

that of an

iceberg drifting in a (familiar, comfortable, unquestioned) sea of

ingrained habits, past practices, and institutional inertia barely influ-

enced by the winds of change and Information Age realities blowing

on the top of its surface. The rest of the iceberg remains sheltered

from and largely uninfluenced by these future conditions and reali-

ties. Its direction and momentum come almost entirely from the sea

in which it drifts. That iceberg, represented in Figure 1.1 (on p.9) is

the conceptual bedrock of the remainder of this book.

From a systemic perspective, the paradigm of schooling

so familiar

to all of us is the accumulation of the cultural and historical para-

digms on which it was constructed. At its tip are the educators'

attempts to respond to the constantly evolving and increasing chal-

lenges of today's Information Age. But their best individual efforts

are being constantly resisted by the inertia of the past that is deeply

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institutionalized within the remainder of the system. These key

change-resisting systemic factors are the school system's:

Bureaucratic Age culture, which defines and operates every-

thing in the system on the basis of time spent, resources,

programs, means, procedures, and roles rather than on outcomes,

results, standards, achievement, ends, and goals accomplished;

Industrial Age delivery system in which curriculum, programs,

teaching, assessment, and student placement are defined and

organized around the major features of the factory assembly-

line, with everyone doing preassigned work at a pre-scheduled

workstation for the proper amount of time;

Nine-month Agrarian Age calendar, which forces the Industrial

Age delivery system to schedule and limit teaching and learning

opportunities around the traditional Labor Day to Memorial Day

High-Tech World

Institutional

Inertia

INFO AGE--

CHALLENGES

with a

BUREAUCRATIC AGE

CULTURE

and an

INDUSTRIAL AGE

DELIVERY SYSTEM

governed by an

AGRARIAN AGE

CALENDAR

and a

FEUDAL AGE AGENDA

The Sea of

Past Practices

and

Ingrained

Habits

Figure 1.1

.23

Our Systemic Educational Iceberg

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calendar so that even today's students have the summer off to

harvest crops (and forget lots of last year's work); and

Its insidious Feudal Age agenda of sorting and selecting the

most able and deserving students from the others so that high-

level educational opportunities are not "wasted" on others.

Together, this set of systemic factors has defined and shaped the

schools we all attended, and their inertia is deeply institutionalized

throughout our society in state laws, regulations, policies, school

accreditation and student graduation requirements, established

precedents, organizational structures, universally accepted practices,

and the paradigm perspectives of five generations of Americans who

believe that this is what school is, period.

A challenge was mounted during the past two decades to the sub-

stance, effectiveness, legitimacy, and necessity of this enormously

educentric paradigm

a paradigm defined by what the system is

and (always) has been rather than by what it should and could be if

student learning and future success in the Information Age

were its

true purpose and priority. That serious, research-based attempt to

fundamentally shift this Educentric Iceberg paradigm to

one of

future-focused learner empowerment was beaten back in 1993 and

1994. What that now-lost paradigm is, how it was lost, what that loss

has cost us, and how it can be regained is the focus of this book. So

please read on with an open paradigm perspective about

an insti-

tution that is totally familiar to us all: American education.

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CHAPTER 2

THE PARADIGM WE LOST

The Emergence of Paradigm Dissonance

The challenge to our familiar paradigm of schooling surfaced in the

'60s, but most of us didn't notice. The research and theory from that

decade called into question the most fundamental premises and fea-

tures of our prevailing education system and offered possibilities

about its purposes, processes, structures, and culture that had the

potential for literally turning existing patterns of thinking and

practice (the Educentric Iceberg) upside down.

At that time, some 30 years ago, educational researchers such as

James Coleman, John Carroll, Benjamin Bloom, and my long-time

friend James Block provided penetrating insights into the counter,

productive ways schools and classrooms were defined, organized,

and operated. They pointed out that at the time:

The prevailing paradigm of educational thinking and practice

ignores fundamental factors about learners and learning and

actually causes low levels of motivation and achievement

among embarrassingly large numbers of students.

Much higher levels of motivation, learning, and success are

possible for virtually all students.

If the paradigm didn't shift, a whole generation of Americans

would unnecessarily gain far less from their education than they

otherwise could.

Well, that generation has come and gone. We now face a period of even

greater paradigm dissonance than those researchers' ideas initially

generated. The Bureaucratic, Industrial, Agrarian, and Feudal Ages

are over. Yet we remain immersed in their paradigms of learning and

schooling. For, despite the brilliance, simplicity, and appeal of these

researchers' insights, the efforts of numerous reformers and educa-

tors across the country to use and build on them, and the obvious

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need for improving student achievement in today's Information Age,

our schools continue to experience an assault against most of the

ideas and practices these basic insights spawned.

In many areas of the United States, this assault fostered a climate of

intimidation. State and local superintendents were fired, curriculum

leaders were harassed, board members were challenged and dis-

placed, and principals and teachers were openly told that certain

ideas, terms, and practices were simply not acceptable to some of

their constituents don't use them!

Why did this occur? Because the ideas in question

the core of our

Lost Paradigm

run against the grain of deeply entrenched aspects

of our educational system, our culture, and the beliefs of influential

segments of our society, including us. We're all a bit afraid to melt

the Iceberg, even though many of us recognize that it's outdated and

no longer effective.

How Our Lost Paradigm Took Form

A coherent alternative to our Educentric Iceberg paradigm came

together in fits and starts between the 1960s and the 1990s. Key

con-

ceptual breakthroughs, research data, and innovations in practice

all eventually formed a compelling picture of what learning communi-

ties (as distinct from schools) could be and become. These new

learning communities are grounded in the challenges of Information

Age careers, living, and responsibilities.

My Initial Paradigm Shocks

The Educentric Iceberg paradigm was all I knew or thought possible

when I finished my Ph.D. in 1967; like almost everyone else, I accept-

ed its basic features and underlying systemic characteristics as givens.

But then the first of many "paradigm shocks," or redefining

insights, occurred for me. As a new faculty member at Harvard's

Graduate School of Education with three degrees from the

University of Chicago under my belt, I had already published two

articles in major research journals and thought I had my future

research career well defined.

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What a surprise I got during my first month there! Along with

hundreds of others, I attended a major conference organized by the

dean, Theodore Sizer, on the pros and cons of the biggest block-

buster to have hit American education up to that point: the Equality

of Educational Opportunity study (EEO 1966), also known widely as

"The Coleman Report."

The report's primary finding was that student characteristics and fam-

ily and neighborhood socioeconomic status factors (SES), not school

variables, accounted for almost all measured differences in student

achievement in America's schools. The blazing headlines surrounding

the study were: "Schools Don't Make a Difference." And those words

got people's attention! Whether the claim was correct or not, this

often-quoted headline left me and millions of others stunned.

Of course schools make a difference, I thought. Look at me. I'm the

son of a garbage collector and hog rancher in Oregon. How do you

think I got here, on a spaceship? Sure, I had some mediocre teachers

in high school, but what about all the great ones? Don't they count?

What does this all mean?

What the data meant, I soon learned, contradicted all of the conven-

tional wisdom about the factors that affected student learning.

Namely, in statistical terms, when you considered the nation as a

whole and all factors simultaneously, virtually none of the factors

that educators had been using for decades as the basis of evaluating

and accrediting school quality was actually correlated with student

learning once student characteristics and family SES factors were

taken into account.

Teachers' degrees and salaries, school and class sizes, the number of

books in the library, the number of microscopes in the lab, and a host of

other variables weren't the things helping students learn. Schools were,

and still are to a large degree, modeling and evaluating themselves

on factors with no direct bearing on the overall achievement of their

students. The keys to school effectiveness lay elsewhere.

Coleman himself spoke to our group. What he told us was the

most shocking and incomprehensible thing I had ever encountered

in education:

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Educational opportunity can no longer be defined as stu-

dent access to variables that don't directly affect their

learning and achievement. Opportunity must be measured

in terms of the achievements of students, not how much time

they spend in particular programs or courses. We will have

equality of opportunity when we have equality of learning

outcomes across schools.

What? Schooling and opportunity based on outcomes and not on

access? Was Coleman suggesting that his data called for a totally

shifted paradigm of education?

Yes. Coleman's study results clearly showed that schools could no

longer be measured in terms of time, means, and resources

the

Bureaucratic Culture elements of the Iceberg paradigm. Schools had

to be measured in terms of their outcomes, ends, and results. Like

almost everyone around me, I found his fundamental point too alien

to grasp. Paradigm dissonance had struck.

But a year later I did get it, thanks to my high school buddy and fellow

educator James Block. Block had started at the University of Chicago

as an undergraduate in 1963, where I was pursuing my graduate stud-

ies in education and sociology. In early 1967 I introduced Block to

Benjamin Bloom, chair of Chicago's graduate program in Measurement,

Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis. Block became Bloom's top gradu-

ate assistant just at the time that Bloom was developing and testing the

concept he called "Learning for Mastery." Thanks to Block's exception-

al energy, ability, and commitment, within a few years the concept

was known worldwide as a simple but powerful instructional/reform

model called Mastery Learning (see Block, 1971, 1974, and 1988).

A conversation I had with Block in 1968 flooded my mind with new

insights. Block explained how a paper published by John Carroll in

1963 had captured Bloom's attention because it gave a profound but

ever-so-simple slant to the notions of student aptitude and capacity

for successful learning. Carroll's paper was called "A Model of

School Learning," but, in retrospect, he could have called it "The

Emperor's New School" because it exposed some obvious things

about schools that people just hadn't seen or acknowledged. Three

of its key notions became my next Paradigm Shocks:

14 PARADIGM LOST

One paradigm shock was Carroll's argument that aptitude is the rate

at which learners acquire new skill or knowledge, not their ability to

do so. Schools operate as if aptitude and ability are the same thing.

Hence, they inappropriately limit access to higher level curriculum

based on a false notion of differences in student "aptitude."

Another paradigm shock was a corollary to the first: Therefore,

potentially all learners can learn to do clearly defined things equally

well, but the time required to learn to do them will vary because learn-

er's aptitudes vary. So how long it takes to learn something well should

not be confused with acquiring the ability to eventually do it well.

Yet another paradigm shock was that school learning is organized

around fixed, predetermined, one-shot amounts of time

the

Industrial Age delivery system of the Iceberg paradigm that do not

match the learning rates of many students. This structure typically

allows enough time for faster learners, but less time than slower

learners need. Therefore, slower learners might be "failing" because

they aren't given enough time, not because they lack the ability or

motivation to learn what is expected.

Wow! Now those were things I could relate to because I knew from

years of playing the trumpet that how long it took to learn a piece

was unrelated to how well one could eventually learn to perform it.

That's why I practiced diligently and why an orchestra practices as

well. And as I thought about many other examples from my school-

ing and life, Carroll's three paradigm-breaking insights seemed

profound. The simple issue he found about the current model of

schooling was: Time is the constant, and learning is the variable.

But what, wondered Block and I, if we made learning the constant,

and time the variable (just like in real life)?

By the time Block and I had this conversation, Bloom (1968) had

already come up with the answer, namely: You'd have far more students

reaching "mastery" levels on what they learned than you do today.

Bloom had translated Carroll's insights into a fundamental paradigm

shift in instructional practice that he felt could apply to the typical

classroom. The essence of his argument was, instead of giving stu-

dents a typical one-shot block of time and chance to learn something

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and ending up with highly variable learning results (which immedi-

ately get graded and permanently recorded), why not:

Clearly define at the outset the (high success) learning result

you want;

Make all students eligible for attaining that result; and

Offer students at least a second chance (i.e., a little more time

with additional assistance or "correctives") to achieve it?

In other words, Bloom's initial notion of effective instruction required

educators to reverse the characteristics of conventional practice.

Here, with the benefit of hindsight and some vocabulary changes,

is the essence of his proposed paradigm shift:

From

Iceberg Paradigm

Mastery Paradigm

Fixed Time

Flexible Time

Single Opportunity

Multiple Opportunities

Curriculum Focus

Learning Focus

Vague Standards

Criterion Standards

Variable Expectations

Mastery Expectations

Bell-Curve Results

Skewed-Curve Results

With these key factors in mind, Block and others had begun to test

the relative effectiveness of Bloom's strategy, using carefully planned

units of instruction with clearly defined learning goals in regular/

typical classroom settings. Using the Mastery Learning strategy,

teachers had been able to increase the percentage of students

reaching previously defined A-level performance standards on given

units of curriculum by three and four times. In addition, students

were retaining what they learned better than before and were doing

better in subsequent work in that subject, even though their teachers

had gone back to "conventional" teaching.

In other words, when learning expectations were made clear and stu-

dents were given time and support to succeed, the students seemed

to be developing strategies about how to learn that they were then

transferring to other work. Thus, it seemed that a strategy like

Mastery Learning could dramatically increase the percentage of U.S.

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students doing excellent work, and help students retain and use their

learning at higher levels. Block's conclusion was that persistent, low

levels of achievement were reversible with a different paradigm of

expectations and classroom instruction.

Block was so excited by the results that he declared Mastery

Learning to be the wave of the future in American education. But as

a sociologist, I saw that huge organizational obstacles stood in the

way. With high schools clearly in mind, I pointed out that Mastery

Learning would never "take" for several reasons.

The fixed-time, one-chance nature and structure of our

Carnegie Unit/semester-based credentialing system with its

wide distribution of learning results and assigned grades (the

Feudal Age agenda of the Iceberg Paradigm) is opposite the

clearly defined performance standards and flexible time

required by Mastery Learning and the needs of the individual

learner. When faced with this contradiction, teachers will

experience dissonance, be compelled to operate according to

this deeply institutionalized structure, and compromise the

essence of the Mastery Learning model.

Moreover, Mastery Learning assumes that teachers want all stu-

dents to be successful learners and will, therefore, establish

clear performance goals, criteria, and expectations accordingly.

But this is counteracted by the built-in selection agenda of

schoolsthe devices of tracking, contest learning, comparative

standards, bell-curve grading, and class ranking that are used by

schools and teachers to actually magnify differences in student

learning and performance. This sort-and-select agenda directly

undermines the all-can-learn-well premise of Carroll and Bloom.

I left my conversation with Block with an entirely different perspec-

tive of schooling and the factors that encouraged and inhibited

student learning and motivation.

As I thought about these factors over the next several years, what

Coleman had said made more and more sense. And after many more

conversations with Block and with Henry Levin of Stanford

University; John Champlin, then superintendent of the Johnson City

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Central Schools in New York; and Wilbur Brookover, the unacknowl-

edged pioneer of Effective Schools research at Michigan State

University; I finally drew three major conclusions about our familiar

Iceberg paradigm of education and the challenge of creating the con-

ditions of authentic learning success for all students. They were:

Seeking to achieve authentic learning success for all students is

a matter of deep personal and organizational purpose and inten-

tion that flies in the face of conventional thinking and practice

(the Iceberg paradigm), and shapes how we view everything

about our system of education. It requires an unwavering focus

on learning, outcomes, performance, results, and the future

not on courses, curriculum, programs, and semesters (the

Bureaucratic Age component of the Iceberg).

Education, despite its rhetoric to the contrary, is a completely

time-based institution. Virtually all of its major features are for-

mally/legally defined by and structured around predetermined

blocks of clock and calendar time (the Industrial Age compo-

nents of the Iceberg). These uniform blocks of time define and

seriously limit the conditions of opportunity, access, and eligi-

bility that most affect students' chances of learning success.

A criterion-defined system is the only achievement system that

maximizes clarity about student learning and performance and

gives individual students full credit for what they ultimately

accomplish. In this system, the actual substance of what is

learned and demonstrated is directly stated in expected outcomes,

assessment measures, reporting devices, and credentialing sys-

tems. Grades, scores, percentages, and other labels only obscure

and distort the actual substance of what students accomplish.

Developing a Common Reform Agenda

of Learning Success

These three conclusions as well as the preceding paradigm shocks

they are based upon became the pillars of my first 15 years' effort to

explain and implement what I call a learning success paradigm of

education. Without ever giving it a name, and without ever formally

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:-32

joining forces, Bloom, Block, Ernest Boyer, Brookover, Champlin,

Coleman, John Good lad, Madeline Hunter, Henry Levin, Larry

Lezotte, Bernice McCarthy, Theodore Sizer, myself, and a host of

other school reformers of the '70s and '80s would, I believe, agree to

being unified under this learning success banner.

At its core, the learning success paradigm is learner centered, suc-

cess-oriented, outcome-based, inclusive, expansive, brain-compatible,

systemic, and holistic. And, as it has developed over the past 30

years, it has evolved into being about:

The processes and conditions that promote successful learning,

High expectations for learners,

The dignity of the individual,

Cultivating human potential,

How people learn,

The forms that successful learning take, and

Accurate and substantive assessment and reporting.

Without question, this paradigm rests on a huge base of research

findings and implications; an unassailable foundation of theory,

logic, and common sense; and a wealth of practical examples in all

areas of human endeavor. But one of its strongest features is the

common philosophy of purposes and beliefs that its contributors and

advocates share. Here are examples of some key beliefs and purpose

statements underlying these diverse reform efforts:

All students can learn and succeed, but not on the same day in

the same way.

Successful learning fosters more successful learning, just as

failure promotes more failure.

Schools control some of the conditions that directly influence

student learning, opportunities, and success.

What and whether students learn successfully is more impor-

tant than exactly when or how they learn.

3 3

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Challenge, not fear, promotes successful learning

and performance.

The purpose of schools is to equip all students with the

knowledge, skills, and qualities needed for future success.

The distribution of learning results for minority students in

school should be no different than for majority students.

Students learn more successfully when they have a clear picture

of what is expected of them and enough time to accomplish it.

It is better to focus on in-depth learning of real significance

than to superficially learn about things of little consequence.

Despite the thrust of this optimistic and empowering philosophy and

the enormous energy devoted to implementing it, this collective

cadre of reformers have barely made a dent in what

appears to be the

most deeply entrenched and anti-empowerment feature of schools:

their selection agenda. Despite all the effort, schools have been

unable to move from what Bloom and Block both call "identifying

and selecting talent" to "fostering and developing" it

the essence

of the learning success approach.

Challenging the Selection Agenda

of Schools

At the heart of the selection agenda of schooling lies the bell

curve

its meaning, role, purpose, and application in both the

instructional and credentialing systems of schools. Decades of

grading practice and "malpractice" in America's high schools and

universities have convinced generations of students and adults that

"the curve" is not only natural, "normal," and to be expected in

instructional situations, it is actually the standard on which grading

and program design should be based. This view has provided the key

rationale for generations of curriculum tracking and for the A through

F distributions of grades.

However, thanks to Bloom's incisive analysis (1976), virtually this

entire cadre of reformers has been able to argue that the bell

curve is

artificially contrived, counterproductive, and unjustified in the face

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of far more positive alternatives. The curve, Bloom argued, was

called "normal" because it portrayed the "naturally occurring" pat-

tern of data that resulted when conditions and influencing factors

operated randomly that is, by chance. Chance is the key condition

on which the fundamentals of probability theory and statistics are

based and on which the likelihood of obtaining a normal curve

depends. But, Bloom showed:

Instruction is not a naturally occurring/random phenome-

non! It is a deliberate intervention in what otherwise might

resemble the chance learning processes of students.

Therefore, instruction that is intentional, well planned, and

effective should produce a sharply skewed curve with most of

the students doing very well

not a "normal" one.

That's what "making a difference" and "being effective" mean

intervening effectively in what might otherwise be the random

distribution of results if students attempted to learn on their own.

Therefore, the last thing teachers who want their students to lern

successfully should expect or accept is a bell curve of results.

This mind-blowing, Paradigm-shattering insight served as the techni-

cal and motivational bedrock for all of the major learning success

reform efforts that followed: Mastery Learning, Mastery Teaching,

Effective SchoOls, Outcome-Based Education, Essential Schools,

Accelerated Schools, Success for All Schools, and countless other

variations on these approaches. Their common mantra: Overcoming

the deadly bell curve of expectations and results requires focused,

deliberate, and insightful effort and intervention.

These reformers also realized that the curve and the selection agenda

gave teachers and administrators an open door of non-accountability

concerning student achievement. The prevailing argument was:

"Students with backgrounds or abilities like these will 'naturally'

perform accordingly." But the reformers realized that as long as the

public regarded the curve as legitimate and inevitable, educators

could argue without impunity that if students didn't have the ability or

motivation to take advantage of the opportunities they were providing,

there was nothing they could do to change things. In other words,

35.

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Educators saw their job as providing opportunities

for students to learn

the rest (and the result) was

up to the students.

This passive view of educators' roles and responsibilities could

not

be justified in view of Bloom's reasoning and research.

The Key Elements in the

Learning Success Paradigm

Over 15 years elapsed between the time of Coleman's pioneering

research on the Equality of Educational Opportunity and the

emer-

gence of school reform as a growing industry in the early '80s. During

this time the paradigm shocks had begun to create

a consistent

From

Iceberg Paradigm

Learning Success Paradigm

Aptitude as Ability

Talent Selection Mission

Bell-Curve Expectations

Calendar Defined

Learner Accountability

Teaching as Coverage

Provides Opportunity

Content-Compatible Methods

Single Modality Instruction

Structured Pacing

Fixed-Time Opportunity

Works Alone

Interpersonal Competition

Comparative Evaluation

Variable Grades

Grading in Ink

Cumulative Achievement

Permanent Records

Time-Based Credit

Calendar Closure

Aptitude as Learning Rate

Talent Development Mission

High-Success Expectations

Outcome Defined

Shared Accountability

Teaching as Intervention

Learns Successfully

Brain-Compatible Methods

Multiple Modality Instruction

Continuous Challenge

Expanded Opportunity

Collaborates

High-Challenge Standards

Criterion Evaluation

Criterion Standards

Assessing in Pencil

Culminating Achievement

Alterable Transcripts

Performance-Based Credit

Outcome Closure

Figure 2.1

The Key Elements in the Learning Success Paradigm

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picture of the major changes in thinking and practice schools were

going to have to make if learning success was going to become a way

of doing business. Reformers were calling for a shift from the then-

unnamed Iceberg paradigm to the learning success paradigm. The

key elements on which the various reforms focused are described in

Figure 2.1 on page 22.

Clearly, the many shifts listed in Figure 2.1 reflect the issues identi-

fied earlier by Coleman, Carroll, Bloom, and myself as critical to

changing the conditions in which educators and students find them-

selves. A major paradigm shift from Iceberg to learning success was

needed if America's schools were to begin realizing the learning

potential inherent in the students they served. Moreover, by the early

'80s there were isolated examples of these shifts making a large dif-

ference in the achievement levels of students on conventional basic

skills measures.

That is why I and others reacted with such mixed emotions to the

flood of studies and reports issued in 1983 and 1984 by organiza-

tions, task forces, and reformers, including the universally read

A Nation At Risk report of the U.S. Department of Education (1983).

On the one hand, this huge volume of reports drew enormous atten-

tion to the need for serious educational change. But, on the other, most

of what was recommended was framed in the context of the

Educentric Iceberg paradigm

things that represented a completely

conventional perspective of schooling, such as longer days, longer

years, more required courses, thicker books, and harder tests.

The good news, however, was that contained here and there within

these books and reports were some genuinely innovative ideas and

recommendations that reflected many of these Learning Success

paradigm elements (see Spady and Marx 1984). Unfortunately, around

that time, I began to believe that all of this reform work, including my

own, was still missing the boat. Two years later I knew I was right.

Beyond the Learning Success Paradigm

After enormous soul searching and prolonged dialogues with col-

leagues, I finally realized around 1986 that we reformers had been

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deeply committed to improving student learning outcomes and

suc-

cess, but none of us had clearly defined what either an outcome was

or success meant. We had simply accepted anything that anyone was

teaching or using as an indicator of student learning

as "achieve-

ment," "outcomes," or "success." Neither

we nor implementers of

our ideas in the field had an agreed-upon standard on which to

ground, target, and judge our efforts.

Major turmoil, frustrations, and disagreements

arose when I

broached this issue with other reformers and practitioners, and they

continue to this day in debates about state and national standards.

I believed that we reformers were asking

our constituents to "focus

on outcomes" without having defined what outcomes were, either

conceptually or substantively. Consequently, everything that moved

was being called an outcome: scores on standardized reading and

mathematics tests, teacher-assigned grades,

scores on district subject

matter exams, percentages of students taking and passing honors or

other college-prep courses, Advanced Placement test results, SAT

and ACT scores, dropout rates, college attendance rates, and

so on.

On the one hand, visible improvements

over time in these easily

understood indicators of learning success convinced

a lot of educators,

parents, and policymakers that our particular reforms were working,

and they became motivated to try what

we were suggesting. On the

other hand, however, no one could tell them what

an outcome really

was, or which outcomes were, in theory or practice, more important

than others for students to learn and demonstrate.

But after an enormous amount of analysis, discussion; debate, and

testing of ideas and their implications, an answer finally emerged.

And, like most of the paradigm shocks and insights noted earlier, it

had the potential to turn everything on its head

only more so.

What I realized was:

An outcome is a result

something students can demon-

strate after an instructional event is over. It's not an

accumulation or average of all the things that happen dur-

ing the event

it's the actual culminating demonstration

of what was learned in those previous experiences and activ-

ities. Therefore, its significance is reflected in what matters

and happens to the student after the event, not during it.

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This initial insight quickly opened the door to several others, all of

which had major implications regarding the paradigm shifts just

described, namely:

Actual demonstrations. An outcome is an actual demonstration of

something what students can actually do with what they

knownot the score, label, grade, or percentage that someone

attaches to the demonstration, but the substance and actions of

the demonstration itself.

Observable competence. A demonstration of competence must be

defined by observable demonstration verbs like "describe" and

"explain" not by commonly used non-demonstration verbs

like "know " and "understand." If you change the demonstra-

tion verb you change the outcome /demonstration} even if the

content remains the same.

Significant outcomes. Significant outcomes are demonstrations of ,

competence that matter to the learner and other major stake-

holders after the learning event is over. These outcomes last

beyond the duration of the event, and matter in the future

after graduation.

Context matters. All demonstration of learning and competence

occur somewhere

in a defined setting or physical context

(e.g., before an audience, out of dOors, before the City Council).

These context factors directly affect the content, form, complex-

ity, and competencies that the demonstration requires.

Complexity varies. Demonstrations of competence can range in

complexity and form from the simple, structured "discrete con-

tent skills" of most school curriculum, assignments, and tests to

the highly complex, open-ended life-role performances required

of adults in the real world (see Figure 2.2 on page 26).

To describe the magnitude of the shock waves that these definitions

and insights generated among U.S. practitioners and policymakers

who took them seriously would be difficult. It required them to be

clear about both the substance and complexities of the learning they

were trying to foster and to transcend their ambiguous world of

points, scores, and grades (see Spady 1994, Chapters 2 and 3).

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In simple terms, the key messages to those concerned with the

Learning Success paradigm were:

Outcomes must drive curriculum, not the other

way around.

Outcomes are performances, not scores or grades, and they

embody student competence, not just content.

Educators need real words to define the substance of the perfor-

mance they are seeking, including powerful and specific

demonstration verbs.

Students need to execute those verbs, and teachers

are obligat-

ed to teach them howoften over a period of

years.

Outcomes happen at or after the end of major instructional

experiences, and they matter after the experience is over.

Outcomes are complex and significant performance abilities,

not day-to-day tasks, assignments, and tests.

Need for

Significance

Transfer:

& Complexity

Real Life

High

Complex Role

Performances

Complex, Unstructured

Task Performances

Higher-Order Skills

Structured Task Performances

Low

Discrete Content Skills

Low

Figure 2.2

The Demonstration Mountain of Learning Outcomes

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On and on the concrete implications went, challenging the wisdom

and utility of countless educentric practices that no longer made

sense. These outdated practices included:

Writing outcomes for the existing curriculum, rather than

designing the curriculum needed to achieve significant out-

comes.

Focusing exclusively on content instruction (the nouns) and

ignoring systematic competence development (the verbs)

something that takes the coordinated effort of many teachers

across subject areas to accomplish over a period of many years.

Focusing primarily on micro everythingsmall chunks of cur-

riculum, small chunks of time, small chunks of learning, small

tests for these small chunks, grading the small chunks, averag-

ing the small grades on the small chunks, self-contained/isolated

classrooms, and so on.

Substituting symbols for substance pretending that scores,

percentages, grades, averages, and units of credit were actually

the students' learning and their outcome demonstrations.

Assuming that the traditional subjects taught in school directly

relate to and support the complex competences needed by

adults in careers and life roles as they encounter the challenges

and rigors of the Information Age.

Assuming that outcomes emanate from within the traditional

curriculum areas when, in fact, outcomes (i.e., complex perfor-

mance abilities) of significance cut across and extend beyond

discrete subject areas.

Testing on a fixed schedule and immediately grading in ink,

even though students learn at different rates and it takes years,

not days or weeks, to develop complex competences and perfor-

mance abilities.

We reformers had been using the language of outcomes but hadn't

realized what it meant and what its larger implications were. Once

we did, we realized that we had been focusing on a very limited defi-

nition of learning success

success in doing the traditional things

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done in conventional school classrooms but not the things that

repre-

sented a more complex notion of role-performance competence and

its application in the challenging arenas of adult life.

To our credit we had been focusing on improving in-school learning

success and on how schools and classrooms could change to achieve

it; but to our dismay we had failed to realize that over a period of

generations schools had taken on an educentric existence of their

own. They had developed a unique way of doing business governed

by symbols, rituals, and habits of mind that have become self-rein-

forcing and self - justifying except when scrutinized against the

lens of concrete substance and real life in the Information Age. Then

the Educentric Iceberg paradigm cries out for total transformation.

Once we acknowledged our educentric blinders, we saw that:

The processes and experiences of schooling should matter

after all of a student's instructional experiences are over

meaning after graduation, once students are out in the real

world. That is the ultimate test of learning success!

But for this new definition of learning success to become

a reality,

districts would need to start their outcome development by examin-

ing the future their students will be encountering in the real world

young adults

and designing back from there.

The good news is that by the early '90s, thousands of educators and

policymakers had been introduced to the future-focused, life-

performance approach to outcome defining and systemic change.

Districts that had taken the lead with what we came to call

"Strategic Design" Aurora, Colorado; Mooresville, North Carolina;

and Yarmouth, Maine, being clear examples became the focal

point of considerable national interest because educators could

immediately see that their strategic curriculum planning had

transcended the serious constraints of the Educentric Iceberg

paradigm. Their outcomes were addressing the whole

person and

equipping their students with the complex competencies and role-

performance abilities needed for a successful future yet they

were

still able to accomplish the basic skills and content standards of the

traditional curriculum.

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4.2

In retrospect, it is clear that what these districts were considering

was a double paradigm shift one focused primarily on means and

the other on ends, respectively. The first embodied the shift from the

Iceberg paradigm of school functioning to a learning success way of

doing business so that far more students could be successful learn-

ers. The other arose out of the definition and implications of the

learning outcomes they would be pursuing: from an educentric

approach to school learning and achievement to an approach that

involved future-focused complex competencies and life performanCes.

This latter shift to a Life Performance paradigm dramatically alters the

traditional ends of schooling and requires a deep, systemic change in

virtually every element of the educational system. The key elements

of this second systemic paradigm shift are summarized in Figure 2.3.

From

Educentric Paradigm

Life Performance Paradigm

Iceberg Components

Subject-Focused Planning

Learning as Mental Processing

Micro-Content Learner

Discipline-Structured Curriculum

Content Acquisition

Seat/Classroom Learning

Paper-Pencil Testing

Points as Achievement

Paper Transcripts

Stable and Familiar

Information Age Challenges

Future-Focused Planning

Learning as Application of Mental Processing

Total Role Performer

Problem-Structured Curriculum

Competence Development

Authentic Context Learning

Authentic Assessment

Performance as Achievement

Performance Portfolios

Dynamic and Effective

Figure 2.3

The Key Elements in the Life Performance Paradigm

A Life Performance Focus + A Learning Success Focus =

Future Empowerment for Students

Together, the key elements of the Life Performance paradigm and

those of the learning success paradigm form a new mega-paradigm

aimed at equipping all learners with the complex abilities needed for

4 3

PARADIGM LOST 29

success in the many performance roles adults face in their career,

family, and civic lives. I call this integrated

mega shift the Future

Empowerment paradigm.

Its life-performance elements establish the nature and direction of

the abilities and learning experiences needed by students for future

empowerment. Its learning success elements establish the instruc-

tional and opportunity conditions that enable students to be

successful in developing those essential abilities. Both sets of shifts

are needed for genuine future empowerment to occur.

The good news is that strong momentum toward this integrated

Future Empowerment paradigm was building rapidly in the early '90s.

But the bad news is that the transformation in thinking, planning,

and implementation represented by this new paradigm got nipped in

the bud when the intense political opposition to anything associated

with the word "outcomes" surfaced nationwide in early 1993.

Without question, if our system of public education is to survive,

educational leaders must recapture the momentum for implementing

this Future Empowerment paradigm. American education simply

can't continue as an Educentric Iceberg floating in a sea of past

practices and ingrained habits.

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4.4

My Initial Paradigm Shocks

Shock No.1: Once student characteristics and family socioeconomic status factors

were taken

into account, virtually none of the factors that educators had been using for decades

as the

basis of evaluating and accrediting school quality was actually correlated with student learning.

Shock No.2: We will have equality of opportunity when we have equality of learning outcomes

across schools. Opportunity must be measured in terms of the achievements of students, not

how much time they spend in particular programs or courses.

Shock No.3: Aptitude is the rate at which learners acquire new skills or knowledge, NOT their

ability to do so. Schools operate as if aptitude and ability are the same thing by limiting

access

to higher level curriculum based on differences in"aptitude."

Shock No.4: Potentially, all students can learn to do clearly defined things equally well, but the

time required to learn to do so will vary because students' aptitudes vary.

Shock No.5: School learning is organized around fixed, predetermined, one-shot amounts of time

that do not match the learning rates of many students.

Shock No.6: The credentialing system of schools drives the instructional system. The fixed-time,

one-chance nature and structure of our Carnegie unit/semester-based credentialing system

with its wide distribution of learning results and assigned grades is totally opposite the needs

of the individual learner.

Shock No.7: The built-in selection agenda of schools the devices of tracking, contest learning,

comparative standards, bell-curve grading, and class ranking used by schools and teachers

actually create, illuminate, and magnify differences in student learning and performance.

Shock No.8: Instruction is not a naturally occurring/random phenomenon; it is a deliberate inter-

vention in what otherwise might resemble the"chance" learning processes of students.

Therefore, instruction that is intentional, well planned, and effective should produce a sharply

skewed curve

NOT a "normal" one

with most of the students doing very well.

Shock No.9: Educators often view their job as"PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES" for students to

learn

the rest (and the result) was up to the students. Therefore, they could argue without

impunity that if the students didn't have the ability or motivation to take advantage of the

opportunities they were providing, there was nothing they could do to change things.

Transformational Paradigm Shocks

Shock No.10: Reformers had been deeply committed to improving student learning outcomes

and success, but no one had defined what either an outcome was or success meant. Anything

that anyone was teaching or using as an indicator of learning was indiscriminately being

called achievement, outcomes, or success.

Shock No.11: An outcome is a result

something that happens after an instructional event is

over. It's not an accumulation or average of all the things that happen during the event

it's

the actual"culminating"demonstration of what was learned in all of those previous experi-

ences and activities.

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CHAPTER

WHAT WENT WRONG

The attacks against the Future Empowerment paradigm, which gath-

ered enormous momentum and spread across the nation in 1993,

disrupted initiatives focused on improving what educators and policy-

makers regarded as important aspects of schooling.

Like school improvement efforts in previous eras, most of these

improvement efforts fell into the categories of technical tinkering

and segmental change (see Spady 1996c). Technical tinkering is a

tentative, small-scale, often piecemeal exploration of the possibility

and feasibility of making organizational change and improvement.

It is usually undertaken by inquisitive individuals or small groups

of innovators who hope to develop a workable prototype and grow it

throughout their organization. Because they are isolated endeavors,

technical tinkering efforts usually come and go with little fanfare

or consequence.

Segmental change was common in 1993 among states and districts

committed to making specific program changes in their schools.

Segmental change usually focuses on improving a major component

of the curriculum or instructional program and requires the coordi-

nated involvement of all personnel directly involved in implementing

that component, but the individual components usually remain dis-

connected. Segmental change also has an infamous history as the

"Reform of the Year."

A much smaller cadre of states and districts were engaged in the

serious and far-reaching discussions that engender the third level of

educational reform

systemic change. Systemic change is compre-

hensive and involves redefining, redirecting, realigning, and

restructuring the total organization so that it can achieve what its

stakeholders agree is its fundamental purpose for existing. Examples

of systemic change are rare in education at any level. But in 1993

several thousand educators and policymakers in the United States

did understand most of the paradigm shocks and why implementing

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the Learning Success paradigm

was imperative. And a few dozen

districts were using most of its elements

to design changes that were

comprehensive enough to be considered systemic.

Implementing the Future Empowerment paradigm requires

an even

more fundamental change in educational thinking and action, and

this involves achieving the fourth and highest level of

educational

change

paradigm transformation. Future

empowerment is ground-

ed in the elements of the Life Performance paradigm and

uses the

elements of the Learning Success paradigm

to achieve a totally non-

educentric transformation in the

way schools are defined.

Paradoxically, many of the Future Empowerment paradigm's

"new"

elements have been alive and well in the educational and

training

programs of many career fields and institutions for centuries

the

military, music, business, sports, and medicine being

among the

most obvious

but they have not found their

way into the academic

programs of schools and universities to any significant degree.

Because they had experienced

many of its key elements in the

course of their careers, several million Americans in 1993 intuitively

understood what the Future Empowerment paradigm

represented.

But only a few thousand of them

were at all involved in public

school reform in any capacity, and

most of those were unknown to

each other. Nonetheless,

a core group of several hundred people

were deeply committed to implementing virtually all of the Future

Empowerment paradigm's elements. This

core included major policy-

making bodies in at least four states, which

were poised to change

constraining laws or regulations to allow this

new future-focused

paradigm to emerge. Today there is

no such core.

Where the Future Empowerment Paradigm

Stood in 1993

The Status of National Reform Efforts in 1993

Although many programs to improve public education existed

1993, nine entities with national agendas and outreach stood

out at

the forefront ready to undertake school

as opposed to strictly

instructional

reform efforts. They and their key leaders

were:

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Reform Organization

Key Leader

Accelerated Schools

Henry Levin

Center for Leadership on School Reform

Phillip Schlechty

Comer School Development Program

James Comer

Coalition of Essential Schools

Theodore Sizer

Effective Schools

Lawrence Lezotte

High Success Outcome Based Education

William Spady

Mastery Learning

James Block

National Center for Outcome Based Education

John Champlin

Success for All Schools

Robert Slavin

Of these nine entities, three were clearly committed to total organiza-

tional change at the school district level: Schlechty's Center for

Leadership, Champlin's National Center, and my High Success

Network. The remainder were focused more on individual school

change, although Lezotte's Effective Schools work often had total

school district endorsement and participation. What gave all nine a

common agenda and purpose were two overarching concerns:

Establishing and achieving outcomes of significance for all

students; and

Transforming and expanding the conditions of success in

schools that directly affect student learning and success.

How each initiative addressed these two key concerns varied

considerably, but their common connections are apparent and impor-

tant. (Please realize that the following brief description of where

each stood in 1993 on these two issues does not reflect the many

details and subtleties in their work. Nor is this analysis an attempt to

set up better-worse comparisons. It is simply a thumbnail description

of where these reforms stood when the overt opposition to these and

other reforms began.)

Significant learner outcomes. Without question, all nine reform enti-

ties were outspoken in their commitment to helping schools focus on

improving student learning and achievement. Where they differed

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was on what they defined as significant student outcomes. To under-

stand their differences, let's divide learning

outcomes into four

widely understood categories:

1. Basic Skills

primarily in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

2. Knowledge Skills

the content and concepts learned, and

used in the major academic subjects.

3. Higher-Order Competences

the skills of planning, orga-

nizing, analyzing, communicating, and producing that

cut

across and transcend specific content and skills.

4. Role Performances

the complex demonstrations of all the

above in dealing with real-life issues, problems, and projects.

The first two categories have been the primary focus of conventional

school curriculum and testing for most of this

century and are

emphasized in virtually all the efforts to

move from a conventional to

a Learning Success paradigm of schooling. The latter two categories

represent the focus of the decided shift in perspectives about learning

and outcomes embodied in the Life Performance paradigm. They

include the more complex forms of mental processing (higher-order

competences) and the much more complex, realistic, and challenging

forms of applying all of these other kinds of learning in real-life

situations (role performances).

All nine reformers advocated improvements in

areas 1 and 2

because they are basics and minimums students

must have. Levin,

Schlechty, Sizer, and I were also outspoken in

our criticism of these

minimums remaining the standards on which America would continue

to define student achievement, its educational targets, and its

measure of educational effectiveness. In short, we argued that these

familiar basics:

Tap only the lower levels of learning and performance essential

for adults in the Information Age,

Reinforce an extremely constraining approach to teaching, and

Encourage a misguided reliance

on paper-pencil testing as the

measure of student competence and readiness for the adult world.

PARADIGM LOST

4(,

Such tests cannot begin to tap the complex competences required of

adults. Tests are educentric and reinforce a static and artificial struc-

turing of curriculum into segregated content areas

areas sanctified

100 years ago by the Committee of Ten, which don't match how the

brain functions or life works. Worst of all, they dilute our vision of

what educational preparation should ultimately do for young people

in the '90s and beyond. In effect, the ultimate illusion that they

perpetuate is that schools are good when they produce high test scores.

But this is saying that schools are effective because they teach stu-

dents to do school work well. Our paradigm was, dramatically

different. It held that schools are good when they equip all their

students for the future they will encounter as young adults. And, as

Lee Iacocca said at a major education conference in 1992, in that

future they won't be getting paid to do traditional school work.

Individually and collectively we were, in effect, challenging the

operational assumptions of the entire educational establishment:

textbook publishers, testing companies, accreditation agencies,

practicing educators, professional associations, teacher training

programs, subject matter organizations, high school graduation

requirements, state laws and regulations, college admissions criteria,

and, most of all, people like us

college-educated people who had

been through at least 16 years of education, which, we believed, had

advanced our lives and careers.

If that wasn't enough, we further argued that schools had to funda-

mentally change the way they were structured and did business so

that these life-performance abilities could be achieved. That meant

redefining schooling, not merely reforming it, and it meant that

anything less than paradigm transformation wasn't going to cut it.

The gauntlet was down!

Expanded conditions of success. Conditions of success are the factors

that directly influence students' chances of accomplishing the out-

comes their schools say. are important. The conditions of success,

which all nine of these,learning success reforms addressed in various

ways, fall into four broad categories:

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1. Beliefs and Priorities

the declared philosophy, assumptions,

driving premises, defining orientations, and criteria for decision

making districts and individual schools

were committed to

using with their students. This set of factors represents the

viewing dimension of paradigm change because it contains the

assumptions and beliefs through which reformers and educators

filter their experiences, perceive what is possible and desirable,

and define their roles and responsibilities.

2. Operating principles and processes

the standards and criteria

for action and decision making teachers and administrators

use

in carrying out their broad instructional responsibilities,

including planning, teaching, teaming, assessing, grading, and

advancing students through the curriculum

everything that

directly affects what, how, and how well students learn. Each

of these nine reform efforts approached these principles and

processes of schooling somewhat differently. Nevertheless, a

clear focus on intended learning results for all students,

expanding opportunities and methods to address different

stu-

dent learning rates and modalities, and high expectations

about quality learning and performance

were almost universal-

ly called for by each group. In fact, having

a framework of

declared principles and processes

was so important to the suc-

cess of school reform efforts that several reform groups required

schools to have large percentages of teachers, administrators,

board members, and parent representatives formally develop,

endorse, and agree to consistently adhere to

a framework of such

principles before they would agree to work with the district.

3. Organizational structures

the patterns of organizing and uti-

lizing time, space, staff, students, curriculum, and learning

resources that directly affect students' opportunities to suc-

cessfully learn the "significant" things in the curriculum. This

repatterning of key organizational resources in order to expand

opportunities for students to learn successfully is the true

meaning of the often misused term "restructuring." Of the nine

key groups under discussion,

none was more outspoken about

fundamentally restructuring the patterns of student-teacher

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assignment and instructional delivery in high schools than The

Coalition of Essential Schools. And no one was more outspo-

ken about removing arbitrary time and eligibility constraints

on student learning, assessment, and credentialing than Henry

Levin and myself. But all nine of us believed that these rigid

time and scheduling arrangements were causing otherwise pre-

ventable low achievement and failure and needed to be

changed. Changing these time-honored, time-based routines,

however, was unthinkable for many of the people we

addressed. Schools had been structured this way since they

had been students themselves, and they remained convinced

that something more flexible would surely lead to chaos.

4. Support conditions

the processes, strategies, and resources

used to mobilize interest in and commitment to "effectiveness

reform" within a state, district, or school and to strengthen the

integrity and impact of the first three conditions of success.

Support conditions usually related to how well a school's or

district's leadership and implementation strategies worked to

bring about needed program and instructional changes rather

than being those instructional intervention factors themselves.

Champlin, Comer, Lezotte, Phil Schlechty, and Bob Slavin

were strong advocates of these factors and conditions, along

with Levin and Sizer. Their reasoning was simple: Unless these

organizational culture and leadership preconditions were

soundly established, the desired changes embodied in the

other three sets of success conditions would not come to pass.

The only drawback to addressing these support conditions was

that schools could easily get themselves so absorbed in them

that the truly hard work of establishing the other three more

directly operational conditions of success would never come to

pass. Hence, the reform effort would eventually become a

notable non-event.

Without question, the combined knowledge base and implementation

strategies of these nine major reform approaches were sufficiently

developed by 1993 that a serious, coordinated paradigm transforma-

tion effort could have eventually succeeded in the United States. But

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each initiative was operating independently, and no agency with

national visibility, resources, and influence made any effort to

integrate, synthesize, and sponsor their collective work.

The Status of Federal Reform Efforts

By all appearances, the two major reform initiatives being launched

at the federal level in 1993 were both extremely educentric. One was

the New Standards Project (NSP), and the other was Goals 2000.

Both lay far outside the dialogue generated by the advocates of the

Future Empowerment paradigm.

NSP. Endorsed by the National Governors Association, the NSP was

designed to define for the nation as a whole what students should

know and be able to do as the result of their schooling experiences.

Enormous time and expense went into polling experts and teachers

from all over the country in all major subject areas regarding their

opinions about what was most important for students to get out of their

subjects. In most cases, the lists of standards for each subject was

voluminous, prompting me to note the irony that there wasn't a teacher

or policymaker anywhere who could meet all these standards because

they were created by specialists for specialists; yet we expected

every student in America to meet them. Not only was it impossible,

it was the wrong paradigm of competence for the Information Age.

In 1993, the NSP was gearing up to develop authentic assessments

for all of its educentric standards.

Goals 2000. Goals 2000 was an initiative begun under President

Bush that President Clinton continued. It was designed to provide

money to states and districts that undergo planning and improvement

efforts to enable their students to meet the newly developing national

standards. President Clinton had been a key player in developing this

initiative while governor of Arkansas and was a natural for supporting

it once in the White House. In 1993, the Clinton version of the

initiative was just taking form.

The Status of State Reform Efforts

The states played extremely different and paradoxical roles in the

emergence and loss of the Future Empowerment paradigm.

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In the first decade of the paradigm's development and eventual public

emergence roughly 1973-1983 the key reform figures of the era

believed the states were a key problem. The often serious differences

between state boards and state legislatures made this a period of

state-level paradigm paralysis. All state regulations concerning any-

thing related to the new paradigm were time based. The time-based/

Industrial Age features of schools were endless. Also, the initiatives

for school improvement that emanated from the states were wholly

educentric which was understandable given the period and

reinforced virtually everything the new paradigm ultimately sought to

change: outcomes, curriculum, assessments, credit, and accredita-

tion criteria, to name a few. Lastly, the most conspicuous initiatives

took the form of extremely unimaginative minimum competency test-

ing mandates that, in situations like Florida's, put the onus totally on

the students and threatened to block their grade-to-grade promotion

and high school graduation unless they passed.

The good news during this period, however, was the policy message

to districts. States were saying that student learning, rather than

courses taken, was going to become an increasingly critical factor in

complying with state expectations and regulations.

The second decade, 1983-1993, turned into one of paradigm chaos.

The release of A Nation At Risk and a host of other reports forced

everyone at all levels to take school reform seriously. But this time

they had very different and decidedly confusing paths from which to

choose. One path was that of educentrism: improve the effectiveness

of the elements of Iceberg paradigm. The other path (a la Levin,

Schlechty, Sizer, and Spady, among others) was to transform the

system and melt the Iceberg. But in the middle of this decade, a new

force emerged, the business community.

Business leaders pointed to a variety of studies and reports on the

Information Age labor market that showed that high school and even

good college graduates lacked the skills to compete in the transform-

ing labor market, and what students were taught in those academic

programs didn't match what complex new careers demanded. With

the help of reformer Willard Daggett, the business community could

point to major differences between our high school curricula and

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those of our chief economic competitors, Germany and Japan. Their

mantra: We are handicapped by an archaic curriculum!

Many people began to see that they were right, which led many

states to readdress their student outcomes.

In the meantime, Sizer and I kept harping away at what

we saw as

the lynch-pin of the entire Educentric Iceberg paradigm: The

Carnegie unit

defined universally across the country as 120 hours

of seat time. Sit there long enough, get Ds, and you graduate. States,

we argued, had to give local districts relief from this rigid time struc-

ture if they were going to effectively make performance the real

criterion for graduation. As I often said: You can't be outcome based

and still be time based. They're fundamentally inconsistent.

Four Near Paradigm Breakers. To the best of my knowledge, four

states

Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania

had gotten

this latter message by 1993. Each was poised to pull the plug

on the

clock and calendar as the undisputed definers of schooling, curricu-

lum, and credit. Florida and Oregon were also preparing to totally

break paradigm by developing future-focused role performances

their definition of learning outcomes essential for high school gradu-

ation. With some resistance, Minnesota was revising a set of

primarily higher-order competence outcomes, and Pennsylvania

was

poised to pass a set of 52 student learning outcomes classified into

goal areas that ranged from purely academic to life performance.

This eclectic Pennsylvania framework was intended to replace time

as the determining factor for student graduation, and it served as the

flash point of the heated national opposition to a broad

range of

reforms that all got called outcome-based education.

Many other states were still busy defining what they called out-

comes, or desired competences, for their students in 1993. Their

outcomes were usually locally developed combinations of knowledge

skills and higher-order skills, but they had much more of

a future

focus to them because of the business influence. Nevertheless, most

states had left the time issue unaddressed and were destined to

remain what I called "time-based with outcomes sprinkled on top."

PARADIGM LOST

Although the number of states poised on the cutting edge of paradigm

transformation in 1993 was small, it was absolutely clear that state

policymaking bodies across the country had become strongly results

oriented by that time. In 1993 most discussions in state capitals about

educational reform centered on desired student outcomes. Today, the

word "outcomes" is only spoken in private, behind closed doors.

The Status of Local Reform Efforts

Local implementation and change efforts take place in a policy arena

shaped primarily by state laws and regulations. To deviate much

from the old paradigm constraints that those regulations typically

impose is to invite legal trouble. Therefore, superintendents and

local school boards are generally on the safest ground when they

avoid doing anything new of significance, which usually leaves

reforms involving systemic change and paradigm transformation out

of the question.

But by 1993, enough local superintendents had heard enough per-

suasive information about the Future Empowerment paradigm that

they had taken action to change their schools. While many operated

in virtual isolation, supported only by the national networks and

support groups formed by these reformers, others created or joined

consortia of districts in their areas that:

Gave them inexpensive access to cutting-edge thinking and

technical support;

Allowed a critical mass of innovators and implementers to regu-

larly and easily meet and share information;

Allowed them to collaborate on solving common problems and

on developing new strategies and products;

Provided a mutual support network for reform and innovation

in their states; and

Enabled them to mount a concerted lobbying effort with their

state agencies and state boards to create more forward-looking

reform policies and regulatory incentives or waivers that would

encourage and legitimate their local reforms.

PARADIGM LOST

I was directly involved in helping form such consortia in Arizona,

California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oklahoma,

Texas, and Wisconsin, and I know that several of the other national

reformers had done the same thing through their work. Significantly,

almost all of these local consortium efforts were funded out of district

budgets, although some received supplemental funding for promising

innovations via competitive grants from their states.

If all of this activity constituted "the smoke" of paradigm transforma-

tion, the real issue for all of us remained: Where's the fire? Who was

really doing something that was significant in terms of defining more

powerful, future-focused learner outcomes or implementing the con-

ditions of success in ground-breaking and effective ways? And who

was getting better learning results that showed that the tremendous

efforts being made locally by key leaders and implementation teams

were worth it?

For those who took the most rigorous interpretation of the learning

success features of the Future Empowerment paradigm seriously and

were involved with outcome-based education, several districts were on

a "must see" list in 1993 . Each could show visitors either impres-

sive improvements in results, exemplary designs and strategies, or

both. They were Aurora, Colo.; College Community Schools, Cedar

Rapids, Iowa; Glendale (Arizona) Union High School District;

Johnson City Central Schools, New York; Lucia Mar Unified School

District, Arroyo. Grande, Calif.; Mooresville, N.C.; Township High

School District 214, Arlington Heights, Ill.; and Yarmouth, Maine.

Some were already receiving national attention for their pioneering

efforts with the Life Performance paradigm as well. And for every

one of these "national standouts," dozens of other districts were

emulating them by taking bold steps to define and improve their

learning outcomes and transforming the conditions of success on

which those outcomes depended.

Because of exceptional building leadership and excellent district sup-

port, three individual schools were also on the national "must see" list:

Alhambra High School in Phoenix, Ariz.; Grosse Pointe South High

School in Grosse Pointe, Mich.; and Southridge Middle School in

Fontana, Calif.

PARADIGM LOST

And for each of these schools hundreds of others were making seri-

ous inroads into improving their instructional systems and students'

success in line with the Learning Success paradigm.

But, were there enough schools and districts in 1993 to create the

critical mass necessary for tipping the policy and practice momen-

tum in the direction of this new paradigm? Clearly not. But that

momentum was steadily building through the tireless efforts of the

reformers, their associates, and local implementers.

The Attack on the Paradigm

Each student shall gain knowledge of various cultures and

lifestyles in order to foster an appreciation of the dignity,

worth, contribution, and equal rights of all peoples.

These words brought down the Future Empowerment paradigm. They

were the summary statement embodying Goal 6 of the proposed

Pennsylvania Student Learning Outcomes, a goal called "Appreciating

and Understanding Others." But they were not at all appreciated in

1992 by a small cadre of Western Pennsylvania conservatives who

saw them as the overt endorsement of irresponsible and reprehensible

lifestyles to which they vehemently objected and did not want their

children exposed

especially in school. When they read this word-

ing, they concluded that in the name of something called

"outcome-based education," the state of Pennsylvania was going to

force their children to value and endorse things like multicultural-

ism, premarital sex, homosexuality, and a variety of other assaults on

their values, or else they wouldn't receive a high school diploma.

To them this statement an outcome imbedded in a larger reform

effort being called "OBE" represented the worst possible combi-

nation of secular humanist philosophy, New Age lifestyles, and

governmental tyranny, and they were determined to resist it. After

their initial attempts to get these objectionable items changed or

deleted from the state's framework of expected outcomes were

denied, they decided political confrontation was their only recourse.

By opposing outcomes, they were primarily attacking the life-perfor-

mance elements of the larger Future Empowerment paradigm. By

ij 0 PARADIGM LOST

opposing OBE, they challenged many of its key learning success

elements as well. While the reform work most closely identified with

the OBE label received the brunt of the attack, all reform work that

had anything to do with outcomes was viewed with suspicion.

In other words, OBE became the opponents' catch phrase for virtually

everything related to more progressive and flexible ways of conducting

education. This was not a situation in which professionally acceptable

standards of evidence were being used. To the critics, any practices

alleged to be OBE were OBE; it mattered little whether the educators

or experts they encountered claimed that these practices were unre-

lated to the essence and defining principles of OBE. In effect, there

were two paradigms operating: theirs and ours. And ours lost.

The Mechanisms of the Attack

To a person, those who experienced this attack first-hand were

astounded by its speed, intensity, organization, and breadth. These

and many other mechanisms were used by the critics to stop the

menace they called OBE:

Large protest rallies were held in state capitals across the

country, attacking any and all proposed school reforms having

to do with outcomes.

State legislatures and school boards were lobbied intensively

to abandon plans to carry out outcome-based reforms.

State superintendents were openly and vehemently criticized

for their advocacy or support of anything containing outcomes

or resembling OBE.

Local and national radio talk shows were filled with ongoing

criticisms of OBE as the certain destroyer of what little

integrity and rigor was left in public education.

Public forums featuring national anti-OBE "experts" were held

throughout the country.

Anti-OBE campaigns led by a small number of circuit riders

were held in hundreds of local communities targeting every-

thing in their programs that looked like OBE.

PARADIGM LOST

Videotapes, articles, books, and huge binders of information care-

fully documenting OBE's dangers and proven weaknesses

surfaced any time opponents chose to examine suspect practices

in local districts.

Throughout the country, hundreds of people were bused to

school board meetings of neighboring districts to protest what

they were doing related to OBE.

Local superintendents, board members, and curriculum lead-

ers were targeted and ousted.

Anti-OBE "stealth" candidates were elected to local school

boards and revealed their true policy positions only after winning.

The Internet was filled with articles exposing the alleged

weaknesses of OBE.

A variety of national and local organizations circulated news-

letters to policymakers and activists providing the opposition's

unique take on the inherent or already "proven" dangers of

OBE

often with each repeating the same misspellings and

typos found in the others.

And lists

everywhere there were people carrying lists of the

names of key OBE advocates to watch out for (many of whom

had never had anything to do with OBE at all) and educational

practices that were dangerous because they were alleged to sim-

ply be OBE in disguise (Spady 1994). These practices included:

Anything outcome-based, performance-based, or results-based;

Cooperative learning and learning teams;

Collaborative or service learning projects;

Critical or constructivist thinking;

Social competence and responsibility;

Attitudes and values;

Human psychology and development;

Personal wellness;

PARADIGM LOST

Sexual development or sexual behavior;

Ungraded classrooms or schools;

Flexible or multi-age grouping;

Flexible or year-round scheduling;

Performance rubrics or portfolios;

Computer-based record keeping;

Multicultural content;

Whole-language reading instruction;

Learning styles; and

Strategic planning.

The Substance of the Attack

At the 1994 AASA National Conference on Education, I identified

six major issues at the crux of the attacks against OBE. Two months

later I became heavily engaged in a reconciliation effort with Robert

Simonds, president of Citizens for Excellence in Education, one of

the highly visible national opposition leaders. We discussed the

major objections to, and misunderstandings about, OBE face to face

on repeated occasions, and his observations and those of his col-

league, Arnold Burron, were extremely enlightening. Consequently,

I identified nine major areas of misunderstanding and disagreement

(see Spady 1994). My current and more mature perspectives follow.

OBE as New Age ideology. The mountains of contrary'evidence

offered by reformers and educators were not sufficient to dispel the

critics' overwhelming concern that outcomes were intended to

promote a particular world view. The bedrock of their concerns were

selected "outcome statements" developed by states and local dis-

tricts, which they believed implied that students were to assume a

particular point of view about a range of social, environmental,

political, or personal issues. What they objected to was the liberal,

humanist, New Age, multicultural, or ecumenical bias they detected

in what they called these values statements.

PARADIGM LOST

Their mounting concerns about schools having abandoned genuine

moral standards for student behavior were deepened when they saw

outcome statements they believed advocated or tolerated an "any-

thing goes"/New Age philosophy. Unfortunately, the critics portrayed

the bias found in some statements as the defining characteristic of

all outcomes.

OBE as psychological manipulation. Moral and philosophical

affronts intensified when the critics noted that these objectionable

statements were declared by educators to be "expected outcomes."

To them this meant that all students, including their own, were going

to have to publicly demonstrate the substance of these statements or

risk not graduating. This they regarded as psychological manipula-

tion and coercion of their children.

Because they found some of these statements to be morally objection-

able to themselves and to their children, they found it morally

intrusive that (they believed) their children would be forced to advo-

cate these things in school against their personal beliefs and will,

and that schools (i.e., the state) would be testing and evaluating their

children on them. This meant that their children were going to be

judged and graded on the correctness of their beliefs and their

adherence to a humanist (read anti-Christian) ideology. That, they

argued, was moral coercion.

Because the leaders of this protest movement chose to characterize

all outcomes as psychological

which they took to mean affective

and attitudinal in nature

they declared the purpose of outcomes to

be mind control. This viewpoint was hammered home repeatedly, and

no information from educators showing piles and piles of cognitive

and academic outcomes and achievements altered their viewpoint.

OBE as the abandonment of academics. This position was a direct

outgrowth of the first two, and it required the critics to ignore all

kinds of evidence to the contrary and to base their conclusions on

three major "facts."

In an early article, Bloom had written about how key student

self-concept was to learning motivation and success. This, the

PARADIGM LOST 49

critics alleged, meant that all outcome-based instruction was sim-

ply about self-concept and "feel-good fluff," not real learning.

They had already declared outcomes to be psychological and

affective in nature, which they further claimed was the oppo-

site of academic rigor.

Because these psychological and affective outcomes did not

contain words that included specific or familiar mathematics,

science, and history content, outcomes inherently weren't

about academics.

Further, critics viewed outcomes as a liberally inspired way of get-

ting schools to spend time promoting a humanistic, multicultural,

social agenda that would further undermine the strength of the

country. They believed these curriculum time wasters would also

undermine the academic standing our schools once enjoyed

because children would be getting even less academic content and

rigor than they currently got, which wasn't nearly enough. Because

they were able to document these positions to the satisfaction of

their constituents, they came to have widespread credibility.

OBE as further government control. The very fact that the outcomes

under dispute in Pennsylvania were being "imposed by the state" put the

role of government right at the heart of OBE and the word government

in the middle of all discussions. And, more than anything, protesters

brought with them an intense dislike and distrust of government,

including, I discovered from Marshall Fritz, executive director of the

Separation of School and State Alliance, "government schools"

something I had always known as public schools. According to this

line of thinking, public schools were simply another agency of the

government undermining the authority and autonomy of families, and

Pennsylvania OBE was the prime example.

To compound this issue, the OBE efforts going on in local districts

and in states like Pennsylvania and Oregon quickly became associ-

ated with another visible governmental intervention in education,

Goals 2000. As quick as a blink, OBE was alleged to be Goals 2000,

which was seen as a federally inspired imposition on local educa-

tional prerogatives that many conservatives had fought bitterly in

PARADIGM LOST

Washington since its inception. From there the connection to the

internationalist orientations of our federal government was made, and

soon OBE was alleged to be a conspiracy of the internationalists and

United Nations sympathizers to promote a new world order agenda

on the United States and Pennsylvania's "Citizenship" and

"Appreciating and Understanding Others" goals proved it.

OBE as an unproven social experiment. Within months of the public

protests against OBE, critics charged that no research or scientific

evidence supported that OBE worked. Instead, they had gathered a

range of data and argumentation to allege that OBE (which they felt

generally embodied all of the liberal and psychological things that

they didn't like about "progressive" education) had been going on for

decades in the United States and was the very cause of the decline

in reading and math scores, teacher effectiveness, and so on, which

plagued our schools. Included in their research base were lists of

places where OBE allegedly was tried, failed, and abandoned

virtually none of which was true or made any sense to those of us who

knew the situations they were describing. Nonetheless, in a matter of

months, OBE had gone from being decried as something new that

was going to be imposed on local districts, to something that local

districts had been doing for decades that had either not worked at all

or had led to their downfall.

OBE as the exploitation of labor. Because Pennsylvania's Student

Learning Outcomes framework also had a goal called "Career

Education and Work," and because the opposition had already

declared OBE to be the vehicle liberals and the government were

using to undermine academic programs and integrity in local

schools, it was easy for them to conclude that a key part of the new

world order would be a capable and psychologically malleable work-

force that would be the worker bees for the international cartels that

actually ran the world and our federal government.

From all appearances, critics drew this conclusion from decades of

experience with the public schools in which the "academic" students

and the "career" students were involved in distinctly different cur-

riculum tracks. To make "Career and Education and Work"

outcomes a requirement for all students was further proof of a desire

'PARADIGM LOST

to make all students worker bees, undermine academics, and "dumb

down" an entire generation of young people to ensure that a supply

of mindless drones would be available to keep the internationalist

economic machinery going.

"Success for all learners" as dumbing down. Compounding this fear

of a dumbed down curriculum and dumbed down America was

OBE's commitment to success for all learners. How could there be

success for all, critics argued, if some students were smart and some

were dumb? The only way you could call the dumb successful was to

lower standards to the point that even they could meet them. These

lower standards, they argued, would then lead to an across-the-board

dilution of expectations and standards for the smart as well, which

would leave us with a homogeneous mass of incompetents. And all of

this was being done so that the less able could "feel good about

themselves" as learners.

OBE's critics viewed standards and success situated at opposite ends

of a "fixed commodity/win-lose" teeter totter of achievement (Spady

1994). Because there's only so much achievement to go around, they

reason, you either have to lower standards to get more success or

lower the rate of success if you raise standards. They did not recog-

nize that another alternative existed: an "expandable commodity/

win-win" elevator of achievement. Although the latter had been the

guiding metaphor of OBE for over a decade, we had not gotten that

message across clearly enough to educators and parents.

"Success for all learners" as socialism. In addition, the opposition saw

in OBE's commitment to "success for all" the embracing of an egali-

tarian, socialistic philosophy taken to extremes. When tied to their

perception of the moral erosion, lowering of standards, and dumbing

down that were inevitable consequences of OBE, critics ultimately

saw it as a foreign-inspired socialist conspiracy to both morally and

intellectually weaken the country. Furthermore, they saw the seeds of

an anti-competition/anti-capitalist ideology that represented to them

the ultimate goal of socialism.

PARADIGM LOST

The point that I and other reform advocates never got across to the

critics of OBE (and to a lot of educators) was that the commitment to

create successful learning for all students did not assume that students

would all end up with the equal achievement of "minimums" and no

more. OBE and the other learning success reforms were committed

to raising expectations for all learners including the smart

that all students could be learning more and better. To do that

schools needed to clearly define what they meant by outcomes and

by achievement levels and then document how far students had got-

ten in reaching thoge levels.

We were not able to get that to happen convincingly enough and in

enough places prior to 1993 to avoid fear setting in among both the

critics and the educators involved at the technical tinkering and seg-

mental change levels of reform. The critics feared what their

perception of OBE would do to their children and the country. The

educators, who neither understood nor could articulately address the

pros and cons of these issues, feared what the critics would do to them.

Consequently, the major elements of the Future Empowerment para-

digm that it took decades to nurture and develop was lost as a driving

force in school reform on a national scale in less than two years.

PARADIGM LOST

CHAPTER 4

ASSESSING OUR LOSS

In February 1993, over 800 educators attended the annual National

Outcome-Based Education Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. They left

energized and anxious to make a difference in their home districts.

Two years later the conference was canceled due to lack of attendance.

In June 1993, over 300 educators attended a major conference in

Colorado focused on the "transformational" approach to OBE.

They left energized and anxious to carry the Future Empowerment

paradigm back to their districts. Two years later that conference was

also canceled due to lack of attendance.

By 1995 numerous articles in both the regular and educational press

had reported on communities from coast to coast being torn apart

over issues surrounding the word "outcomes" and the term "OBE."

Their political climates were described as negative, ugly, divisive,

and polarized, and the relations between segments of the community

and school leaders were often depicted as strained and distrustful.

Just saying "the 0 word" in public was an invitation to trouble, so

most educators and board members did what they could to avoid the

inevitable confrontation.

Our Initial Losses

More than outcome-based education and the Future Empowerment

paradigm were lost during this two-year period. Whether educators

realized it or not, the entire profession of education received a stun-

ning body blow in 1993 and 1994. The climate of optimism and

innovation that seemingly broke through during the early '90s had

turned into intimidation and retreat by 1995. Sure, new budget short-

ages arose in many areas in late '93, and lots of fiscal conservatives

were elected to school boards and state legislatures in '94; these were

inevitable and recurring situations educational leaders had learned

how to face. But this was different. This was a serious backlash

against outcome-focused change that ran across the board.

PARADIGM LOST

The losses associated with this backlash

can be clustered and

described, in many ways, but seven losses stand_ out

as the most

devastating to educators. They are summarized in Figure 4.1.

Loss of Leadership

Loss of Momentum

Loss of Efficacy

Loss of Integrity

Loss of Trust

Loss of Vision

Loss of Connection

Figure 4.1

Education's Key Losses

Loss of Leadership

Generally, the people involved in any major change effort fall into

eight broad groups:

Generators

Advocates

Innovators

Replicators

Supporters

Bystanders

Skeptics

Opponents

Anyone in any position in education

can play any one of these roles.

For example, a superintendent could be

a generator of paradigm ideas

regarding a specific change effort, or an opponent of those ideas

as could any teacher, principal, board member, or parent.

PARADIGM LOST

Generators and advocates were the key leaders in the Future

Empowerment paradigm change process.. Innovators, replicators, and

supporters were their followers and actually got the new ideas in

place and working. The success of this change effort depended on

the leaders (1) continuously recruiting and expanding the number of

innovators in their districts, (2) encouraging them to influence and

recruit more replicators and supporters, and (3) converting

bystanders into supporters. Between 1973 and 1993 progress was

slow, but key examples of the Future Empowerment paradigm were

under way when the momentum shifted.

As in guerrilla warfare, the opponents of the Future Empowerment

paradigm gained their success by launching a surprise attack on

many simultaneous fronts that caught the leadership cadre completely

unprepared, seriously disrupting and neutralizing it. between 1993

and 1995, state superintendents from Florida, Minnesota, Ohio,

Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia who were recognized as advocates

or supporters of the new reforms were either forced out of their jobs or

sought refuge from the fire storm. Their departures made headlines in

the educational press, and sent powerful signals across the country

that supporting new paradigm reforms and regulatory changes at the

state level was a huge risk for anyone who valued job security.

Simultaneously, a similar fate befell advocate, innovator, and supporter

board members, superintendents, curriculum leaders, and program

specialists in local districts, but in far greater numbers. The shock

waves of fear, intimidation, and caution that these confrontations and

firings caused within their communities and states were devastating.

Local educators hit the fox holes in droves just to survive, and this

fear factor made it much easier for the opponents to convert innova-

tors, replicators, and supporters into bystanders; skeptics into

opponents; and bystanders into skeptics. It worked. Within two

years, 20 years of intense effort by generators and advocates to shift

the paradigm of education had been stigmatized and left for dead.

Gone were the presence, voice, influence, and example of key fig-

ures in local communities and state capitals who had championed

student learning, new ideas, and productive change. Gone too were

the national generators and advocates of these transforming and

69AR

ADIGNI LOST

empowering ideas, for they had become just as stigmatized as the

concepts they had pioneered. No more attendance at conferences, no

more materials purchases, no more strategic planning, no more staff

development, no more open discussion, no more questioning the

tried and true, and no more references to "the 0 word." John

Champlin, Al Mamary, Kit Marshall, Spence Rogers, Larry Rowe,

and yours truly became non-persons. It was as if we never existed

just like OBE. Systemic educational reform had been placed in a

wasteland

and replaced by national and state content standards

and test scores.

Loss of Momentum

The years of continuous effort by a number of generators, advocates,

and innovators to bring the paradigm to where it was in 1993 plus the

ten-year period of largely conceptual work that preceded it repre-

sented a natural evolution of new thinking, research, and action that

began to accelerate rapidly during the early '90s.

It had taken seven years to finally establish an annual OBE confer-

ence that had the stature and substance to ultimately draw 800

people. It took an equal number of years to establish the stature and

substance to ultimately draw 300 people to Colorado. It took

many

years also for some of the top generators, advocates, and innovators

of the paradigm to be invited to present at state and national confer-

ences of major educational associations

AASA being the key

exception. And it took several years for the sessions of those

new

paradigm leaders to draw large audiences at those conferences. And

we must remember that this a movement starting from the ground

with no major stigmas, red flags, and black balls attached

they are now. True, when this paradigm transformation effort first

began it had no visibility and name recognition, but it also carried

no negative baggage. Today, board policy in many districts prevents

staff from receiving funds to participate in or attend professional

events such as these because the topics and presenters are suspect.

Under circumstances like these, just getting back to ground

zero

would be a major achievement, let alone climbing the mountain

again. The real bad news, however, is that a policy-driven loss of

momentum such as this creates its own self-reinforcing downward

spiral as illustrated in Figure 4.2.

PARADIGM L0570

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Figure 4.2

The Spiraling Loss of Momentum for Change

The less often you encounter new paradigm thinking and action, the

less likely you are to want to pursue it, which means that your col-

leagues will then have even less to encounter and pursue, and so on.

Add to this the diminished leadership to stimulate attention on these

issues, and you have a lethal double whammy.

Loss of Efficacy

Educators across the board have experienced a serious loss of

efficacy in two major ways. First, educators have lost ground as pro-

fessionals. They can no longer feel confident about acting on the

basis of best research and knowledge, or in making sound profes-

sional decisions in the best interests of their students. External

pressure, not internal judgment, is driving instructional planning,

content, delivery, and assessment.

ADIGM LOST

Second, the impetus to apply new paradigm thinking to educational

practice has diminished greatly. When impetus diminishes,

so does

the likelihood that educators will continue to apply

new paradigm

thinking to their work. And when the intensity and quality of appli-

cation go down, so do the effectiveness of practice, its effect

students, and the results. What once made

a big difference and gave

those involved a sense of pride no longer does so because what

they're doing just isn't the same as before. And, of

course, this gives

replicators, bystanders, and skeptics grounds for saying: "Gee, why

bother? This new stuff doesn't work much better than what I have

been doing all along anyway."

Loss of Integrity

Accompanying a loss of efficacy is a loss of integrity. The standards

of using sound research, best evidence, objective analysis,

accurate

representation of ideas and data, and professional criteria regarding

job performance have all been seriously compromised in the face of

the intense political pressures that brought the paradigm down. It

may be "smart" to change the names of things to get them accepted,

but it is not professional. It may be "smart" to

use methods and

materials that do not pass the test of best practices in order

to avoid

public ridicule or sanction, but it is not professional. And it

may be

"smart" to constrain learning and success opportunities for students

in order to keep your job, but it is not professional. Today's truly

professional educators know it and feel the pain.

Clearly, the ideological strictures that have been placed

on some

school districts have put honest, effective educators in

an enormous

moral bind. They genuinely want to

serve their students, but in doing

so they can't say certain words, cite or use particular research mate-

rials, or attend professional development seminars. To keep their

jobs they have had to fudge on their integrity. Yet without integrity,

these educators compromise their professionalism, and without their

professionalism they experience a further loss of integrity. In the

absence of integrity, dishonesty and expediency prevail.

Loss of Trust

The advocates and innovators trusted the research, trusted the

results they were getting with their students, and trusted that their

PARADIGM LOST

,72

communities would support their efforts and successes as they said

they would in public forums and planning sessions. Moreover, their

colleagues trusted them. But fearing that they'd seen serious change

efforts come and go in their schools too many times, many skeptics

and bystanders waited to be sure things were "for real" this time.

Once convinced that they were, many of them eventually jumped in

and became supporters and replicators

just in time to have the

rug pulled out from under them, again.

Advocates and innovators are inherently risk takers. They are moti-

vated and energized by new ideas and promising possibilities. By

jumping in first, trying out and testing new things, and sharing the

results, they embody leadership and model professionalism for their

colleagues. When they took initiative and pursued the Future

Empowerment paradigm, there was more to risk than usual because

they were asking their colleagues to make the big plunge into deep

water. No more technical tinkering, folks! Don't be satisfied with seg-

mental change! We won't discover our real potential or our students'

potential until we're well into systemic change or beyond, based on

the elements of the Future Empowerment paradigm.

Advocates and innovators are famous for being idealistic and

resilient; but their colleagues rarely share their capacity for major

disappointment. So don't expect many to cross the line the next time

someone is looking for volunteers to try something new that's good

for kids. They are likely to be in the staff lounge signing up their col-

leagues to become bystanders and skeptics.

Loss of Vision

Leadership and vision are synonymous. At a minimum, loss of leader-

ship creates short-term loss of vision

the ability to see beyond the

daily grind to what lies ahead and the new possibilities that exist. The

attack on the new paradigm was a frontal attack on precisely this kind

of vision: future-focused, open-system, research-oriented, imagina-

tive, logical, and humane

orientations the opposition did not share.

Advocates and innovators are fueled by their vision and they love to

share it with others. Many of them were targeted by the opposition

precisely because their vision of the possible for their students was

PARADIGM LOST 61

confusing and threatening to those who could only

see the paradigm

of schooling in the conventional Educentric Iceberg

way they had

experienced it as students. Removing, demoting, and constraining

these leaders were powerful ways of silencing

or diminishing the

expression of their vision.

But vision has a way of resurfacing, especially given the powerful

forces of change, instantaneous worldwide communication, and infor-

mation sharing that exist today. The opposition may have

won the

initial battle over vision, but they can't win the

war. The Information

Age is too big for them to control and constrain, and it is too big for

public education to resist or deflect. And if the opposition can't win

the war of vision, they won't be able to win the

war of leadership

either; those with courage and imagination will.

Loss of Connection

An extremely unfortunate disconnect between the public schools and

a significant constituency in our society had already reached the

danger level by the early '90s. When that constituency finally lashed

out at the schools with a vengeance in '93 and '94, it only magnified

the disconnect.

In March 1994, I was introduced to Robert Simonds, president of

Citizens for Excellence in Education and the National Association of

Christian Educators. Simonds was widely recognized

as one of the key

leaders of the attack on OBE, and I had just watched him decry OBE

before a huge audience of educators. Our unplanned and totally

surprising conversation lasted 35 minutes, and neither of

understood a word the other was saying. Our world views and frames

of reference were so different that we couldn't comprehend the

other's words. In truth, we were totally disconnected from each

other's world and paradigm.

Simonds and I agreed to keep talking. It was difficult, frustrating,

and time consuming for both of us, but after several months of

regular meetings and phone calls, the common ground

we hoped

might emerge finally did. I learned an enormous amount about the

philosophy, assumptions, thinking, and concerns of "Traditionalist

Christians," and Simonds learned a lot about the motivations,

PARADIGM LOST

7 4

capabilities, and integrity of "New Age Liberals." With the unwaver-

ing and insightful help of our mutual colleague, Arnold Burron, we

formally agreed to work together to bring peace, reason, and recon-

ciliation to the many states and districts being torn apart over

disagreements about educational philosophy and practice.

Simonds was filled with stories about how public school educators

had impolitely refused to discuss the legitimate and reasonable con-

cerns and requests of

Traditionalist Christian parents. When, from

his point of view, his constituents had turned their cheeks too many

times on too many issues, they finally decided that

confrontational

politics was the only way to get educational leaders to take them

seriously. They went all out. I had to acknowledge that I had not seen

things from that point of view, and that building on the common-

ground connections that he and I had established was the most

important thing we could do together.

I am convinced that our schools will remain under constant duress as

long as powerful, passionate constituencies are disconnected. Yes, com-

ing to complete agreement may, indeed, be impossible;

establishing

common ground is not. It will just take enormous

effort and patience.

I am also convinced that the best hope for regaining both the

Future

Empowerment paradigm and the other things professional educators

have lost is to equip local leaders with the insights and urgency

that

compel them to inspire their communities with a vision of what

their

current schools can and must become.

Without local leaders stepping

forward to mobilize and encourage their communities, there is

little

hope that we can recapture these serious losses of momentum,

efficacy, integrity, trust, vision, and connection.

Where We Stand Today

In Chapter 4 of my book on OBE (Spady 1994), I identify the

four

faces of OBE: classroom reform, program alignment, external

accountability, and system transformation. These faces are the way

both OBE and the larger Future Empowerment paradigm appear to

people

the way they interpret and act on what they think these

concepts are all about. Each face is dramatically

different in focus

,-75

PARADIGM LOST

and scope, and each provides

an excellent backdrop to understand-

ing where school reform stands today

as the result of our lost Future

Empowerment paradigm.

The Status of Classroom

eforms

Classrooms are where the rubber

meets the road; where the direct

instructional interventions of teachers happen and

formal student

learning is most directly shaped. If change doesn't

happen there,

then there's little reason to believe that student

learning will

improve. But classrooms are only micro

systems in the larger picture

of paradigm change and need

to be understood that way. They are

vital part

but only a part

of what it takes to shift the paradigm of

education. Given our long-standing tradition of

having self-contained/

self-constrained classrooms, instructional improvement

has been

wholly dependent on what each individual

teacher chooses to do and

is capable of doing with students. In effect, focusing

on individual

classroom change compels

us to launch two million individual reform

efforts with no assurance of achieving collaboration

or coordination

across the hallways, which is a precondition for

any systemic reform.

With this major caveat in mind, it

appears that today's world of class-

room reform is focused on four major themes. Each overlaps with and

reinforces key elements of

our lost paradigm. These themes are con-

structivist learning, integrated curriculum, learning

modalities, and

performance assessment. Each theme is research-based,

has a variety

of well-recognized generators and advocates,

and receives loads of

attention in the publications and

programs of education associations.

And note: Each is out of step with the educational

preferences of

those who oppose the Future Empowerment

paradigm.

Constructivist learning. Constructivist learning is

probably the domi-

nant theme in instructional improvement today. It

emanates from a

variety of research studies and models of how the

human brain works

and how children actually learn. It is

very much about learning suc-

cess and potentially opens the door to future empowerment.

Its advocates argue that the brain builds frameworks

of meaning and

connections among individual pieces of information;

that is, that

things don't make sense and get remembered

unless they relate to

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construct or concept already familiar to the learner.

Consequently,

they encourage learners to discover new things and make connec-

tions among them as a way of building systems of meaning and

stimulating intellectual growth. This is done through active learning,

with learners intensely engaged in accessing their own information,

discovering and analyzing interesting things about it, and creating

things with what they have discovered.

Constructivist learning is down on textbooks

boring tools for pro-

moting passive learning and high on critical thinking. Hence, the

teacher's job is not to give students lots of facts to memorize (which

is the paradigm that the critics favor), but to help students build

meaning and connections among all of the things they encounter.

The critics of the Future Empowerment paradigm, on the other hand,

love textbooks that are factual rather than "ideologically biased," but

intensely dislike both active learning (because of its broad focus and

open structure) and critical thinking

(because it endangers parental

prerogatives to shape their children's beliefs).

Integrated curriculum. Directly supporting this emphasis on con-

structivist learning is an emphasis on Integrated Curriculum, which

is closely connected to two other trends: interdisciplinary instruction

and problem-based learning. All three approaches advocate having

students build rich connections among ideas and information in

whatever form they encounter them, and all three are congruent with

elements of the Future Empowerment paradigm.

Integrated curriculum, interdisciplinary instruction, and problem-

based learning represent a direct challenge to the century-old

practice of teaching content as isolated subjects separated by the

seemingly insurmountable walls called "the disciplines": mathematics,

science, social science, English, and so on. That subject structure is

cast in concrete via our system of graduation requirements,

which

stipulates how many years of particular discipline-based subjects

students must pass in order to graduate.

Many reformers have argued that the tremendous lack of connection

among courses prevents students from seeing

connections that exist

and inhibits them from deriving greater meaning from the content

they encounter. But integrated curriculum is viewed negatively by

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the critics of reform because they perceive it

as an attempt to make

curriculum artificially "relevant" which to them

means dumbed

down, and the opposite of academic and rigorous. They

only regard

subjects with familiar, discipline-based

names as legitimate founda-

tions of intellectual learning, and they view

attempts to alter this

academic structure as unjustified experimentalism and

a deliberate

lowering of standards.

Learning modalities. For nearly two decades, educators

have been

exposed to the notion of learning styles. The

generators and advocates

of this approach demonstrate that

some people learn more easily

through hands-on manipulation, others through words, and

others

through pictures. From

some, understanding comes when things are

concrete and practical. For others, things only click when the broader

concept is clear and fits into a bigger picture of ideas and relation-

ships. Howard Gardner's (1993) notion of multiple intelligences

expanded this field by suggesting that

persons actually have multiple

dimensions of natural ability, which schools typically fail

to tap.

Research shows that the vast amount of teaching in the

upper grades

fits one single learning pattern: verbal-abstract. Those whose

domi-

nant learning modality matches this methodology end

up being good

students; those whose don't match it rarely do. Most

verbal-abstract

learners go to college, and do well there. Some then become

teachers,

and teach the way they learn best

further reinforcing this one

modality. As a result, countless children end

up classified as slow or

poor learners even though they have many gifts that

go unrecognized.

Since the learning modalities approach deliberately

tries to discover

and build these other dimensions of talent, the challenge

for teachers

is to diversify their instructional approach sufficiently

so that more

students can involve themselves successfully in the

material being

addressed. However, the critics of reform

care little for this approach

because they believe it is soft,

opens the door to classroom activities

that look suspiciously non-academic, and devotes disproportionate

attention to those who lack the academic talents that, in their

view,

schools should spend more time cultivating.

Performance assessment. The evaluation (read "macro testing")

student learning is close to

an obsession with elected officials. But

PARADIGM LOST

7 8

performance assessment is something different. Known by a variety of

often-misused terms, performance assessment is about determining

and documenting what students can actually do with what they know.

It is about familiar terms like "competence," "application," "applied

competence," "performance," and "authentic performance" things

people actually do when carrying out everything from simple tasks to

complex projects. It's totally consonant with the life-performance

elements of the Future Empowerment paradigm.

Performance assessment is not about filling in blanks on answer

sheets; it's about having teachers establish the clear criteria that

constitute a quality student performance, having students execute

the performance, and assessing whether all of the essential criteria

are present and complete in the performance. This takes

profoundly

more thought and planning than developing a 10-item test

with each

item worth 10 points. And because educators are caught in the

extremely unfortunate illusion that scores are measures, enormous

misinformed attention is being paid to helping teachers "score"

these "authentic" performances.

The good news here is that performance assessment is compelling

teachers to be much clearer than before about what demonstrations

of learning really matter and fully embody the goals they have for

their students. Consequently, teachers are dramatically expanding

the range of things students are being encouraged to do to show that

they are competent, not just knowledgeable.

What is not news is that the critics view all of this, including the

words "rubrics" and "portfolios" that accompany performance

assessments, as a smoke screen for avoiding "real, academic" evalu-

ations. To them, scores are measures, and tests are the only valid

way to objectively determine those scores. They want all subjectivity

removed from the assessment process, and performance assessment

looks to them to be about as subjective and nebulous as you can get.

The Status of Program Alignment Reforms

Program alignment transcends the individual classroom, grade level,

and even school. It is a key way for a district to operate as a coordi-

nated instructional system rather than a collection of autonomous

classrooms. Program alignment is usually about "getting the whole

7 9

PARADIGM LOST

herd moving precisely West" in pursuit of clearly defined curriculum

goals in the respective subject areas; it involves coordinating the

efforts of all staff toward accomplishing these agreed-upon goals.

"Alignment" means

a direct match among the components in a

system. In this case, those components include:

The performance goals that have been defined for

a subject area,

The curriculum that directly matches and

supports each goal,

The teaching processes that directly match and

support

each goal, and

The assessment processes that directly embody each goal.

The goals used to align curriculum, instruction, and

assessment

generally come from three key

sources:

National subject matter associations (which

are all contributing

to the New Standards Project).

State curriculum boards (which

are usually influenced

heavily by the work of the respective national associations

and the NSP).

Local curriculum committees (which

are usually heavily

influenced by all of the above and which

may contain a few

parents and representatives of the community).

The goals developed and endorsed by

any of these three sources will

almost universally reflect the following template: This is what

want our students to know and be able to do by

grade.

Note that virtually all of this endeavor is subject focused and subject

bound. It largely operates within the traditional subject

areas and

derives its direction and priorities from national, state, and local

subject experts in those areas. While it gives focus and coherence

district programs, it is largely educentric

it uses what the system

already is and does as the basis for defining what it should do in the

future. The highly influential NSP is based

on the traditional subject

PARADIGM LOST

structure and reinforces it by defining national standards and the

time-based/grade-level structuring and delivery of curriculum. While

the NSP emphasizes what it calls authentic student performance, the

performance mainly involves tasks customarily done in class in each

respective subject area. NSP needs a future-focused role perfor-

mance thrust, not an educentric one.

One major factor forcing districts and curriculum specialists to look

beyond the traditional subjects is the use of advanced technologies

and the development of student technological literacy. Whether it's

computers, the Internet, or robotics, schools are confronting a huge

discrepancy between their traditional curriculum content, structures,

and delivery processes and the world in which their students are

living. And, as far as Lewis Perelman is concerned (1992), educators

had better make this shift rapidly or they'll soon discover that

School's Out!

the title of his book.

I witnessed Perelman's dazzling high-tech demonstration of these

technologies to over 700 Illinois high school teachers a few years

ago, and I was immediately persuaded by his argument that our

century old high school structures, curricula, and processes are

obsolete obstacles to preparing students for success in the

Information Age. The response his presentation received from the

teachers ranged from ice-cold ... to hostile! Then it was my turn to

speak to the same group, and I've never written overheads so fast in

my life. What I explained was that Perelman was describing what

happens when the paradigm shifts from schooling to learning.

Today's Information Age paradigm is about learning. We have the

technologies that allow anyone to learn anything from anywhere at

anytime. But our outdated Educentric Iceberg paradigm of schooling

can't do the job because it still requires specific students to learn

specific content in a specific classroom on a spec ifw schedule.

The centerpiece of the current model is the time-based, hyper-

structured, Industrial Age, assembly-line model of instructional

delivery. Teachers aren't the problem, but the system they work in

surely is

which sounds a lot like one of the major propositions in

the pioneering organizational change work of Peters and Waterman

(1992) and Deming (1986), the father of the "quality" movement.

8 1

PARADIGM LOST

The Status of External Accountability Reforms

For years I was surprised when educators and policymakers associat-

ed the term OBE with standardized testing. Externally imposed tests

not aligned with a defined set of outcomes can't be an application of

OBE, I thought, but the myth persisted. Yes, having

a clear outcome

framework inherently makes educators more accountable. And

yes,

accountability-minded legislators and board members

are always

promoting testing as the silver bullet of system effectiveness. But

there the connection stops. Tests are not outcomes, and off -the-shelf

testing isn't part of either the Learning Success or Future

Empowerment paradigms.

I can't get excited about the current national, international, and state

testing fervor. It's not that I don't want students to learn what's

important for their futures; it's that I do want students to learn what's

important for their futures. I believe the tests that we spend count-

less millions of dollars a year developing and administering only

assess a narrow slice of those future role-performance abilities.

Testing keeps us focused on how students

are doing on what we

know how to teach in school, rather than designing and achieving

what will really matter once students leave school.

So how are things going in the world of external accountability

reforms? Definitely stronger than ever! Every district is testing its

kids on everything that moves because parents, board members, and

taxpayers "want to know." Every state is testing its kids because the

governor, the legislature, and the state board "want to know." And

the president is proposing that we expand national testing beyond

the National Assessment of Educational Progress because

one good

national test isn't enough. We need more national tests because the

president, the Congress, and the American public "want to know."

If test scores could only give them what they really want to know,

could celebrate, but we'll need to do further testing to find

our what

that really is.

The Status of System Transformation Reforms

This is where we really need to take stock because this is what the

Future Empowerment paradigm represents.

PARADIGM LOST

First, to the best of my knowledge, only five local districts that had

used a future-focused Strategic Design process to develop a frame-

work of role-performance outcomes for their students survived the

attacks on OBE. They had such solid community involvement,

understanding, and support they were able to dispel the accusations

of the opposition carriers when they hit town. Many others inform me

that they're doing their best to use what they learned before '93, but

they're using different names for things, they're distancing them-

selves from "the 0 word" as much as possible, and they're not

focusing on role-performance outcomes like they once did.

Second, among the paradigm-shifting states in 1993, only Oregon

seems to be proceeding with the same fervor and spirit as before,

but even its effort has been compromised by recent legislative

action. Everyone else seems to be excited about improving student

performance on their content standards (read "subject matter

skills"). The time-based Carnegie unit is still the coin of the realm

for student credentialing, although Oregon's system of higher educa-

tion has instituted a real performance component as part of its

admissions requirements.

Third, several new initiatives are currently operating to stimulate

systemic change in schools on a national basis, and are achieving

mixed results. They include:

The New American Schools Development Corporation

(NASDC)

The Annenberg Partnership

IBM's Redefining Education Program

Charter Schools

School to Work

NASDC's initiative was launched primarily through corporate spon-

sorship in 1993. It awarded competitive grants to a small number of

high schools across the nation that had proposed to reinvent them-

selves. The initial awards were made to highly diverse projects, two

of which showed considerable promise as Future Empowerment

models. The remainder were not as transformational, but they did

8 3

PARADIGM LOST 71

plan to incorporate a lot of technology and community involvement

in their instructional delivery systems. Two years later NASDC held

a second competition for districts or consortia of districts willing to

up-scale the initial set of models. Keep an eye on their results.

Walter Annenberg has made $500 million available to families of

schools throughout the United States. Each participating district was

required to develop a plan for how it would establish a vital learning

community that consistently followed a set of implementation princi-

ples established by the Annenberg Partnership with major input

from Sizer. These principles focus primarily on support conditions.

Among these principles, however, is a commitment 'to improve the

learning outcomes of all students, but it is up to local districts to

determine the nature of those outcomes. In addition, the planning

criteria allow districts and schools to focus on specific program

changes rather than requiring them to look at change and improve-

ment systemically. If Annenberg wanted system transformation, he

would have invested more wisely by betting on the Cubs to reach

and win the World Series.

IBM's Reinventing Education initiative was launched in fall 1994.

Its goal is to fund "... fundamental school restructuring and broad-

based systemic change to improve student performance in public

schools." The initiative emphasizes the use of high technology to

advance this goal. Information provided on the first ten award

recipients suggests that their improvements focused on significant

components of their system (e.g., a comprehensive data-management

system) or on specific instructional programs (e.g., interdisciplinary

math/science curriculum tools) rather than on fundamental systemic

change. A second set of awards was made in fall 1997.

Charter School initiatives have been launched in a number of states,

and in considerable numbers. Their intent is to meet student needs

(read "parent preferences") better thdn current public school do. While

wide variations exist in the regulations and procedures for establish-

ing a charter school in various states, four key points stand out:

They are intended to be highly participatory and often suffer

from decision-making ambivalence and overload.

PARADIGM LOST

They are small-scale alternatives to the current system, not

changes in the system itself.

Most established to date are highly traditional rather than

innovative or paradigm breaking.

They are having problems with "hard-to-teach" students,

just like the public schools.

With all due respect to their intent and potential for innovation,

charter schools are not examples of system transformation.

School to Work, the name given to a joint U.S. Department of

Education/Department of Labor initiative, makes it an easy target for

those who thrive on the "work is for the dumb kids" stereotype. But

School to Work is far from the vocational education of the past. This

initiative is future-focused, committed to future empowerment that

matters in the real world as well as school, strongly grounded in local

communities through partnerships with business, and focused on the

development of complex role-performance abilities and intellectual

skills we all need for Information Age careers.

The good new is that its generators, advocates, and innovators under-

stand and endorse almost all the Future Empowerment paradigm

elements. Their biggest challenge will be breaking down the acade-

mic versus practical stereotype so deeply imbedded in old paradigm

thinking and practice. Their second biggest challenge will be prepar-

ing themselves for the wave of opposition that has formed against

School to Work, headed by some of the same people who led the

crusade against OBE.

Conclusions

Enormous attention is being paid at every level of the educational

system to improving learning and schools. On that we are united.

Some of these major thrusts focus on the learner, some on the

future, some on learning, some on schooling, some on technology,

and some on testing. Some are innovative, most are educentric, and

a few are transformational. This fragmentation of focus is what

-8 5

PARADIGM LOST

might be expected after a major political cataclysm like the one we

experienced in 1993, but in truth, reform efforts were already frag-

mented and educentric before then. It's just that now we have a lot

less transformational thinking, ferment, and action in the reform

mix than in 1993.

Today's paradox is that the most transformational things on the cur-

rent reform landscape involve what is happening at the classroom

level, not what is happening at the system level. Those trying to

stimulate broad, systemic change seem to lack a template and crite-

ria for what it is and what it involves. Clearly, it requires more than

people at the local level currently recognize and are generally capa-

ble of addressing. But it also involves more than the current funders,

sponsors, and policymakers at the top of the system have asked for

or shown them how to do.

That missing template and how local leaders can use it to foster

paradigm change in their districts are explained in Chapters 6-9.

But first, I'd like to share with you a brief look at the lessons

I learned from our losing the Future Empowerment paradigm.

PARADIGM LOST

CHAPTER 5

PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES AU INSIGHTS

By summer 1993, people saw, and I felt, no distinction between what

the system transformation approach to the Future Empowerment para-

digm represented and who Bill Spady was. I had so fully devoted the

previous 15 years to developing a compelling picture of what America's

educational future needed to be that the terms "Transformational OBE"

and Bill Spady had become synonymous in the eyes of thousands of

educators across the globe. It was an identity I held proudly.

Within a year, however, that identity had turned into a stigma that had

devastating short-term consequences. An enormously busy calendar

became and stayed empty. A vital and thriving consulting company

closed its doors and left a cadre of wonderful friends and consultants

searching for a way to make a living. Invitations to present at profes-

sional meetings and staff development workshops completely stopped.

Close colleagues in local districts sent me letters (under duress, I sus-

pect) denouncing me and my work. Firm agreements to collaborate

with other consultants and reformers on major projects never materi-

alized. Except for reporters from all parts of the country wanting me

to defend the evils of OBE, I received no calls. By summer 1994,

Transformational OBE was all but dead, system transformation had

been driven underground, no one could say "the 0 word" in public,

and my career as a contributor to educational change seemed over.

My Initial Responses

Without question, my initial reactions to this negative turn of events

fell into three predictable categories:

Disbelief that anything as sound and common sense as

OBE

could be so soundly trashed and abandoned by people.

Frustration that the contributions I had made and wanted to

keep making were being rejected everywhere I turned.

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Reflection on what I had done to cause all of this to happen

and what I could do to get myself out of it.

The first two reactions were pure emotion and didn't help change

anything. But the third opened some unexpected doors of insight that

have transformed the last three years into some of the most productive

and gratifying of my life. One of the major breakthroughs came when

I realized that my plight was similar to what many able and motivat-

ed education leaders have gone through, sometimes several times in

their careers. It's called being isolated and estranged from your col-

leagues and community and eventually fired because you're a genuine

leader who is trying to change and improve things with which many

people feel satisfied and in which they have an enormous emotional

investment. The desire to make change is seen as the problem; and

in politics

which is what major organizational change ultimately

comes down to

perception is treated as if it were reality. I realized

that if I could learn anything from a process of prolonged, serious

reflection, then others facing similar circumstances might benefit

from my insights and experiences. Here's what I learned.

Personal Insights

Thanks to the encouragement of several close friends, I went through

a long process of personal stock-taking. Through this process, I

examined and affirmed:

Who I really am.

What I am on earth to do (i.e., my fundamental life purpose).

What my genuine strengths and limitations are.

What I need as a human being in order to be fulfilled.

Where I can make my greatest contributions.

What kind of friends and relationships I choose to have.

What obstacles I typically put' in my own way.

What needs to be the focus of my personal growth agenda.

PARADIGM LOST

What has emerged from this process so far is a set of insights that

I am happy to share because they relate to fundamentals that will

affect all education leaders' success in continuing to be the most

effective advocate for children and schools we are capable of being.

These key revelations, with some specific detail about my particular

situation are:

Insight 1. Each of us has unique gifts and talents that don't go away or become irrele-

vant just because we encounter major setbacks.

I realized that I have a quick analytical and systemic mind that

conceptualizes and organizes information and ideas succinctly, and

I am able to translate and communicate those insights to help people

understand things more clearly.

Insight 2. Even during turmoil, our visionary orientations and deepest human and spirk

tual values remain intact. In fact, trying experiences can actually strengthen

them.They don't disappear just because people criticize them.

I have affirmed how natural it is for me to examine situations or

problems by turning the obvious on its head to discover that there

is a wealth of powerful possibilities in a novel way of approaching

things. I have also affirmed how important honesty, responsibility,

quality, and caring are to me in everything I do in life. These are

givens in my life, and critics cannot undermine them.

Insight 3. We all need a network of close, honest friends

people who love us enough

to tell us the frank truth about our strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and

character. Mine were invaluable in this period of crisis.

Besides my family, several colleagues have stuck by me through thick

and thin and bolstered my confidence during the darkest hours. They

have also provided enormous intellectual stimulation and challenge

and have never hesitated to give me tough, constructive feedback on

anything I've said, done, or written. They are the people to whom

this book is dedicated. Without them, this could have been a grim

three years.

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Insight 4. The reactions against us are rarely about us personally and should not be per-

ceived that way; they are against the things we represent and advocate.Our

viewpoints are not us, even though they accompany us everywhere we go.

A clearly negative newspaper reporter opened a conversation with

me by stating: "Boy, there sure are a lot of people out there who

don't like you!"

I replied: "That's too bad, because none of them has ever met me nor

has any idea who I am as a person."

What I have also realized during this intense process of introspec-

tion is that I am not and never was OBE; nor is OBE Bill Spady. I've

learned about and done so many things that have nothing to do with

OBE, that most people who first meet me have no idea of my

involvement with it or anything like it.

Insight 5. The adversity we encounter and the honest reflection and growing that we

do as a result often increase our potential for contributing positively to the

world

and our contribution doesn't have to be in the same arenas in

which we were recognized before.

The work described in the last four chapters of this book is mainly

new. Some of it represents leadership ideas and organizational change

strategies that took form in my earlier OBE work, but most of it is

the result of my intense collaboration with Chuck Schwahn over the

past three years. The good news is that most of it applies just as well

to education as it does to organizations in business and the private

sector. My work over the past few years with companies completely

outside of education has been extremely successful and gratifying.

Remember: What we have done well in the past doesn't dictate what

we must continue doing. Making a positive difference in the quality

of the world is what ultimately counts. Assess your real talents and

go for it.

78 PARADIGM LOST

Insight 6. Finances aside, not having to go to work every day is an invaluable gift. It

gives us the opportunity to enjoy our lives and relationships and develop our-

selves in ways that the pressures of work seldom allow.

Money is essential, but it is no substitute for quality of living. Without

question, I felt driven by the need to carry the Transformational OBE

message everywhere I could, and I was leading an insane life on the

road as a result. For years I complained that I'd never had a break from

my intense career and had never had a sabbatical. Well, you usually get

what you ask for if you mean it! Consequently, I've been on

one for

three years now. I've skied more than 60 days each year, learned to

scuba dive, improved my golf game and bicycling skills immensely,

made many new friends and reconnected with old ones, enjoyed

healthier relationships with family, helped my daughter with house

painting and repairs, and gotten more quality writing done than in the

previous decade. The only thing that wasn't better was my income.

Insight 7. Forgiveness is the key to inner peace and the capacity to grow and contribute

even more.Those who try to do us in may be mean-spirited, but we only sink

to their level when we choose to fight them on their terms.

As described in the first half of Chapter 4, I devoted

a great deal of

time in 1994 and 1995 to developing a reconciliation and common-

ground relationship with Bob Simonds, one of the major anti-OBE

leaders. Before we met I thought Simonds was an irrational demon.

By our third meeting I began to like him. By our fifth visit we had

agreed to do all we could to quell the truly irrational confrontation

over OBE and other related school reforms

and we spent a lot of

time during the next two years attempting to get our messages about

common ground and productive agreement across to any constituency

that would listen. Few did, but my time getting to know and work

with the real Bob Simonds was invaluable.

Letting go of the resentment I had toward people like Simonds is the

most important thing I have done in the past four years. It gave me

the unfettered energy to focus on the constructive side of everything.

Doing so is a gradual process not an event, but it's worth

every ounce

of energy you put into it.

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Professional Insights

As I engaged in this reflective process, many professional insights

about the process of paradigm transformation came to me. I have

organized the most important of these in the hope that they will

assist you in making the Future Empowerment paradigm a reality in

our lifetime.

Insights About the Profession of Education

Theoretical debates have gone on for decades over whether educa-

tion is' a true profession. Regardless of which side seems to win

based on the criteria and evidence used, clearly:

Insight 1. There has been a major shift in orientation by educators over the past two

decades with regard to their reliance on the professional literature for quid-

ance.SeaVof-the-pants planning and decision making are waning.This has

been accompanied by a.major increase in women in major administrative

and leadership roles

positions earned through demonstrated knowledge

and expertise rather than success as a coach.

Insight 2. Given that national professional associations took a hands-dffstance toward

the attacks on OBE, and with no visible legacy of significant change and

reform in education to use as a guide, it is natural for most educators to run

for cover when intense opposition to reform surfaces.

Insight 3. New paradigm thinking rarely emerges from teachers and principals. Most of

them describe their work in terms of the students they serve or the subject

they teach.They use established practice rather than research, theory, or sys-

tems thinking to guide their daily decisions and actions.

Insight 4. The monopoly era in education is over. Charter schools and more are here to

stay. Professional associations will be under increasing pressure to ensure that

their members perform competently and meet client demands.The viability

of the public school system depends on its ability to promote the shift from

system preservation to future empowerment.

Insights About Leading Paradigm Transformation

Leadership means being out front. Out front in terms of vision and

perspective, out front in terms of ideas and information, out front in

terms of decisions and operating principles, out front in terms of

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clear communication, and out front in terms of addressing things that

aren't working. From my perspective (see Spady 1996c), the terms

"leader" and "change agent" are one and the

same

you can't be

one without being the other.

Major educational change doesn't happen without informed, commit-

ted leadership at the district and building levels willing to be out

front, ask tough but empathetic questions, and disturb the institutional

inertia that blocks productive change. Paradigm transformation doesn't

happen without these same qualities and practices being applied by

paradigm generators and advocates at the national and state levels.

My most significant lessons about leading paradigm transformation

relate to what it takes to be continuously "out front."

Insight 1. Genuine leaders in every state, district, and school building are doing their

best to overcome the inertia of their organizations, transcend their bureau-

cratic responsibilities, and endure criticism from colleagues for not accepting

things the way they are.

I found genuine champions of change everywhere I went for 20

years: in state departments of education, regional agencies, district

offices, school buildings, and classrooms. They

were the reason I

pushed for paradigm transformation for so

many years. These indi-

viduals saw the compelling merits of paradigm transformation and

did all they could to share it with their colleagues. They

were moti-

vated by a deep sense of purpose and willingness to advocate sound

ideas and were the risk-takers who stood out from the crowd.

Because they were often isolated geographically, organizationally,

and psychologically, they were hungry for affirmation and support in:

their sometimes lonely quest to make change where it seemed

unwelcome or extremely difficult. And while I did what I could to

share my most important and latest insights and to put them in

con-

tact with like-minded peers, I always wished that I could have given

them more

more ideas, more information, more encouragement,

more contacts, more examples, more recognition, and more exposure.

Many of the local, state, and national networks

we created were

highly effective in filling these needs, but

many of these unsung

heroes and heroines managed to accomplish

an enormous amount

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without these supports. My deepest admiration goes out to all of

them. These state and local champions carried the implementation of

the Future Empowerment paradigm on their shoulders until it was

decidedly lost. They deserve all the credit and support their

communities can muster.

Insight 2. No one gets paid for being a champion of paradigm transformation.

Regardless of your position superintendent, national reform leader,

principal, teacher there's no bonus pay for leading change. In fact,

there's often a lot of hostility and grief. For years I stood in awe of

people at the local level who devoted incomprehensible amounts of

time, energy, and talent to making the Future Empowerment para-

digm work in their schools and received neither formal recognition

nor financial compensation. They acted because making a difference

mattered to them, even if it didn't to some of their colleagues. In this

regard education is the perfect laboratory for testing commitment

and professionalism: namely, those who have and exercise them in

great abundance do so out of pride and integrity; those who don't are

the first ones out of the parking lot at the end of the day.

Insight 3. Effective leadership is selfless, principled, persuasive, and persistent.Those

who try to lead with their egos, personal agendas, and positional authority

cannot establish or sustain the legitimacy and respect necessary for the try-

ing times and challenges that accompany major change efforts.

The more I interacted with local advocates of the Future Empowerment

paradigm, the more I marveled at their capacity to generate interest

out of resistance and enthusiastic participation out of initial passivity.

They operated from a combination of deep purpose and high-level

principles, which they projected in all their interactions with staff

and community members. Self-interest, expedience, and conve-

nience simply didn't exist as reasons for doing anything. Because

these educators gave so completely of themselves and held them-

selves to such a high standard, they could appropriately ask the

same of their colleagues. And some of their most impressive demon-

strations of leadership effectiveness came not from public displays

of knowledge of and commitment to the Future Empowerment

PARADIGM LOST

paradigm, but from the powerful one-on-one interchanges they had

with teachers or other colleagues

dialogues that introduced better

ways of looking at both daily practice and long-term results and that

changed the nature of the informal conversations and culture of

their organizations.

Insights About the Language of Paradigm Transformation

Of all the insights I had about the emergence and loss of the Future

Empowerment paradigm, none came as more of a surprise and shock

to me than the ones about terminology. Each day of my career has

been an intense exercise in learning about the meaning, power, and

clarity of words

which words accurately and clearly portrayed new

or potentially controversial ideas; which had appeal and would be

easy to remember; which had different meanings for different audi-

ences and could easily be misinterpreted; and which were clear red

flags that required lots of explaining if they were going to be used at

all. I prided myself in working and reworking overheads and hand-

outs many times over to make them as clear, understandable, and

useful as possible. But it wasn't enough. As noted in the latter half of

Chapter 3: Words brought the paradigm down.

Insight 1. Disagreement over ideas is inevitable but misunderstanding about what they

are is not.

Advocates of an idea cannot expect everyone who hears their

mes-

sage to agree with it, but they have an obligation to make sure that

what they mean is what gets represented. Presenters cannot take

anything for granted, especially when dealing with audiences who do

not share their professional frame of reference and vocabulary. They

must be extremely careful and precise in making every aspect of

their message as clear and understandable as possible.

Insight 2. Advocates of major change have an obligation to portray every key idea they

present in the simplest, most familiar language possible,with clear examples

of what it means and what it doesn't mean both conceptually and in practice.

This is especially true for any idea that

may inherently divide groups

on ideological grounds. Leaving ambiguities to be interpreted and

PARADIGM LOST

resolved by the listener invites misunderstanding, distortion, and

disaster. What the idea means in terms of concrete practice and

consequences for those involved cannot be spelled out too clearly.

Insight 3. Because education is loaded with terms that have enormous symbolic and

ritualistic meaning, hard data and rational explanations only satisfy a minori-

ty of those involved in or affected by a change effort. Hence, symbolic

language must be preserved even though the substance and underlying

meaning of those symbols may be altered as the change effort takes hold.

As a rational researcher, this was one of the most difficult lessons for

me to learn because I thought that the essence of the Future

Empowerment paradigm was inherently logical and made enormous

common sense to people. I was right about people like me. But what

I had to learn is that many people are unfamiliar with and don't care

much about the technical meaning and substance associated with

particular concepts. They need to be reassured that schools are going

to improve a lot but not be transformed into something they don't

recognize or can't identify with.

Insight 4. Certain key code words for fundamentally different philosophies of education

and living automatically trigger debate and reaction within districts, regard-

less of the care taken to explain what they do or don't mean in a particular

change effort.These words include:academic, grades, standards, competition,

cooperative, basks, self-concept, values, multi-anything (cultural, age, or disci-

plinary), and diversity.

The introduction of any of these virtually unavoidable words into the

dialogue about school change is guaranteed to divide groups who

hold fundamentally different views of their meaning, importance, and

implications for the education of children. Because the phenomena

represented by these words are central to what educational systems

are and do, and since fundamental differences in world view will

continue to affect public education, I recommend two key steps:

1. Make an extraordinary effort to reduce the ambiguity and mis-

interpretation of these terms and show what they will mean in

actual practice.

84 PARADIGM

LOST

2. Establish alternative programs that allow parents and students

to choose a path they find congenial with their world view.

Who knows, we may discover large numbers of parents willing to opt

for the Future Empowerment paradigm once it is made available to

them as a choice.

Insights About the Politics of Paradigm Transformation

As all of the foregoing suggests, America is a country divided over

issues of educational change. Are Americans in favor of educational

improvement? Yes, unanimously. Are Americans in favor of systemic

educational change? Maybe, but only if they understand it and it

appears to be to their particular advantage. Are Americans in favor

of something called paradigm transformation? No, not if it means fun-

damentally redefining, redirecting, restructuring, and reengineering

what they have always known as "school." The public still thinks there

are too many things about the current Educentric Iceberg of education

that seem to work and make sense to justify transforming everything.

While this continual embracing and reinforcing of the term "school"

may be the source of the key difficulties that the Future

Empowerment paradigm has faced over the past decade, it underlies

several key realities about the politics of paradigm transformation

that have been disappointing lessons for me and my colleagues.

Insight 1. No natural political constituency for paradigm transformation exists except,

perhaps, the politically disenfranchised who benefit least from the status quo.

Contrary to the allegations made by some of the paradigm's oppo-

nents, its emphasis on success for all is not an attempt to rob Peter

to pay Paul, but an attempt to elevate the entire distribution of stu-

dent learning from where it now exists. By emphasizing "all," the

paradigm might seem to favor disadvantaged children whose school

achievement typically falls far below those of the middle and upper

middle classes. If any group potentially has the most to gain from the

paradigm's success, it is they. But because this constituency was

attracted primarily to three other reform programs

Levin's

Accelerated Schools, Comer's School Development Program, and

Lezotte's Effective Schools initiative it was not aligned with the

9 7

PARADIGM LOST

OBE part of the larger reform effort and had no specific reason to

fight for its survival when things got difficult in '93 and '94. Because

these other three reforms were strongly associated with urban and

minority students, they fared the best during the attacks because the

opponents, being primarily white and middle class, were focused on

what was happening in the schools their children attended.

Insight 2. What begins as a knowledge-driven set of initiatives to improve teaching

and learning can turn into hardball politics when the nature and scope of the

paradigm transformation threatens to change the entrenched regulatory

structure of education. All reformers and educators need to be equipped to

fight such tough political battles.

As long as the Future Empowerment paradigm was represented and

interpreted as "instructional reform" requiring mainly changes in

educator thinking and behavior it remained outside the realm of

major politics. The paradigm was built on a foundation of well-crafted

research, powerful theoretical insights, and highly effective imple-

mentation in a small but widely recognized number of locales; and its

credibility with educators rested on rational argument, demonstrated

feasibility, and persuasive results. But once this paradigm required

significant changes in policy and law

especially at the state level

it became political, and the attacks against it took on a different

character deep misunderstanding, serious distortions, blanket

misrepresentation of information, quotes out of context, and guilt by

association

tactics that caught reformers and educators unaware and

unprepared. To their credit, they continued to travel the high road of

rational discourse and substantive accuracy while their opponents

chose to bypass accuracy in favor of emotionalism, direct confronta-

tion, and intimidation. Unfortunately, rational discourse lost.

Insight 3. Paradigm transformation can be defeated politically because neither the

reformers nor state and local leaders have the necessary and time-consuming

political groundwork, coalitions, and support to counteract the intense

pressures of the opposition.

The attacks on the paradigm revealed two fatal weaknesses. First,

once it became political, the paradigm required advocates outside

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the educational system itself, and neither the reformers nor local

educators had done what was necessary to inform and marshal influ-

ential public spokespersons and constituents to their cause. Few

parents were sufficiently informed to provide a local counter-force

against the vocal opposition; the business community was signifi-

cantly involved in the reforms in only a few states; few state

legislators or board members understood the issues well enough to

counter the critics' arguments; and the opposition effectively flooded

a lot of broadcast and print media with its version of the truth.

Second, the paradigm's support within the field of education was a

mile wide and an inch deep. For every district that received national

or regional attention for its pioneering change efforts, there were

hundreds either indifferent to or barely involved in making these

changes. And even within the strong districts significant numbers of

bystanders and skeptics remained within the ranks who offered no

support when the going got tough. In addition, few educational asso-

ciations involved themselves directly in these changes at either the

state or national levels.

Insight 4. Small numbers of well-mobilized people can shape major political decisions by

exploiting the public's lack of involvement in politics and its fears about change.

During the attacks on the Future Empowerment paradigm, the gen-

eral public and educational community got completely out-hustled

by the oppOsition. A small number of highly motivated people filled

what turned out to be an enormous influence vacuum with regard to

the new reform agenda at the state and local levels. Using remark-

ably effective information networking, they portrayed a negative

picture of these proposed reforms via every medium available. This

highly charged portrayal used "documented evidence" to galvanize

the resistance of large numbers of skeptics and potential opponents

and to dramatically raise the level of concern among bystanders and

potential supporters. As a result, all but the most ardent advocates

and innovators ran for cover from what appeared to be nothing but

trouble, and found themselves in a triple bind.

1. Only those with an intimate knowledge of the new paradigm

reforms and the research on which they rested could articulately

PARADIGM LOST

rebut the allegations that were being made. This eliminated

almost all non-educators from the heart of the debates and left

reform advocates in what appeared to be a self-serving position.

2. They lacked a mobilized constituency to fight aggressively. By

the time they were able to make the public aware of the

attacks and the issues involved, many a lethal blow had

already been struck.

3. No amount of data about the demonstrated effectiveness of

"the new" could counter the security most people felt in "the

familiar," especially when so many emotionally laden

accusa-

tions were made about the legitimacy of the new paradigm

research.

Fear easily won out over promise.

Insights About National Paradigm Transformation Efforts

At a conference in 1989, Larry Lezotte likened a school to

a collec-

tion of self-contained classrooms unified by a common parking lot.

This line got a huge but nervous laugh from the audience. Little did

Lezotte or I know at the time how prophetic that analogy would be to

the school reform movement in the early '90s.

The major reform leaders described in the first half of Chapter 3

were an extremely dedicated, hard-working, high-integrity, highly

intelligent collection of private entrepreneurs, each offering schools

and districts a version of the better mousetrap. Occasionally

appeared on state and national conference programs together,

some-

times to, promote reform and sometimes to debate the fine points; but

most of the time we did our own things. Some of us were good

friends, some of us didn't even know each other, and by the early

'90s some of us had become undeclared competitors.

In retrospect, we were nine self-contained/self-constrained/self-

interested movements.

10 0

PARADIGM LOST

Insight 1. The Future Empowerment paradigm and the critical conditions of success need-

ed to achieve it are bigger than any individual reform effort and require key

elements and strategies from most of them to be successfully implemented.

Had some individual, agency, or organization had the insight, credibil-

ity, influence, and courage to unify and synthesize these separate

efforts into a mega-strategy for paradigm transformation, the Future

Empowerment paradigm might not have been lost, and America might

be facing a far brighter educational future. Instead, corporate leaders

and governors have jumped into the fray with their highly educentric,

testing-oriented conception of school reform; and most of the nine

reformers continue to promote their work in isolation from the others.

Insights About Local Paradigm Transformation Efforts

Given assurances of confidentiality, local educators will be brutally

honest. They know the heroes and villains in their districts, and they

will name them. They know the histories of the plaques on the walls

and the skeletons in the closets, and they will describe them. They

know the larger and smaller political forces at work in their buildings

and communities, and they can identify their dynamics and implica-

tions. But most of all they know when their district and building

leaders are for real and when they are just blowing smoke, and can

predict the eventual success of their change efforts with great accu-

racy from those characterizations.

The genuine leaders in local districts saw the merits of the Future

Empowerment paradigm, advocated its elements to their colleagues

and communities, and painstakingly guided its implementation.

It was only after these local leaders had created some genuine

successes that the people in the state capital began to take note.

Here's what I learned from their efforts.

Insight 1. With few exceptions, every district that distinguished itself by pursuing par-

adigm transformation had an enlightened and committed superintendent

who actively participated in the reform effort, taught board members what

they needed to know about it, and cultivated and empowered others as

partners in the change process.

PARADIGM LOST

Insight 2. The kiss of death was being told by curriculum leaders or building principals

that they had to do an end run around the superintendent or the board in

order to engage in serious reform. They could almost never run far enough or

fast enough to pull it off.

Insight 3. Exceptional building principals are able to accomplish some wonderful

things with their staffs even without strong district support but their

successes rarely carry over to other buildings in their district, especially

among high schools.

Insight 4. In every district, a huge reservoir of motivation for change and improvement

remains untapped.lt just needs to be stimulated and supported. This reser-

voir typically resides in the people who gladly work with less successful

students and know how to engage them in purposeful learning.

Insight 5. You can always identify the greatest resisters to local reform. They get to your

presentation early to capture a seat in the back row so they can read the

newspaper or do their knitting during the session without being noticed by

their peers.

Insight 6. The most future-focused, non-educentric, paradigm-shifting thinking and

designs take shape in local districts, not in state capitals. The loss of their

momentum, visibility, and recognition was the greatest blow paradigm trans-

formation experienced.

Insight 7. In the few years that future-focused strategic planning and designs were

being actively pursued,few districts were able to get their visionary plans

into full operation before the attacks began.What they might have become

is a great part of our loss.

Insight 8. Most practitioners are very curriculum-focused thinkers.They need a great

deal of help learning to think outside that constraining box about student

competence and performance beyond their classroom and school. But once

they do, they never want to go back.

Insight 9. Paltry commitment and resources are devoted to paradigm-shifting

professional development in most districts.Those districts that made

significant reform strides made serious budget commitments to continuously

build staff capacity.Without such commitment,their efforts would have been

non-events.

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Insight 10.The knowledge base that drove the future empowerment reforms has little

bearing on programmatic and operational decisions in most schools, but the

schools and districts that leapt ahead in the early '90s were constantly using

this research base to improve their effectiveness.

Insights About State Paradigm Transformation Efforts

One could easily argue that the phrase "state paradigm transforma-

tion efforts" is an oxymoron. States don't do paradigm transformation;

they do educentric regulation and evaluation. Yet states from coast to

coast have actually played a more enlightened and aggressive role in

promoting improved student learning during this past decade.

Observing this has taught me several things.

Insight 1. State-level policymaking is governed by the rules and forces of macro politics,

not by the values, priorities, and rules of evidence of either educational

research or classroom practice. When policymakers leans heavily on educators

to shape reforms, the result is educentric solutions; when they lean on non-

educators, heavy-handed accountability requirements are usually offered as

the solution. Given this reality, state policy is inevitably going to be institu-

tionally conservative and inherently insensitive and responsive to the

elements in the Future Empowerment paradigm.

Insight 2. The state-controlled regulatory structures that govern education inhibit all

but technical tinkering and segmental change.They were designed for and

perpetuate Educentric Iceberg thinking, purposes, organizational structures,

and contractual relationships. Paradigm transformation will remain quite

literally illegal as long as the clock and calendar are the legal definers

of education.

Insight 3. States are convenient whipping posts both for national leaders seeking to

blame someone for poor educational performance and for local educators

needing to pass the buck upstairs.

Insights About the Process of Paradigm Transformation

Paradigm transformations don't start out that way. They begin with a

bolt out of the blue someone's new insight that opens up unrealized

possibilities and eventually turns old ways of viewing and doing things

on their heads

or with a serendipitous discovery some new tool,

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gadget, or phenomenon that opens up whole new ways of carrying out

important life functions. In either case, they don't start out as master

plans; they evolve, just as the Future Empowerment paradigm did.

As the evolutionary process of paradigm transformation unfolds,

critical mass of interest and implementation begins to develop. It is

then that the larger scope of change and possibility emerge and the

new ideas begin to bump against established practice with some real

force. That action creates a reaction that puts the fledgling paradigm

shift to the real test, requiring its generators and advocates to

address its potential applications, merits, and implications with

peo-

ple at all levels of the affected institution or society.

My most significant insights about the Process of paradigm transfor-

mation relate to this critical stage of scaling up and boundary testing.

Insight 1. True paradigm transformation is a colossal process that involves redefining

and reshaping entire institutions and the belief systems and cultures

surrounding them.

For transformations of this depth and magnitude to occur, fundamen-

tal and widespread shifts must occur in the perceptions, beliefs,

values, and preferences of the countless people involved in and

directly affected by the transformation; prevailing patterns of practice

and action that define the operational realities of the new paradigm;

and the laws, regulations, and institutional structures that govern and

reinforce these perceptions and practices. Failure to explicitly

address any one of these three arenas can undermine the paradigm's

development, acceptance, and influence.

Insight 2. Paradigm transformation requires continuous attention to changing the per-

ceptions and beliefs of a critical mass of potential implementers and their

constituents about what is possible and desirable.

A continuing dialogue must be established by paradigm generators

and advocates in which potential participants and the constituents

they serve are given new and compelling descriptions and explana-

tions of how familiar, deeply held ideas and practices can be viewed

and defined in fundamentally different ways (as in John Carroll's

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104

insights about aptitude). The more persuasive and compelling these

new possibilities, the more old ways of viewing and doing things will

eventually cease to make sense.

Insight 3. Most people need to see a new paradigm and its essential elements work

well before they will be persuaded by any of its value-, theory-, or innovation-

based ideas.

Successful, carefully documented action by advocates and innovators

is the key to changing the perceptions and actions of the numerous

bystanders and skeptics who ultimately hold the balance of power

over a new paradigm's acceptance. Without demonstrable models and

effective prototypes, only the most visionary and idealistic people will

be persuaded of a new paradigm's potential merits, which forces

advocates and innovators to balance the pressures for implementation

speed and results with the need for quality. Constituents want instant

results, but quality implementation takes time.

Insight 4. Advocates and local innovators must constantly lobby at all levels of the sys-

tem to have procedural, structural, and regulatory barriers to implementation

waived or lifted

either on a provisional basis or by guaranteeing that new

practices will meet specific criteria or achieve agreed-upon results.

Unless institutionalized barriers are identified, addressed, and

removed, all implementation efforts will face two major obstacles.,

The first is the institutional inertia of the old paradigm's practices

and culture

usually manifested in the innovation-killing phrase:

"We've always done it this way before, and no one has complained."

The second is illegitimacy in the eyes of those devoted to the old

paradigm and in the letter of formal rules, regulations, and

contractual arrangements.

Precedent and regulation are the sanctuary of skeptics and opponents

who have a vested interested in the failure of the new paradigm. You

can count on a core group of them to raise every possible objection

to innovations that require a departure from comfortable routines. In

addition, with organizational obstacles in the way, authentic imple-

mentation of new practices may be impossible, thereby reducing its

potential impact on intended results.

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Insight 5. Paradigm transformation cannot succeed unless five key bases are firmly

established and continuously reinforced throughout all levels of the system.

They are: purpose, vision, ownership, capacity, and support.

Purpose is the fundamental reason that the new paradigm

exists.

Vision is the clear and concrete picture of the organization

operating at its best, which guides its implementation

progress.

Ownership is the buy-in and commitment that organizational

constituents feel toward the new implementation.

Capacity is the foundation of knowledge, competence, and tools

that staff have for carrying out the new practices successfully.

Support involves the policies, resources, and assistance staff

receive to implement the new paradigm successfully.

These five factors are the bedrock of successful leadership and

change strategies. They are developed and explained in Chapter 6

and applied in the remainder of this book. In general, the schools

and districts that took the time and effort to solidly establish all five

weathered the attacks on the Future Empowerment paradigm far bet-

ter than did those who didn't give these factors the attention they

deserved. Insightfully addressing and establishing them is

your

gateway to productive change and successful schools.

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THE FUTURE EMPOWERMENT

PARADIGM

107

CHAPTER Ii

ESTABLISHING THE BASES OF

AN EMPOWERING LEARNING COMMUNITY

The remainder of this book is designed to help you transform con-

ventional school districts into learning communities that embody the

key elements of the Future Empowerment paradigm.

Empowering learning communities are places where students, staff,

and community members all embrace and implement key elements

of the Future Empowerment paradigm and engage in an ongoing

process of continuous learning and improvement. To design

and

implement these new paradigm elements, you must establish, bol-

ster, and sustain the five bases of paradigm change: purpose, vision,

ownership, capacity, and support. As noted in Chapter 5, if any of

these bases is weak or missing, change efforts almost always bog

down or are undermined. Be sure that doesn't happen to you.

The Bases of Paradigm Change

The five bases of paradigm change determine the fundamental

strength, integrity, and durability of an organization. Your goal as a

leader is to establish and sustain these bases of productive change in

all parts of your learning community. Here, in a nutshell, is a

description of each and why they're critical to both your leadership

effectiveness and your learning community's long-term success.

Base 1: PURPOSE "It has meaning for me!"

Purpose is the deep reason your organization exists, which

employees must share in order to find value and meaning

in their work and constituents must endorse in order to

identify with your aims.

Purpose lies at the very heart of both organizational change and suc-

cess. Establishing it is a leader's most basic and important task.

Clear, heart-felt, personally fulfilling purpose allows employees and

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108

constituents to easily recognize, identify with, and embrace what the

organization is trying to accomplish. This, in turn, enables leaders

tap a rich source of employee and constituent trust, understanding,

motivation, and goodwill. Without

purpose, employees simply go

through the motions, constituents wonder why you're doing what

you're doing, and change efforts falter due to apathy and distrust.

Base 2: VISION "It's clear and exciting!"

Vision is the clear, concrete word picture of what

you want

your organization to look like and be doing when

accomplishing its purpose and operating at its best.

Vision is your blueprint and road

map for change. A clear and

compelling vision statement brings

your purpose to life, provides a

concrete description of what your organization will be like when

operating at its best, and gives

everyone in the district and commu-

nity a clear direction to pursue and standard against which

measure their performance and results. The vision statement you

create must demonstrate the quality and depth of the ideals

your

change effort will embody when fully in place. With it,

your ideal

future comes to life in the present. Without it, the specifics of

your

intended change remain obscure, people hesitate

to try anything

new, and no one is ever quite sure where they stand as things

unfold

or unravel.

Base 3: OWNERSHIP "I want to be

part of it!"

Ownership is the strong identation with, investment in, and

commitment to your organization's stated

purpose and vision.

Ownership

the motivational fuel of successful change

is the

result of employee and constituent investment in and commitment

what their organization is doing, which

emerges when employees and

constituents are given a significant role in planning, shaping, and

implementing change. Others' involvement in both designing and

carrying out the district's purpose and vision makes it "theirs"

not

just "yours" the leader's. Without ownership, passive compliance

often prevails and change is widely regarded

as "your idea" and

"your problem."

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Base 4: CAPACITY

"I can do it!"

Capacity is the knowledge, skills, resources, and tools

needed to successfully make the changes implied in your

organization's stated purpose and vision.

Capacity is the "know how" and "how to" element of productive

change. It embodies the entire array of knowledge, information,

understanding, skills, processes, technologies, and resources that

enables employees and other constituents to carry out the desired

change competently. Whereas purpose, vision, and ownership pri-

marily affect employee motivation to engage in productive change,

capacity is about their ability to do so. With it, individuals have the

knowledge and tools to succeed. Without it, change becomes a night-

mare of errors, frustrations, and disappointing results.

Base 5: SUPPORT "The superintendent/principal is

really helping!"

Support includes the policies, decisions, resources, and

procedures that make it possible for employees and

constituents to engage in and sustain the changes implied

in your stated purpose and vision.

Support is the organization's "proof of the pudding" its willingness

and ability to put itself and its resources squarely behind its

declared purpose and vision and the people it is counting on to make

them happen. Support reflects organizational leaders' true commit-

ment to the change process

their willingness to make decisions,

commit people and resources, and operate in ways that directly align

with organizational purpose and vision, and make it possible for staff

and constituents to carry out the changes everyone has committed to.

With adequate and consistent support, change will "take" and last.

Without it, you can expect anxiety, cynicism, and a major retreat to

the status quo.

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These five bases make up the chemistry needed for successful

change to occur. Leave an element out and the

necessary chemistry

is destroyed.

Without purpose your learning community lacks the

reason to change;

Without vision it lacks a clear road map for change;

Without ownership it lacks the commitment needed for

change to succeed;

Without capacity it lacks the ability to succeed; and

Without support it lacks the opportunity to succeed.

The Essential Components of

an Empowering Learning Community

The question then is: How do you establish these bases of paradigm

change? Some districts already have these powerful conditions for

change in place; others do not. But any district that intends to

become an Empowering Learning Community must establish and

continuously strengthen these bases of change.

The four major operating components of

a learning community, their

twelve key operating elements, and the design dynamic that

governs

them are shown in Figure 6.1 on page 101.

The first three components

organizational purpose and direction,

empowering student outcomes, and the instructional delivery system

constitute a learning community's program structure. The fourth

component

organizational coordination and culture

constitutes

the support structure for this program structure. This support

structure

governance and decision making, parent and community

involvement, valued attributes and relationships, internal and exter-

nal communication, and the accountability and improvement

process

is vital in establishing the bases of paradigm change.

As the arrows in Figure 6.1 indicate, there is

an explicit sequence to

the strategic design and alignment

processes described in these con-

cluding chapters. The process has been used to guide the strategic

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change efforts of both large and small districts in the United States

and abroad (see Spady 1996b and 1996c).

A. Organizational Purpose and Direction

1. Future Conditions and Rationale

2. Mission, Beliefs, and Vision

B. Empowering Student Outcomes

3. Quality Performance Standards

4. Performance Assessment and Reporting

C. Instructional Delivery System

S. Curriculum Design and Development

Instructional Processes and Technologies

7. Delivery and Opportunity Structure

D. Organizational Culture and Coordination

8. Governance and Decision Making

9. Parents and Community Involvement

10. Valued Attributes and Relationships

11. Internal and External Communication

12. Accountability and Improvement Process

1.j

Figure 6.1

The Key Operating Components and Design Dynamics

of an Empowering Learning Community

Both strategic design and strategic alignment rest on the fundamental

premise that the design and implementation of a change process should:

Start with the end in mind and systematically proceed back

from there.

While that end is your organization's purpose and direction, strategic

design cannot begin unless some basic support structure conditions

exist from which to proceed. Consequently, your ability to establish

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101'

an Empowering Leaning Community will depend on the quality of

the organizational culture and coordination

you establish.

The Culture and Coordination of Your Learning Community

Any organization whose key members and constituents decide

pursue major systemic change must ensure the existence of a deep

commitment to learning from everyone involved

leaders, employees,

key constituents, board members, and, in the

case of school districts,

students. This is especially true when the change being considered is

genuinely paradigmatic; that is, when established beliefs, philoso-

phies, purposes, definitions, practices, roles and relationships,

technologies, and intended results are all open to intense scrutiny,

reevaluation, redefinition, and restructuring which the Future

Empowerment paradigm requires. During such a change effort,

enormous amount of new information, ideas, possibilities, thinking,

and action emerge. All of this requires people who

are willing listen-

ers and learners, plus organizational processes open to and capable

of assimilating, organizing, disseminating, and effectively using what

those individuals learn to the benefit of

everyone involved.

This represents my conception of a true learning community. Any

other orientation makes implementing something

as far reaching as

the Future Empowerment paradigm close to impossible.

So what constitutes such a community? A key part of the

answer lies

in the five elements that constitute your organization's culture and

determine how it coordinates its major programmatic actions. These

five elements relate to:

How you structure and carry out decision-making authority;

How involved you get parents and community members;

The values, principles, and relationships

you encourage

and maintain;

The openness and clarity of communication

among you,

your staff, and all your constituents; and

The formal processes and mechanisms of personal and organi-

zational accountability and improvement you implement.

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113

These elements directly affect and support your learning community's

program structure

your organizational purpose and direction,

empowering student outcomes, and instructional delivery system.

Organizational

Support

Elements

Governance

and Decision

Making

Parent and

Community

Involvement

Valued

Attributes and

Relationships

Internal and

External

Communication

Accountability &

Improvement

Process

Figure 6.2

Program Structure Components

Organizational

Purpose and

Direction

Empowering

Student

Outcomes

Instructional

Delivery

System

The Connection Among a Learning Community's

Key Program Structure Components and

Implementation Support Elements

These five elements of your organization's culture and coordination

are vital to shaping your learning community's qualitative character

and supporting your program structure. Let's look at each element

and its relationship to the bases of paradigm change.

Governance and decision making. One of the major trends within the

broader educational reform movement of the past decade has

involved bringing decision making closer to those most affected by

the decisions. In the main this has meant more involvement and

input from principals, teachers, students, and parents and less from

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103

legislators, policymakers, and administrators farther removed from

the classroom. While as many negatives as positives are inherent in

this trend, three key issues surround any governance and decision-

making model and directly affect the implementation of any

learning community's paradigm transformation effort.

1. Are those authorized to make decisions in your learning commu-

nity directly responsible for what results from their decisions?

What form should that accountability/responsibility take?

2. Are those currently authorized to make decisions better quali-

fied/ informed about the matters at hand than those in other

positions or roles? What criteria and assumptions are used in

addressing and answering this question?

3. Does the current system of decision making directly support

how well your learning community functions and achieves its

declared purpose and intended results? If not, what is the jus-

tification for keeping it, and what system would be more

effective and productive?

Governance and decision making is ultimately about influence and

control. Those who have it determine policies, procedures, formal

priorities, rules and regulations, guidelines, and resource alloca-

tions that directly shape and affect everything you do. While it may

not be easy to determine who "deserves" to have it, and who

benefits most from it (and in what way), learning communities must

remember that ownership and support for their change efforts hang

directly in the balance.

Parent and community involvement. Parent and community involve-

ment directly affects the substance and success of all three of your

major operating components. The real-world perspectives and exper-

tise many parents and community members bring to your strategic

design process expands the range of ideas under consideration. These

ideas shape the elements in your organizational purpose and direction

and your empowering student outcomes components. Furthermore,

they can be invaluable resources in enhancing your instructional

delivery system's effectiveness.

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Parents, experts, and community members can also play a positive

role in all other elements of organizational culture and coordination.

They can play a positive role in your learning community's governance

and decision-making mechanisms; in contributing to the valued attrib-

utes and relationships that define its character, ethos, and culture; in

supporting strong internal and external communication; and in shaping

and contributing to your accountability and improvement process.

With community constituents heavily involved in your paradigm

transformation, you gain badly needed external vision, ownership,

capacity, and support for future empowerment. Without their involve-

ment, the worst can happen, as we saw in the early '90s.

Valued attributes and relationships. At its essence, the valued

attributes and relationships component is about the climate and

culture of your learning community and its recognized purpose for

existing. Valued attributes and relationships are directly reflected in

the statement: How we do business around here

especially when

no one is looking!

Climate and culture are reflected in your organization's publicly

embraced values, beliefs, and principles; they determine which

attributes and actions of people in the organization get honored and

accepted without complaint. They're also reflected in the expecta-

tions that underlie your major decisions and procedures, and in:

Who has influence and who doesn't;

Who usually enjoys special consideration, and who routinely

is ignored;

Who initiates improvements, and who blocks them;

The prime topics of discussion among staff in the lounge;

Whether cliques and factions exist among the staff;

Whether recognition and support, or the cold shoulder, is given

to staff who do an exceptional job;

The response given to those who spend extra time and effort with

students, and to those who vanish at the end of the school day;

and

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105

The response staff have to professional development opportuni-

ties, parent involvement, and professional accountability.

All these factors are indicators of the qualitative character, profes-

sionalism, and ethos of your staff and the overall health of your

learning community. Consequently, nothing is more important to the

success of your paradigm transformation effort than cultivating a

core set of values, beliefs, and principles (see Chapter 7). They will

be your moral foundation, and will affect both the success of your

change effort and the ethos that operates in your classrooms. Without

them, purpose is poorly implemented, and change and improvement

are frustrating ordeals.

Internal and external communication. In many respects, effective

communication is the glue that holds any organizational process

together. It is the key to feeling:

Included or excluded.

Well informed or "in the dark."

Treated honestly or manipulated.

Empowered or powerless.

Involved or ignored.

On the "inside" or on the "outside."

Accurate or not, the perceptions staff, students, parents, and other

community stakeholders hold about the frequency, adequacy, and

accuracy of information they receive pertinent to their interests is

vital. Therefore, initiating a paradigm transformation process

requires that you enlist suggestions from as many people as possible

about how to communicate effectively. The more proactive you are at

the outset, the less trouble you will face later on. And the more you

think of novel ways to involve others in getting the word out, the

more likely you are to strengthen your capacity and get the owner-

ship and support you need. And, because even the most obvious

things to you will not be obvious to some people, you may have to

repeat and repeat things in the clearest, simplest language to have

any hope of their being heard and understood.

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117

Accountability and improvement process. The accountability and

improvement process most distinguishes what Peter Senge (1990)

calls "learning organizations" from organizations in general. At its

core this process is about:

Generating clear and pertinent information about your learning

community's operations and effectiveness;

Reporting that information regularly to all staff and

constituents on a regular basis; and

Using that information to decide how you can continuously

improve what you are doing and increase the capabilities of

the people involved.

Having a focused, consistent, and systematic feedback loop for

guiding and tracking organizational functioning, effectiveness, and

improvements is essential to any organization, especially those

involved in major change. In the field of business this powerful

approach to quality control and continuous improvement is often

called Total Quality or Quality Management, and its major proponent,

W. Edwards Deming, became a living legend prior to his death in

1994 (see Deming 1986 and Walton 1986). The accountability and

improvement process is a critical mechanism for building and

strengthening your organization's capacity for change and for aligning

your programs, structures, and people to achieve the necessary sup-

port for change. Paradigm transformation efforts absolutely require it.

Although many schools are unaccustomed to regularly and systemat-

ically gathering data on how well things are working, informed

decision-making and improvement initiatives require it. The work of

Deming, Senge, Peter Block (1987), William Bridges (1991), Max

DePree (1989), Kaplan and Norton (1996), Labovitz and Rosansky

(1997), Peters and Waterman (1982), and countless others makes

clear that establishing a continuous improvement process is a major

stimulus to both individual and organizational learning because such

a process strongly influences how people view and carry out their

organizational responsibilities. Everything you currently do in the

name of professional development, new technologies, and program

restructuring can be imbedded, integrated, and applied in a rigorous

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continuous improvement process.

Leaders must work with their staff and constituents to build such a

process directly into their organizational vision, establish the mecha-

nisms and feedback loops to implement it, and have organizational

members take full responsibility and ownership for implementing it.

Without such a process, your change effort will look more like tech-

nical tinkering than paradigm transformation.

The best way I have found to establish the ethos and mechanisms

such a process requires is through what I call the Learning Circle

(Spady 1996c). With the Learning Circle, you can help

ensure that

your organization works toward a Future Empowerment paradigm in a

concerted way rather than through piecemeal attempts to move things

off of the deeply entrenched dead center of institutional inertia.

Establishing a Learning Circle/Learning Cycle

Paradigm transformation requires that organizational members and

constituents engage in an ongoing, honest search for the deeper

essence, meaning, values, and possibilities that define and embody

the organization's ultimate reason for existing its purpose and mis-

sion. For many, this process of serious, collective introspection,

self-examination, and revelation represents an exciting time of major

focusing and growth. For others, it brings with it risk, vulnerability,

and uncertainty. This combination of potential opportunity and threat

occurs because honest discussion inevitably brings a host of sensitive

issues to the surface, which include:

Discovering what the organization really exists to accomplish;

Waking up to reality;

Looking beneath the surface of issues and problems;

Acknowledging the unacknowledged;

Shedding light on things long kept in the dark;

Doing something with the information brought to light;

Searching deeply for underlying causes, meaning, or

explanations; and

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Becoming sensitive to painful organizational issues and

experiences.

The Learning Circle encourages everyone to take a hard look inside

themselves at what's true about their strengths and limitations as

individuals, and what they can willingly and successfully contribute

to defining and achieving the organization's ultimate purpose. When

handled well by a capable and sensitive facilitator, this hard (and

deep) look allows people to see familiar things in new ways, and to

use those new perspectives to develop new ideas, consider new pos-

sibilities, acquire new paradigm thinking, discover the deeper

purpose of making major change, try out and assess the effectiveness

of new things, and recommend needed changes.

This is why you as a leader must make it both imperative and safe

for people to confront and discuss what's true about the organiza-

tion's actions and results, based on the best information you can

gather. I strongly recommend that with the. help of staff and key

constituents, you establish a total organizational safety zone

a location, process for, and set of formally acknowledged and

endorsed ground rules that directly encourage, honor, and protect

each individual's right to discuss sensitive issues and feelings open-

ly and honestly without fear of criticism, censure, or recrimination.

Otherwise, potentially embarrassing information, serious introspec-

tion, and the open expression of ideas, values, and feelings can be

too easily pooh-poohed or negatively exploited by those less sensi-

tive to their essential role in fostering paradigm transformation.

With such a zone in place, the Learning Circle process allows the

members of your learning community to perceive, acknowledge, and

eventually move beyond a familiar, comfortable, but stagnant dead

center that inhibited the organization's effectiveness and diminished

their integrity and well-being as individuals. That break from the

psychological and behavioral inertia that pervades so many organiza-

tions ultimately allows staff and constituents to overtly acknowledge

that: "Something different and better is needed here, and we'd better

start searching for what it is!"

The Learning Cycle process involves five continuously cycling stages

of learning and doing that occur as groups encounter new informa-

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tion and ideas (see Figure 6.3). These stages are awareness,

acknowledgment, assimilation, application, and assessment.

Figure 6.3

An Empowering Learning Cycle

Awareness

Assessment

Acknowledgment

Application

Assimilation

Awareness

The opening up of intellectual, emotional, and physical perception and the con-

scious recognition of new knowledge, experience, and insight. Awareness leads to:

Acknowledgment

The conscious acceptance, expression, and description of the new experi-

ence or insight that has occurred. Acknowledgment, in turn, leads to:

Assimilation

The continual linking or incorporation of acknowledged experiences or

insights with existing knowledge, abilities, and experience. Assimilation, in turn, leads to:

Application

The conscious and deliberate use of the new learning in activities of conse-

quence to the learner. Application, in turn, leads to:

Assessment

The conscious monitoring of the results or consequences of applying the new

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learning in a variety of situations that leads to new awareness and the continued repetition

of this cycle. Assessment, in turn, provides new information and Awareness, which starts the

Cycle anew.

While there is nothing dramatically different about this cycle and

other learning models, the key to its effectiveness for

you and your

learning community is its simplicity and ease of implementation. To

make it work to greatest advantage you must formalize it

that is,

explicitly discuss and use its components as

you work with the new

information that the Learning Circle and your accountability and

improvement process will continuously generate.

Once it becomes okay for everyone to learn, acknowledge what they

have learned, and translate it into

new decisions and action that

themselves offer new opportunities to learn,

you will be well on your

way to establishing an authentic learning community. And with that

the Future Empowerment paradigm will not be far behind.

Concluding Thoughts on Establishing

an Empowering Learning Community

My work over the past several years has helped

me draw three con-

clusions about the issues presented in this book. First, the need for

and logic of the Future Empowerment paradigm described here has

not been diminished by the political events of the past five years. The

only thing that has diminished is the willingness of policymakers

acknowledge and act on the ideas and possibilities presented here.

Second, paradigm change of the kind described here

can only be

achieved by strong leadership at the local level; leadership that

establishes the bases of paradigm transformation and their

support-

ing values, beliefs, and principles; and that competently carries

out the strategic design and alignment processes described in the

following chapters. With anything less, Future Empowerment

change efforts will never reach their full potential.

Third, the Future Empowerment paradigm and the

concept of a fully

functioning learning community are

one and the same. Both are

committed to and dependent on continuous learning and improve-

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111

ment by all

students and staff alike; both nurture and advocate

reflection, honesty, openness, courage, integrity, commitment, excel-

lence, productivity, risk-taking, and teamwork

core values that

make for a healthy organizational culture; and both are driven by a

sound accountability and improvement process. That process, more

than anything, is the life force that fuels the dynamism and energy of

any organization willing and able to continuously pay attention to

what is happening around it and within it, to redirect itself accord-

ingly, and to improve what it is doing in order to be as responsive,

effective, and responsible as possible. To me, this describes the

essence of a learning community committed to doing the best it can

for its students and constituents.

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CHAPTER 7

CHARTING YOUR COURSE TOWARD

FUTURE EMPOWERMENT

This chapter provides an overview of the first steps of the strategic

design process. Your goal is to use the power that resides in the

process to establish your organizational purpose and direction and,

ultimately, chart your course toward implementing a future

empower-

ment paradigm.

The logic and sequence of the strategic design and strategic align-

ment processes are simple. First, chart the course that reflects the

future-focused paradigm and priorities you want to implement and

the learning outcomes that match them. Then, develop and imple-

ment an instructional system that directly helps you achieve those

learning priorities and outcomes. And finally, focus on strengthening

the organizational supports that help your instructional system func-

tion effectively and achieve its intended outcomes.

How you develop an effective instructional delivery system and the

organizational supports it needs to achieve its intended outcomes

depends entirely on the paradigm you define and the

course you chart.

As you consider how to proceed, just remember these two basic rules:

Always chart your course back from your ultimate destination.

Frame your strategic questions carefully because only non-

educentric questions will give you non-educentric answers.

Charting Your New Paradigm Course

Charting a course of paradigm transformation requires a great deal of

organizational preparation. Figure 7.1 contains a brief list of

resources you must have at your disposal and be ready to implement.

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Superintendents need to ensure that all these resources are in place

when planning major paradigm changes.

A core team of facilitators who can join you in conducting this systemic undertaking.

These people must have excellent communication skills and strong credibility with

staff and constituents.

The leadership skills to undertake the strategic design and alignment

processes that

follow. You and your core team will be leading both processes.

A way of orienting all organizational members and constituents to a new mode of

paradigm thinking and action far different from the Educentric Iceberg. Orienting

staff and constituents requires that they become familiar with using new terminolo-

gy, examples, and analogies that represent a Future Empowerment way of thinking

and operating.

A firm grasp of your organizational purpose and direction and a solid understanding

of the empowering student outcomes components and elements you will be using to

chart a sound course of paradigm transformation.

The key questions that shape new paradigm thinking.These will enable you to build

the foundation of beliefs, values, principles, purpose, and vision you need for chang-

ing your instructional system and its results.

An overall strategy for getting all of these critical factors to come together.This is

what the strategic design and alignment processes provide you.

Figure 7.1

The Key Resources Needed for Charting a New Paradigm Course

Recruiting a Core Team of Facilitators

Superintendents must be heavily involved and highly visible in para-

digm transformation. Your credibility, interest, and commitment will

be key to whether or not staff buy into the hard work that lies ahead

for them. But you can't do it alone. This strategic design process

requires a great deal of outreach, involvement, and communication

throughout your community. So you need help from willing, able

people from all parts of the organization and community who can

deal effectively with new ideas and information, have high credibility

with peers, work well with others, and communicate effectively. How

many people you need on this core team depends on the size of the

district and the diversity of the constituents you must engage.

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This core team of facilitators must understand the fundamental whys,

whats, and hows of strategic design, strategic alignment, and the five

bases of paradigm change very well before you proceed with anything.

They must also be thoroughly grounded in the whys and whats of

future-focused paradigms. And every team member must be prepared

to answer the countless questions they will be asked some of

which will be "loaded" clearly and accurately. This means that

you must provide core team members with front-end preparation

before they speak in public. You also might consider recruiting an

expanded team of people who can assist the core team with its many

responsibilities. These people should have strong ties to the many

constituencies in your larger community.

Building a New Paradigm Perspective

One of the fundamentals for making strategic design and alignment

and paradigm transformation work is a way of thinking and convers-

ing about the paradigm you ultimately want to establish. This

requires an extended and highly focused period of building new per-

spectives about learning systems

one that may be very difficult

given the deeply entrenched educentric views of many educators and

parents' familiarity with the Iceberg model of schooling.

Be sure you lay the groundwork. The energy you expend to involve

and inform all constituents about what you're doing helps move

people from apathy to understanding to ownership. Without such a

shift, change won't happen.

Three things work very effectively in helping others build a new

paradigm perspective. The first is repeated showings and discussions

for mixed groups of educators and constituents of Joel Barker's highly

popular video "Discovering the Future." No matter how many times

you've seen this video, its message continues to be eye opening.

Following its viewing, your core team facilitators can conduct

focused discussions around the things in everyday life that represent

examples of new paradigm thinking and action

for example,

things that are extremely different today than when you were chil-

dren. These examples are powerful conversation starters with

colleagues, parents, and community members.

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115

Second, you and your core team can use the simple framework in

Figure 7.2 as a way to break down current paradigms and shape new

ones. The framework compares the basic difference between ends-

driven perspectives about things (like schooling) and means-driven

perspectives of the same things.

Imagine Education...

Organized Around

Instead of

The Future

The Past

Ends

Means

Purposes 0=0. Procedures

Results ,3.=4-,

Resources

Outcomes

.0.rdl, Processes

Goals

:..*- Roles

Learning

Teaching

Achievement

Programs

Performance

:,,4- Curriculum

Standards

Time

Competence tom, Content

Life ..*. School

Figure 7.2

A Tool for Generating New Paradigm Perspectives

The Educentric Iceberg the traditional schooling paradigm

is organized around the elements listed on the right side of each pair.

The Future Empowerment paradigm is organized around the ele-

ments on the left side. When people consider how dramatically

different these two kinds of organizations are (or could be), paradigm

shocks of all kinds begin to happen. If

these differences aren't clear

at first, left side examples such as scouting merit badges, pilot's

licenses, ski schools, and parenting usually start animated discus-

sions rolling especially when you ask whether anyone, starting

today, would ever invent a learning system organized around the

right-side elements in the figure.

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127

Note here how critical the vocabulary is in framing a paradigm.

Words, expressions, and concepts that make sense on one side of

these pairings often don't on the other side. Take, for example, the

popular word "cover," the ultimate poor substitute for "teach" and

the antithesis of "learn." Because the left-side elements will become

the foundation of your learning community's new language system

and mode of operation, you and your core team will need to continu-

ously point out and reinforce these differences and the words that do

and don't work on the left side.

Finally, once people begin to internalize these differences and show

openness to these new paradigm perspectives, they will be ready to

deal with the key Learning Success and Life Performance paradigm

shifts described earlier. To avoid mixing apples and oranges, start this

discussion with just those paradigm elements that pertain to the

orga-

nizational purpose and direction aspects of your planned change effort.

These aspects include the defining shifts that appear in Figure 7.3.

From

Iceberg Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Industrial Age

Information Age

Subject-Focused Planning

Future-Focused Planning

Calendar Defined

Outcome Defined

Aptitude as Ability

Aptitude as Learning Rate

Talent Selection

Talent Development

Bell-Curve Expectations

High-Success Expectations

Stable and Familiar

Dynamic and Effective

Figure 7.3

Paradigm Shifts Related to Key Organizational Purpose and Direction

Here especially, you and your core team members must be well

grounded in the issues raised in Chapter 2, what each shift means,

and why it is central to the new paradigm you are establishing. This

exercise expands and reinforces people's new thinking and encour-

ages them to make these additional elements a part of their new

perspective. Throughout the discussion, keep asking: What new

possibilities would open up for us if we were to use the non-

educentric elements from both lists to chart a new course for our

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117

learning community? Keep track of the most insightful answers for

later use and reinforcement.

Your goal at this early reorientation stage is to build excitement

among your staff and constituents about designing and implementing

a paradigm focused on the Information Age; maximizing the develop-

ment of student talent, high expectations for students, and sound

student outcomes that matter in the future; and becoming a dynamic

and continuously improving community of student and adult learners.

Charting Your Learning Community's

Purpose and Direction

Your learning community's organizational purpose and direction rep-

resent the absolute bedrock of your paradigm transformation effort.

To give your planning and implementation effort integrity, you must

involve all employees and constituents in addressing this component

and its elements before considering anything else about a new para-

digm. Why? Because successful practice and a massive amount of

literature [see the works of Blanchard and Peale (1988), Chappel

(1993), Covey (1990), Kotter (1996), Kouzes and Posner (1993), and

Sengp (1990)] say that:

Everything emanates from purpose!

With purpose, you and your colleagues and constituents know "true

North" and can chart your ultimate destination. Without it, you're

like a rudderless ship on a rough sea or an iceberg adrift in the

prevailing current.

Here are the key elements of organizational purpose and direction,

what they mean, and how to address them.

Key Operating Element 1: Future Conditions and Rationale

Your organizational purpose and direction and the mission,

beliefs, and vision that directly reflect it

all need a compelling

rationale; hard-hitting and persuasive propositions and reasons that

explain and justify what each is and embodies. That rationale can

reflect an inward orientation toward what the organization has done

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129

in the past or an outward one concerning its ability to respond to

future conditions and challenges.

This strategic design process is firmly focused on the future, and it

uses the future and the conditions your students are likely to face

there as young adults as its starting points. It requires you and your

core team to enlist all employees and constituents in developing a

compelling picture of the future they believe your students will face.

For that you will need to introduce them to "futures research." One

resource is The Shifts, Trends, and Future Conditions that are

Redefining Organizations and Careers in the '90s (Schwahn and

Spady 1996), which is a synthesis of nearly 30 major futures books

and other pertinent resources. (Also look for Total Leaders, in press,

Schwahn and Spady, due out in March 1998 from AASA.)

Unlike most of the available literature (which focused mainly on

career-related shifts and trends), Shifts, Trends, and Future

Conditions focuses on arenas of living that give life so much of its

meaning, significance, and beauty outside the economic sphere. As

we tried different ways of getting strategic design groups to identify

and focus on these other spheres, we found that we could tap a com-

munity's deepest values and priorities by having them answer what

should be the genesis question of your strategic design effort:

Key Strategic Design Question 1:

In which spheres and contexts of living do we want our students to

function effectively and be successful in the future?

In district after district, participants initially named seven key

spheres as vitally important. Although the names varied, their focus

related to:

Personal Life Work Relationships Learning

Culture

Civic Duty Global Awareness

In 1992, a framework containing eight spheres was developed as a

composite of several other innovative frameworks. It has received a

lot of positive comments from both educators and non-educators and

its eight spheres are shown in Figure 7.4 on the next page.

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Work &

Productive

Endeavors

(Li

Significant

Relationships

resource Aidoci

%).

c..\\.0en g es

c('')

Group

& Community

Memberships

Personal

Potential &

Wellness

Meaningful

& Fulfilling

Pursuits

t's

el)

Physical

& Cultural

Environment

Figure 7.4

Essential Spheres of Living

This composite framework was generated by large groups of educa-

tors, parents, and community members, and has great meaning for

them. Yet none of the spheres in this framework carries the name of

a familiar school subject

a major break with the Educentric

Iceberg paradigm. When allowed to address non-educentric design

questions and work with frameworks like these, your constituents are

likely to excitedly endorse this as the kind of education they want for

their children. So remember that a spheres of living framework can

be a powerful resource in developing a compelling rationale for

everything else that unfolds in your strategic design process. I urge

you to use it that way in your strategic design process, and as a

guide to curriculum design (see Chapter 9).

Once your constituents agree about such a framework, they will be

ready to address the future conditions your students are likely to face

once they leave school. Our experience shows that when groups of

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14:31

educators and constituents look seriously at the futures research,

they quickly notice a major gap between the trends dramatically

changing the world around them and what students are being pre-

pared for in their schools. We have also learned that once

participants have answered the first key strategic design question

and developed a spheres of living framework, they relish continuing

the process by assigning themselves to specific sphere working

groups based on their interests, expertise, and credibility with their

peers. Once that happens, they're ready to address the second key

strategic design question, one that allows them to consider three

kinds of emerging data about the future, namely:

Shifts in the way things in life are defined and operate;

Trends in the way things are changing over time; and

Conditions that are likely to exist when today's (high school)

students are young adults.

This second key question is deliberately structured to tap the nega-

tive (problems), neutral (challenges), and positive (opportunities)

aspects of future conditions. The question is worded here to focus on

data relevant to a specific sphere:

Key Strategic Design Question 2:

What significant problems, challenges, and opportunities are likely

to exist within the

sphere that our students will have to

anticipate, address, and solve as young adults?

To answer this question, the members of a sphere work group must

read and reflect deeply about what the literature indicates about the

shifts, trends, and conditions affecting their sphere. They should be

encouraged to search far and wide for possible information and per-

spectives. Their goal is to answer the question by developing

objective, precise descriptions of the conditions they believe students

will face in their sphere as young adults. Their descriptions must be

concrete statements about the conditions the students will actually

face. They should not be value-laden statements about how the world

should be or what students will "need" in order to be successful.

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LOST 121

Once each group has developed its set of future condition state-

ments, we usually have them present their results to representatives

from each of the other sphere groups. This enables all participants to

evaluate all future condition statements for clarity and alignment

with the known information and data. Following this fine-tuning

process, we formally acknowledge (and celebrate) that the spheres of

living framework and set of future condition statements are the

learning community's picture of the future for which it is committed

to preparing its students.

The clearer and more comprehensive your future condition statements

are, the stronger your rationale for defining your organizational

mission, beliefs, and vision; designing and implementing a Future

Empowerment paradigm; and deriving a compelling framework of

empowering student outcomes that will transform your organizational

purpose from philosophy into practice.

The discrepancy between anticipated future conditions and the reali-

ties of your current schools is the actual basis for your rationale. In

effect, your rationale should be a series of highly motivating state-

ments that expand on points like this:

Here's what our students will be facing in their immediate

futures, and here's what they're prepared to do now. An

enormous gap exists between the two, which we need to start

closing now!

This rationale should engender in your colleagues and constituents a

compelling need to undergo a serious paradigm change process, one

that incorporates your new spheres of living framework and future

condition statements and that follows the course you began to chart

earlier with your discussions about paradigm perspectives.

Key Operating Element 2: Mission, Beliefs, and Vision

Mission. Your mission is the formal declaration of your learning com-

munity's fundamental purpose, reason for existing, and commitment

to its clients. In one succinct statement it represents what you stand

for and are committed to accomplishing. Hence, every word counts.

Your mission should reflect your new paradigm perspectives discus-

sions, your spheres of living framework, your future conditions

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PARADIGM

L0113 3

statements, and your rationale. And all of the people involved in

developing these pillars of your strategic design process should also

be involved in shaping your mission.

Remember: Your mission should be brief, vital, compelling, future-

focused, student success-oriented, and easily stated. If your

employees and constituents have to look it up to state it, it's not a

mission that is guiding and motivating them. Make sure it is.

Sample Mission:

Equipping All Our Students to Succeed in a Changing World

Beliefs. Your beliefs are the ethical foundation and code that governs

how your learning community will operate and why. They are a suc-

cinct, forinal declaration of the core values your learning community

believes in, the principles and standards that will shape and drive

your decisions and actions, and the premises and assumptions you

and all your colleagues and constituents are asserting about learners,

learning, and the conditions that directly affect student success. You

should develop an explicit framework of these three elements and

disseminate them everywhere in the district.

Sample Belief:

All Students Can Learn and Succeed, but Not On the Same Day in the Same Way.

As you formalize and endorse your beliefs, keep in mind that gener-

ating too many of them increases the chance they be taken lightly.

Beliefs are your moral compass; be sure they are meaningful, power-

ful, and something everyone clearly intends to endorse and follow.

A review of the decade's most important literature on organizational

leadership and change identifies 10 core values that prevail in orga-

nizations that achieve future-focused change (see Spady 1996c).

These 10 core values are:

Reflection

Honesty Openness

Courage

Integrity

Commitment Excellence

Productivity

Risk-Taking Teamwork

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All 10 are essential in the moral grounding of the Future Empower-

ment paradigm.

In addition, 10 key driving principles directly guide organizational

decision making and action and support effective leadership and

productive change. These 10 driving principles are:

Inquiry Connection

Future-Focusing

Clarity Inclusiveness

Win-Win Accountability

Improvement

Alignment Contribution

These too are essential to any organization that desires to operate as

a continuous improvement learning community.

Also note that Chapter 2 lists key premises that underlie the Future

Empowerment paradigm. Make sure you review and discuss this list

at this time; its elements provide excellent starting points for devel-

oping your own framework.

Vision. Your vision is the detailed statement of what you want your

new paradigm perspectives, rationale, mission, and beliefs to look

like when translated into concrete action. Your vision must be a

clear, concrete description of your learning community's long -term

preferred future what it will accomplish, how it will operate, and

what it will look like when functioning at its best. The clearer and

more precise your vision is, the clearer the targets toward which your

learning community can, in confidence, aspire, and the stronger your

employees' and constituents' understanding of, and support for, what

you exist to accomplish.

Without a vision, your organizational purpose and direction remains

abstract philosophy. With one, you have the tangible road map that

charts your course toward paradigm transformation in clear and con-

crete terms, and the criteria for deriving a compelling framework of

empowering student outcomes and subsequently carrying out a

strategic alignment process that will give you a future empowerment

learning system.

Organizational purpose and direction is the bedrock component on

which everything else in your change effort will be built. Take the

time to make it right!

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135

When tightly integrated and aligned, as in Figure 7.5, the entire

array of elements described in this chapter chart a clear and power-

ful course for your learning community that opens wide the door of

paradigm transformation and future empowerment. Keep each of

these important elements clearly in mind as you implement the

remaining stages of your strategic design and alignment processes.

Organizational Purpose and Direction

Vision

Mission

Beliefs,

Driving Principles,

Core Values

Rationale

Future Conditions

Spheres of Living

Key Premises

New Paradigm

Perspectives

Figure 7.5

An Aligned Organizational Purpose and Direction

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125

CHAPTER 8

DESIGNING EMPOWERING STUDENT OUTCOMES

Up to this point, we have discussed seven essentials

you will need to

have in place to design and implement

a Future Empowerment

paradigm in your learning community. The elements

are:

1. A core team and an expanded team of facilitators to help

you

involve all or your learning community's members and

con-

stituents in your major change effort.

2. An ongoing dialogue, using the Learning Circle/Learning

Cycle strategy, among your organizational members and

con-

stituents concerning the perspectives and elements needed for

a Future Empowerment paradigm to take hold in your district.

3. A spheres of living framework and future condition

statements,

which have shaped the elements in

your organizational pur-

pose and direction and will further shape your student learning

outcomes and instructional delivery system.

4. A powerful, compelling rationale for establishing

a new organi-

zational purpose and direction in

your learning community.

5. A succinct, powerful mission statement that clearly defines

your learning community's fundamental reason for existing and

what it is committed to accomplishing.

6. A comprehensive system of beliefs about the moral culture of

your learning community; its core values, driving principles,

and fundamental premises

all geared to enhancing genuine

professionalism in the attitudes and performance of staff and

facilitating successful change.

7. The seventh element

an imaginative and concrete vision of

what your learning community will be doing when fully imple-

menting all of the above

actually cannot be completed until

you take the next step in the strategic design process, namely:

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deriving from your spheres of living, future conditions state-

ments, rationale, mission, and beliefs a framework of

empowering student outcomes that equip your students to

succeed in the complex, challenging future they face.

Translating Purpose into

Empowering Performance Outcomes

Regardless of whether you call them outcomes, standards, performance

abilities, results, or any variation on this theme, an inescapable fact

remains: Until you have developed a framework of intended results

to shape everything in your instructional and assessment systems, all

your organizational purpose and direction elements will

likely have

little effect on how you actually end up operating.

A framework of empowering student outcomes gives you the concrete

tool needed for redefining, aligning, and restructuring the elements

in your instructional system. Nothing else does.

Preparing To Derive a Framework of

Empowering Student Outcomes

Before jumping into the process of deriving and developing a frame-

work of empowering student outcomes

or whatever you choose to

call them

there are six basics that core team members and every-

one they work with need to learn about what genuine outcomes are

in order to avoid likely misunderstandings.

1. Outcomes are about student learning, and student learning

comes in at least four categories: content learning (knowledge),

competence learning (complex skills), moral learning (values

and attitudes), and psychological learning (motivation and rela-

tionships). Be sure you can recognize the differences and keep

them straight.

2. Outcomes are learning results. Outcomes are what happens at

or after the end of prolonged instructional experiences. They

are what ultimately "stick" and get carried out the door by

students. Don't confuse curriculum details and test scores with

these significant, long-lasting learnings.

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PARADIGM LO 51T3 8

3. Outcomes are clear demonstrations. Outcomes happen when

students actively do observable things with the information,

skills, values, and dispositions they acquire. Define

your out-

comes with powerful and significant "doing" verbs. Don't use

non-observable verbs like "know" and "understand."

4. Outcomes are substance, not scores. Outcomes

are exactly what

their nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech define them

to be;

not the scores, grades, and other labels educators commonly

attach to assessments of learning performance. Stay focused

the substance you want, and choose

your words carefully because

they define what you expect, and what you'll ultimately

get.

5. Outcomes are the dog; curriculum is the tail. Outcomes

must be

defined and developed first. Nothing inherently belongs in the

curriculum unless it supports the demonstration of

a complex

outcome. Be careful not to let the traditional curriculum tail

wag your dog.

6. Outcomes should be significant and have

consequences far

beyond the classroom. Keep focused

on the kinds of perfor-

mance abilities students will need in their family, civic, and

career roles, not on what is familiar about classroom instruction.

As a part of your orientation discussions,

core team and extended

team members must be able to explain at least these key

reasons

behind having a framework of empowering student

outcomes (see

Spady 1996a). Outcomes:

Define the direction and purpose of instruction,

Drive curriculum planning and development,

Establish instructional priorities and focus,

Define what the terms learning and achievement will

mean,

Motivate students and teachers,

Determine standards of performance and effectiveness,

Determine student preparation and qualifications, and

Define criterion standards that students will ultimately reach.

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To complete this discussion, core team members can facilitate a dia-

logue with their colleagues and constituents involving the new

paradigm perspectives engendered by the Future Empowerment par-

adigm. Here they should discuss and explain the key paradigm shifts

originally shown in Chapter 2 that specifically relate to empowering

student outcomes and their two key operating elements: quality per-

formance standards and performance assessment and reporting.

These key shifts are shown in Figure 8.1.

From

Educentric Paradigm

Future Empowerment Paradigm

Learning as Mental Processing

Micro-Content Learner

Content Acquisition

Points as Achievement

Bell-Curve Expectations

Interpersonal Competition

Time-Based Credit

Learning as Application of Mental Processing

Total Role Performer

Competence Development

Performance as Achievement

High-Success Expectations

High-Challenge Standards

Performance-Based Credit

Figure 8.1

Paradigm Shifts Related to Key Empowering Outcomes

Deriving a Framework of Role Performer Learning Outcomes

Districts that have systematically used the strategic design process to

redefine and redesign their instructional systems over the last sever-

al years have mainly followed an approach that emerged from a

discovery made in Aurora, Colo., early in 1991.

When Aurora decided to develop a framework of exit outcomes for

its students, it didn't have a spheres of living framework or a system-

atically derived set of future condition statements. But it did have a

future-focused mission statement and something similar to what you

would now recognize as a rationale for change, which contained a

mixture of things resembling goals and future conditions statements.

With this imperfect grounding, a large team of Aurora educators and

community constituents accidentally but systematically derived the

first-ever framework of role performer student outcomes. These out-

comes are about high-level abilities for carrying out complex

tasks in

a broad variety of real-life settings, and are closely

related to what is

described in Figure 2.2 (see page 26) as complex role performances.

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PARADIGM LOSWO

Within weeks, districts around the country that saw Aurora's initial

draft recognized in them a whole new paradigm of outcomes thinking,

design, and implementation. They either wanted permission to

use

them

"No, you must generate your own!" or wanted help in

developing something like them. The outcomes paradigm had shifted.

What the Aurora team had produced was a set of five key outcomes

that described the kind of performers they wanted their students to be

after they left their schools, in whatever roles or situations they might

encounter in their lives. They wanted their students to become:

Self-Directed Learners

Collaborative Workers

Complex Thinkers

Community Contributors

Quality Producers

Following each role-performer label was the word "who," and follow-

ing that was a series of what came to be called essential performance

components

the set of performances and abilities one would

consistently expect a specific role performer to be able to do. For

example, Aurora's initial framework called for all their graduates to

be self-directed learners who:

Set priorities and achievable goals,

Evaluate and manage their own progress toward those goals,

Create options for themselves,

Take responsibility for their actions, and

Create a positive vision for themselves and their future.

What we later realized

and you should particularly note

was that:

The set of essential performance components actually defines

what it means to be a particular role performer. So, for

exam-

ple, if you could consistently do the five things listed above

well and in combination with each other in Aurora,

you were

qualified to be called a self-directed learner.

The "real" outcome is not the big label (self-directed learner),

but the related essential performance components. The perfor-

mance components define both what the role performer label

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really means and what students need to be able to demonstrate

successfully. What these components are, and how they work

in combination with each other, are what determines the kind

of role performer you have identified.

Rigorously defining these essential performance components is

the biggest technical challenge in the strategic design process.

What Aurora also discovered, however, was the intimate connection

between a district's mission and its outcomes framework.

Consequently, the district chose to place a brief statement at the

beginning of their outcomes framework, which read:

We will know we are achieving our mission when all of our

graduates are

In other words, the district's mission and the success of its students

on what it calls its exit outcomes is one and the same. Hence, help-

ing all students be successful on all of its role performer outcomes is

the district's mission.

Before proceeding, take a minute to revisit the five Aurora role-

performer outcomes on the previous page. Notice that (with one

grammatical exception) they follow a consistent pattern.

The last word in the pair identifies the nature of the perfor-

mance role that is being sought: learners, workers, thinkers,

contributors, and producers were Aurora's word choices. (Other

districts have used some of these five role-performer labels for

their frameworks, as well as the words citizens, participants,

communicators, and persons.)

The first word in the pair is an adjective that conveys the key

qualitative attribute of that role performer. In the case of

Aurora, self-directed, collaborative, complex, community, and

quality were chosen to give a particular character to their five

role performer designations.

As you consider these pairings, notice how much difference the adjec-

tive can make in defining the desired outcome. Imagine, for example,

how different the essential performance components would be for

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4 2

learners if Aurora had chosen "academic" rather than "self-directed"

as the key qualitative attribute, or "diligent" instead of "collaborative"

to go with workers. In both cases, what they would be expecting their

students to consistently demonstrate would be very different.

Over the years, we watched design teams struggle endlessly over

the perfect qualitative attribute word when no one word adequately

portrayed what their students needed to become. So we adopted a

rule you might want to follow: Use two qualitative attribute adjec-

tives, but no more. Two adjectives give you far greater power and

accuracy than one, but three or more start to become a meaningless

laundry list.

With all of the foregoing in mind, here's the key question for this

stage of your strategic design process and how all of the preceding

relates to it:

Key Strategic Design Question 3:

If these are the spheres of living in which we want our students to be

successful, and if these are the future conditions they are likely to face in

those spheres, then what qualities and capabilities will they need to face

those problems, challenges, and opportunities successfully?

In answering this question, design teams need to undertake a

thorough analysis of everything they have created to date.

Sphere

of Living

Rationale

N 1

Role-Performer

Label

Future

Conditions

Qualitative

Attributes

Essential

Perormance

Components

Figure 8.2

Key Components for Defining Role Performer Outcomes

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133

Your spheres of living framework and rationale will have a

large bearing on the role performer labels you choose.

Your future conditions statements and beliefs will be the major

factors that determine the qualitative attributes you choose.

Your role performer labels plus your qualitative attributes

determine your essential performance components.

The acid test of how well you operationalize a given role-performer

label is to give just its performance components to another group,

and have them guess the label. If their guess is close, you probably

did a good job. But if they miss badly, you've got work to do. As you

tackle this technically challenging part of strategic design, keep ask-

ing: "How would I know this kind of role performer if I saw one?"

Another important aspect of what affects these essential performance

components relates to the actual substance and issues students will be

asked to grapple with and demonstrate. These, of course, will be influ-

enced strongly by the nature of the sphere you are dealing with and by

the future conditions students will be encountering in that sphere.

Multiple levels of role performer outcomes. We had just finished writ-

ing and reviewing the initial set of role-performer outcomes in

Aurora, when someone in the group asked: "If these outcomes are

what we expect from our high school graduates, what outcomes do

we expect for 8th grade?"

Without hesitating, I responded: "The same ones, but done at a level

of complexity and sophistication suitable for students who are 13 years

old not 17. In fact, the same applies for students finishing the primary

grades. We'd expect them to demonstrate the same outcomes, but at

a level of complexity and sophistication appropriate for students who

are ten years old. This means that for the first time ever, all teachers

in the district will be working as a unified team toward accomplish-

ing the same outcomes, regardless of their grade level or subject."

The silence in the room was stunning. But for the educators in

Aurora, and for me as well, the Future Empowerment paradigm had

just taken on new meaning. As we discussed what all this meant,

several key points of agreement emerged:

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144

All students, regardless of ability, rate of learning, or age,

could and should be helped to develop these role-performer

abilities, which will really matter throughout their lives, not

just in school.

These complex abilities develop and mature over time, just as

the children themselves do. Our job is to facilitate their devel-

opment the best way we can

at all grade levels, in all

subjects, throughout a student's career.

These role-performer outcomes give teachers in all subject areas

a connection to each other that they could not appreciate as long

as they focused on the details of their particular curriculum.

You can't nurture, teach, assess, or report these abilities in the

same ways that you can conventional chunks of curriculum.

A whole new philosophy and methodology of grading and

record keeping is required.

Fortunately, the staff in Aurora was eager to pioneer the new paradigm

thinking and action needed in all those areas. And, following their

lead, what eventually emerged was a variation on what I call "The

Performance Wheel," which contains an array of role-performer abili-

ties required of competent adults in an array of life roles: competent

managers, responsible citizens, innovative entrepreneurs, effective

employees, conscientious parents, and so forth. An example of this

highly useful and versatile tool, without any qualitative attributes or

essential performance components (shown in Figure 8.3 on page 136).

Deriving and Developing Enabling Competences

The Aurora educators discovered what every district encounters in a

strategic design process aimed at developing and achieving empow-

ering student outcomes. They found that when you consider the

spheres of living, the future conditions, and what people in the real

world have to do to be successful in the Information Age on the one

hand, and the way curriculum and school achievement are tradition-

ally defined on the other, the match is very poor.

So what is the connection between the two, and how do you bridge

the gap?

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135

Mediator &

Negotiator

Leader &

Organizer

Coach &

Facilitator

Advocate &

Listener &

Supporter

Communicator

Implementer

& Performer

Searcher &

Learner

Producer &

Contributor

Problem

Framer

Innovator &

& Solver

Designer

Figure 8.3

The Role Performer Wheel of Empowering Student Outcomes

The answer lies in a concept called enabling competences. Enabling

competences are the building blocks of knowledge and skill that

underlie students' abilities to do these more complex role perfor-

mances. Some are developed in our current school curriculum, but

many are not. What your learning community must do to make the

connection is to ask about each role-performer outcome:

Key Strategic Design Question 4:

What knowledge and competences do our students need

in order to do this?

Every time you hear a definitive answer to this question, ask it again

about that particular answer. Keep asking and asking. What you'll

eventually get from this backward mapping process is the set of

baseline building blocks that determine where you need to start in

your instructional program and wligiet(io go from there.

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If you take this process seriously, you'll definitely find some of your

current curriculum in what you develop; but don't be surprised if

much of it isn't represented. The discrepancies reflect the results of

applying two distinct paradigms of student learning and curriculum

design to your work. One of them is educentric and, for generations,

has been using subject-matter specialists to ask about the content

they love: What should students know and understand about this

subject that tells me they are knowledgeable?

The other is future-focused and uses a large cross-section of your

greater learning community to ask: What will our students face after

they leave school?

These represent two different design paradigms, questions, and sets of

answers that don't match. The first is designed to turn some children

into good students so that they can learn what their teachers know.

The second is designed to empower all children to become things like

self-directed learners, collaborative workers, complex thinkers, com-

munity contributors, and quality producers

or whatever local

design teams decide is essential. Give parents and students an honest

choice, and most of them will opt for the future empowerment course

that these strategic design questions help you chart.

Designing an Aligned Standards and

Assessment System

Once your learning community has defined a framework of empower-

ing role-performer outcomes and the enabling outcomes that support

them, you are ready to begin designing quality performance stan-

dards and performance assessment and reporting, which translate

outcomes into operating factors that directly define and influence

student learning success

Quality performance standards are the direct translation of your

empowering and enabling outcomes into the concrete criteria that

teachers use to:

Target and design their curriculum and instruction,

Formally assess students,

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Devise supplementary instructional assistance for students,

Place/advance students into appropriately challenging learning

experiences, and

Assess the effectiveness of their instructional efforts.

These standards are not about curriculum details or everything that

teachers might teach and students might do. They represent the frame-

work of priority results that your learning community has determined

are essential for all its students to achieve at the maximum level of

complexity and sophistication they are capable of ultimately attaining.

Therefore, standards defined this way are not the time-bound gates

we are used to, which determine whether students should have access

to particular curriculum content. Instead, they assume that students

will be allowed and encouraged to progress along a continuum of

increasing complexity as they develop the high-level competences

embedded in your empowering role-performer outcomes.

Performance assessment and reporting represent the direct docu-

mentation of student performance on your empowering and enabling

outcomes. The assessment part of this element requires that you:

Create situations for students that directly (i.e., authentically)

align (i.e., exactly match and embody) with your outcomes.

Determine the quality of student performance on defined

criteria related to your outcomes.

Store that evidence/information in an accurate way that can be

changed when later, improved performance warrants it.

This component is completely criterion-defined; that is, determined

by the precise substance of what is stated in a given outcome, which

is what makes it authentic. It is wholly different from the traditional

paradigm of testing, scoring, and grading students on fixed but

poor-

ly defined segments of content. A good example of criterion-defined

performance assessment and reporting is the merit badge system in

the scouts. A good example of what it isn't is a semester grade

vague label or number that represents the amalgamated average of a

range of undefined and dissimilar things that relate to each other

only because numerical scores have been assigned to them.

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Criterion-defined reporting requires attention to substance and detail

and ways of presenting information and evidence that directly reflect

what a student has done. This usually goes far beyond conventional

report cards and includes actual examples of work and non-tradition-

al forms of documentation (such as photographs, videotapes, and

other kinds of artifacts).

Key Paradigm Shifts in Your Quality Performance Standards

As your core team members initiate the dialogue and action related

to quality performance standards and performance assessment, they

need to keep three things in mind. First, the credentialing system of

schools drives the instructional system (see Chapter 2). This means

that how you define standards, achievement, grades, and credit

strongly influences what, when, and how people teach. Second, the

foundation for your performance standards has already been laid; it's

your empowering student outcomes, and the spheres of living, future

conditions, beliefs, and rationale on which they rest. Third, every-

thing in this strategic design and alignment process is guided by the

driving principle of alignment things must directly match and

embody what precedes them in a design back process such as this.

Armed with these reminders, your core team members are ready to

address the key paradigm shifts inherent in their quality perfor-

mance standards. As Figure 8.4 illustrates, there are six of them.

From

Educentric Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Learning as Mental Processing

Micro Content Learner

Interpersonal Competition

Bell-Curve Expectations

Variable Grades

Calendar Closure

Figure 8.4

Learning as Application of Mental Processing

Total Role Performer

High-Challenge Standards

High-Success Expectations

Criterion Standards

Outcome Closure

Paradigm Shifts Related to Quality Performance Standards

The grounding for your performance standards is your framework of

role-performer outcomes, which concretely embodies and represents

your organizational purpose and reflects a dramatic shift from the

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conventional focus on student mastery of segments of curriculum

content. As leaders and core team members work with staff and con-

stituents on designing and implementing performance standards,

they must keep their framework of role-performer outcomes and the

paradigm shifts in Figure 8.4 front and center at all times.

Note that as you address these shifts content learning is still impor-

tant as a building block for improved student performance. However,

content learning alone is no longer the ultimate criterion for the stan-

dards you are seeking to develop and implement. And as you begin

using quality standards, remember that:

Your standards should directly embody the words that define

both the specific performance components that constitute each

of your role-performer outcomes and the high levels of chal-

lenge described in your framework of future conditions.

All students should be expected to meet these new standards

before graduating no bell curves or student-to-student

comparisons allowed.

Your goal is to document the performance of each student accord-

ing to the precise substance and criteria that you build into

each standard

no vague labels and variable grades allowed.

There may be set calendar dates for the administration or re-

administration of formal assessments, but a student's ultimate

learning and performance on your role-performer outcomes is

what matters, not the calendar date.

Each student will have met your performance standards

when(ever) he achieves or exceeds your performance stan-

dards. It's just that simple and direct.

Key Paradigm Shifts in Your

Performance Assessment and Reporting

The paradigm shifts that establish a future empowerment perfor-

mance assessment and reporting system are closely related to the

shifts that drive quality performance standards. So

as you and your

core team members take this next strategic design and alignment

step, both your performance standards and the underlying paradigm

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X50

shifts in Figure 8.4 will be invaluable to you; they are the foundation

on which designing and building an aligned assessment system

directly rests.

The major paradigm shifts that shape the development of your future

empowerment model of performance assessment and reporting

appear in Figure 8.5.

From

Educentric Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Comparative Evaluation

Criterion Evaluation

Paper-Pencil Testing

Authentic Assessment

Points as Achievement

Performance as Achievement

Cumulative Achievement

Culminating Achievement

Permanent Records

Performance Portfolios

Time-Based Credit

Performance-Based Credit

Figure 8.5

Paradigm Shifts Related to

Performance Assessment and Reporting

A quick glance at these shifts suggests that the nature and magni-

tude of the change needed here may be greater and more difficult to

achieve than anywhere else in your operating system because they

lie at the center of how the Educentric paradigm does business. The

six educentric elements on the left are so familiar and deeply

entrenched that they have acquired institutional status within

American culture

their meaning and legitimacy are universally

recognized. The dilemma this creates is that these factors simply

aren't consistent with the empowering role-performer outcomes you

want for all your students. Therefore, you will need to devise an alto-

gether new but completely common sense approach to assessment

and reporting, and it will need to:

Be criterion-defined;

Measure exactly what your outcomes state, which requires

a host of authentic methods and evidence;

Focus on documenting best-case demonstrations of

student learning;

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Retain and record this performance evidence in its authentic/

substantive form; and

Award what we now call credit on the basis of what students

accomplish rather than how long the course lasts.

So what do you do with the huge reporting dilemma you are likely to

face? I suggest establishing and operating a dual system: One that

accurately assesses and clearly documents for students, parents, and

others what you have determined to be your most important empow-

ering and enabling outcomes; and one that continues to satisfy the

expectations and regulatory requirements of the conventional

educentric system. Because your high-level role-performer outcomes

and this aligned, criterion-defined system are giving your key

constituents the substantive information they are seeking about stu-

dent learning that really matters, your staff will eventually grow

frustrated with the educentric approach's many weaknesses and

attempt to make it more like your criterion-defined system. In the

long run, your standards, assessment, and reporting paradigms will

shift accordingly.

Remember: The rules and conventions that govern the educentric

approach to these issues reflect a minimums mind set. As long as

you give the educentrists the minimums they are seeking, nothing

prevents you from using your criterion-defined role-performer

outcomes to extend and embellish those minimums tremendously.

At its core, that's what empowerment is all about.

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(AMER g

ALIGNING AN EMPOWERING

INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEM

With a clear and compelling organizational purpose and direction

and a framework of empowering student outcomes and accompany-

ing performance standards clearly defined, your learning community

is in a position to begin implementing the key elements of a future

empowerment instructional delivery system. This final chapter

explains what that entails.

Future Empowerment Instructional Systems

The three major elements that constitute an instructional delivery

system curriculum design and development, instructional process-

es and technologies, and the delivery

and opportunity structure (see

Figure 6.1) are at the heart of a learning community's influence on

its students' learning success. Therefore, I will examine each in two

ways. First, I'll define each element

and describe where it fits in the

mosaic of a learning community. Second, I'll identify and explain the

major shifts from educentric practice to the Future Empowerment

paradigm associated with each element.

Defining the Key Elements in Your Instructional System

Curriculum design and development. Curriculum design and devel-

opment includes everything related to the planning, organization,

sequencing, and integration of the learning experiences students are

given that enable them to accomplish your empowering and enabling

student outcomes. Your curriculum design and development efforts

should be guided by the tenets of a future-focused, outcome-driven

strategic design approach, which departs significantly form conven-

tional practice by emphasizing the following four major propositions:

1. Curriculum design and development proceed back from your

empowering student outcomes, and ensure that these outcomes

are addressed and developed on a continuous,

increasingly

more complex way throughout each student's career.

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2. Curriculum design and development give at least equal

emphasis to competence development

as to knowledge build-

ing. Your colleagues must recognize that

mastery of complex

competences takes many years of focused attention and

prac-

tice and cannot be organized and approached

as one would a

body of content.

3. Solid curriculum is defined and organized in

many ways other

than academic subject areas and nine-month blocks of time.

These include a variety of inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary

approaches organized around key concepts, themes, issues,

problems, and life challenges that transcend the traditional

disciplines and include the spheres of living and future condi-

tions identified in your strategic design

process.

4. All demonstrations of learning

occur in defined contexts or

physical settings, which may have

a major influence on the

knowledge and skills required to be successful. For example,

consider what it takes to land a plane at night in

a storm com-

pared to landing on a calm day; or presenting

a proposal to the

City Council compared to handing in

an assignment to a

teacher. To do justice to your empowering student

outcomes,

teachers must design realistic, challenging

contexts into cur-

riculum and implement them regularly. This will

at times move

instruction and assessment outside the four walls of the typical

classroom into the real world.

Instructional process and technologies. Your instructional

processes

and technologies are all the methods, tools,

resources, and strategies

used to help students successfully learn and demonstrate

your out-

comes and competences. These processes and technologies

inevitably reflect and respond to differences in students' learning

backgrounds (some already know how),

rates (some get it faster than

others), and styles (some need hands-on experiences

to get it).

Here, as in each of the preceding elements, the driving principle

alignment takes center stage, meaning that what teachers and

students do to teach and learn

a given outcome must directly match

what that outcome explicitly says and

means. The following is a

hypothetical example:

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All students

Describe and explain to an assessment committee of teach-

ers and adults in their community how each of the

Amendments in the Bill of Rights directly affects their daily

lives and their post-school opportunities and choices.

Here are three of several major instructional implications of this out-

come that illustrate the general approach to alignment.

First, the students are going to have to be good at describing and

explaining things

Bill of Rights or not. Therefore, describing and

explaining and the subskills that underlie them should be a constant

part of their learning experiences and actions from the earliest years on.

This requires teachers at all levels to use methodologies that continual-

ly involve students in developing and implementing these particular

competences, and to include describing and explaining as core parts

of assignments and projects in all subjects. They might even place

students in "describing and explaining teams" in all their classes.

Second, to become proficient enough in the content of this major out-

come to be able to describe and explain it to an audience of adults

requires students to be engaged with these ideas at increasing levels

of maturity and complexity over a period of years

not just in a sin-

gle unit in a single course in high school. If an outcome is far

reaching and significant enough, it can mean that all staff at all levels

in all subject areas have a responsibility for helping students learn the

essential content and competences for demonstrating it successfully.

Third, describe and explain or not, and Bill of Rights or not, the stu-

dents are going to have to be experienced and competent at

addressing adult audiences in "high-stakes" situations. As with

everything else about the competencies and content of this outcome,

this will require a great deal of experience and focused practice in

front of at least simulated audiences

something teachers across

the grade levels will need to provide.

Delivery and opportunity structure. Your delivery and opportunity

structure is the way curriculum, time, people, space, and resources

both inside and outside the four walls of the school are organized

and used to help students learn successfully. The term "structure"

means "pattern." In its bare-bones form, your learning community's

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delivery and opportunity structure is the pattern of how and when

people interact around given learning experiences. For example,

consider Perelman's (1993) analysis of the expansive learning

sys-

tems available to us in the Techno-Information Age and the

constrained structures of Industrial Age schools that prevail

across

the country. My interpretation of the differences he describes is

sum-

marized in Figure 9.1. The profound differences in these paradigms

speak for themselves.

Techno-Information Age Learning Systems

Industrial Age Schools

Figure 9.1

Anyone

Specific Students

(can learn)

Anything

Specific Subjects

(from)

(in)

Anywhere

Specific Classrooms

(at)

(on a)

Anytime

Specific Schedule

(from)

(from a)

Worldwide Experts

Specific Teacher

Perelman's Contrasting Instructional Paradigms

Is your opportunity structure fixed, prescheduled, predetermined,

and limited to one chance? Is it flexible,

open, on demand, and

recurring? Or is it some combination of these? The

answer has an

enormous bearing on the notion of conditions of success (see Chapter

3) and on whether schools expand or constrain students' opportuni-

ties for successful learning.

The closer the answer falls to the flexible/open configuration, the

greater the scope and accessibility of a school's opportunity structure

and the likelihood that it is empowering students to be successful

using the broad range of instructional resources and technologies

available to learners today. The closer it falls to the fixed/prescheduled

pattern, the more it limits opportunities for learning success.

At its core, the Future Empowerment paradigm embodies and fosters

opportunity-expanding conditions of success. The

reverse is also

true: Expanded opportunity promotes future empowerment. Thus,

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1 0

future empowerment instructional systems define and conduct their

essential operating elements in ways that expand the individual stu-

dent's opportunities for success, both in school and beyond it.

Opportunities fall into four major categories:

1. Structurethe way time, access, content, learning experi-

ences, and assistance are organized, sequenced, and made

available to students.

2. Substanceexactly what is required, taught, assessed, record-

ed, and reported, which can open or close doors of

access and

advancement or students, both in and beyond school.

3. Processthe techniques, technologies, strategies, and align-

ment of instruction, and the methods used to document and

report student learning and achievement.

4. Attitudinalwhat is expected of students, how much encour-

agement they're given to succeed, and how much effort

teachers make to help them.

Together, this mosaic of factors either expands opportunities for indi-

vidual success beyond their current boundaries or continues to limit

them unnecessarily for students.

Key Paradigm Shifts in Curriculum

Design and Development

Virtually everything we considered in Chapters 7 and 8 provides an

almost self-explanatory rationale for the eight paradigm shifts shown

in Figure 9.2 (on page 148), which guide student guide empower-

ment curriculum design and development.

These shifts move the fundamental focus of student learning experi-

ences from the content-dominated classroom to the-role performance

realities of the real world. Your spheres of living framework, your

future conditions, and your empowering role-performer outcomes

give you a deep foundation of substance from which to plan and

design student learning experiences rich in complex content and

even richer in complex competences.

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From

Educentric Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Subject-Focused Planning

Future-Focused Planning

Calendar Defined

Outcome Defined

Learning as

Learning as Application

Mental Processing

of Mental Processing

Micro-Content Learner

Total Role Performer

Discipline-Structured

Problem-Structured

Curriculum

Content Acquisition

Competence Development

Seat/Classroom Learning

Authentic Context Learning

Calendar Closure

Outcome Closure

Figure 9.2

Paradigm Shifts Related to Curriculum Design and Development

This new paradigm is a boon for staff with imagination, creativity,

and a willingness to facilitate very active learning environments. A

curriculum structure that relates directly to

your spheres of living

and future conditions encourages them to simulate

a variety of real-

life challenges in their classrooms and to

venture beyond the

classroom itself to develop their role-performer

outcomes. But this

new paradigm won't be easy to implement for those who depend on

the substance and structure of subject

area textbooks and subject-

specific materials to guide their instructional planning, and view

their role and their students' roles in

very traditional terms.

Beyond these differences in staff orientations, learning communities

face another formidable challenge in implementing

an empowerment

approach to curriculum design.

The challenge is building ultimate role-performer

outcomes into all

content areas at

all

grade levels. Regardless of what particular

con-

tent students may be addressing, they should always be developing

and practicing their role-performer

competences. This continuity of

student learning experiences is, without question, the

most unique

and challenging aspect of this new curriculum design paradigm.

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To meet this challenge, educators must engage in a systematic

design back process that builds a framework of enabling (building

block) competences for complex role-performer outcomes. These

enabling competences will include many of the traditional basic

skills that constituents view as key indicators of school effectiveness,

but this process may also reveal the absence of necessary building

blocks, so watch out for them.

This design back process probably sounds like a lot of work; it is.

But if it sounds like wasted effort, consider the experience of an

expert math teacher in the Chicago area who used it a few years ago

with Algebra 1. The map of enabling competences he created varied

so much from the sequence in the available algebra books that he

only selectively used the books as he got a class of struggling basic

math students to master Algebra 1 in one semester. He later estimat-

ed that by following any available algebra book that class would

have taken two years to accomplish what they did in a semester.

Key Paradigm Shifts in Instructional

Processes and Technologies

This element is the most vital to the learning success of students. In

simple terms, it's about how students get taught. Its twelve paradigm

shifts, shown in Figure 9.3 (on page 150), encompass a variety of

motivational and technical factors that relate to the purpose and inten-

tion of the teacher's role in a Future Empowerment paradigm and to

some of the processes they carry out as teachers work with students.

The first 10 shifts in Figure 9.3 all pertain to teachers' definition of

and orientation to their role responsibilities in the instructional process.

In their educentric form, these shifts portray a teacher as a provider of

opportunities for students to learn the established content curriculum.

This passive orientation of teachers toward students and learning

stems from a view of students as either having or lacking the ability

and motivation to learn what is presented to them, and, therefore,

being solely responsible for their own learning success. This orienta-

tion, in turn, directly promotes a monolithic approach to instruction

in which methods that seem the most compatible with the nature of

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From

Educentric Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Aptitude as Ability

Talent Selection

Learning as Mental Processing

Micro-Content Learner

Content Acquisition

Teaching as Coverage

Provides Opportunity

Learner Accountability

Single-Modality Instruction

Content-Compatible Methods

Works Alone

Seat/Classroom Learning

Aptitude as Learning Rate

Talent Development

Learning as Application of Mental Processing

Total Role Performer`

Competence Development

Teaching as Intervention

Learns Successfully

Shared Accountability

Multiple-Modality Instruction

Brain-Compatible Methods

Collaborates

Authentic Context Learning

Figure 9.3 Paradigm Shifts Related to Instructional Processes and Technologies

the content being taught are uniformly used for all students. It

assumes that those capable of getting the content will, and the others

just won't to the same degree based on their aptitudes.

The shifts in orientations and responsibilities that lead

to future

empowerment begin with a different conception of learners as capable

of learning, but perhaps not always at the

same rate and also, perhaps,

not always via the same approach. This, in turn, opens up a totally

different set of possibilities, all linked to Benjamin Bloom's early

notion of Teaching as Intervention: An active, shared accountability

role that can unlock successful learning that might

not otherwise

emerge by using a variety of appropriate methods and strategies.

The multiple-modality/brain-compatible methods and collaborative,

authentic learning contexts shown in Figure 9.3

are the natural instruc-

tional vehicles when learning is viewed

as the application of mental

processing rather than mental processing alone, and the student is

viewed as a total role performer rather than

a learner of content.

When you combine all of these factors, it becomes clear that teachers

can and do make an important difference in future empowerment.

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This is a picture and message that leaders and core teams must con-

tinuously carry throughout their learning communities as they

translate strategic design and alignment into strategic action.

Key Paradigm Shifts in Delivery

and Opportunity Structure

The differences that individual teachers can make in student learn-

ing success are, however, magnified or diminished significantly by

the structures in which they work. When teachers and principals feel

unduly constrained and frustrated by the organizational arrange-

ments in which they find themselves, they often refer to these

structures as "the system." It is your job to remind them that well-

intentioned people in the past created this system because it offered

an alternative to what at the time appeared to be an even more nega-

tive set of conditions. And if that system has outworn its usefulness

and is limiting staff and student success, it is now the role of today's

informed educators and constituents to create a system that empow-

ers them and their students.

Figure 9.4 lists nine factors that influence the nature of the struc-

tures that either constrain or expand student and staff opportunities

for success

a learning community's key conditions of success.

From

Educentric Paradigm

Empowerment Paradigm

Industrial Age

Information Age

Calendar Defined

Outcome Defined

Fixed-Time Opportunity

Expanded Opportunity

Structured Pacing

Continuous Challenge

Works Alone

Collaborates

Seat/Classroom Learning

Authentic Context Learning

Stable and Familiar

Dynamic and Effective

Provides Opportunity

Learns Successfully

Calendar Closure

Outcome Closure

Figure 9.4

Paradigm Shifts Related to Delivery and Opportunity Structures

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As you and your core team members discuss these nine sets of fac-

tors with your learning community, keep the picture of Perelman's

contrasting instructional paradigms in Figure 9.1 front and center

and use it to remind everyone of how limiting a schedule-driven,

self-contained/self-constrained classroom can be if students' success

as role performers is their goal.

As a paradigm-breaking exercise, you might remind your staff and

constituents that there are about 1,000 hours of scheduled instruc-

tional time available in each school year, and ask them to suggest

ways that those 1,000 could be used smarter and better to achieve

your empowering student outcomes. Then have them multiply 1,000

by the number of full-time equivalent teachers, assistants, and vol-

unteers you have available in any given building and suggest ways

that those many thousands of hours could be used smarter and better

to accomplish your outcomes. Finally, have them multiply the num-

ber of students in a given building by 1,000 and ask the same

question about those hundreds of thousands of hours.

I have found that the number of paradigm-breaking answers that

emerge from this simple exercise surprises everyone. Leaders need only

consolidate them into a workable plan for restructuring their instruc-

tional system, continuously acknowledging that the ideas belong to

everyone involved in the strategic design and alignment. processes.

Sustaining Your Paradigm Transformation Effort

You can do three things in addition to devoting unwavering attention

to aligning everything in your organization with your declared orga-

nizational purpose and your empowering student outcomes to sustain

the vitality and impact of your paradigm transformation effort. You can

(and should): Extend your strategic design and alignment process;

use your foundation of performance criteria to foster continuous

organizational improvement; and use the Learning Circle/Learning

Cycle strategy (see Chapter 6) to foster a culture of continuous per-

sonal and organizational learning.

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Extending Your Strategic Design and Alignment Processes

To sustain momentum established for paradigm transformation, you

must periodically update and realign your organizational purpose

and direction, your empowering student outcomes, and all the ele-

ments in your instructional delivery system. Continued attention

transforms strategic design and strategic alignment from events (or

simply an initial stage in your paradigm transformation effort) to

working tools that you can continuously use to monitor changes in

the shifts, trends, and future conditions your students will encounter

once they leave school, and your students' experiences and successes

as they encounter those conditions in their post-school lives.

By carrying out this kind of external information search, you can keep

abreast of what lies ahead for your students and of how well your

instructional efforts are accomplishing their intended purposes. You'll

also prevent initial changes in your organization from calcifying and

taking on a life of their own. Continually monitoring the external

environment means encountering new information, which, in turn,

means refining changes you initially implemented. This will help you

remain future-focused and attentive to the results that matter most:

The postschool successes of your students.

Using Your Foundation of Performance Criteria to Improve

The second key thing you must do to sustain your paradigm transfor-

mation process is to systematically use all the data you gather in

your performance assessment and reporting efforts to drive your

accountability and improvement process. Schools become empower-

ing learning communities when the most important factors in

organizational decision making are their students' learning results,

and their success in implementing their organizational vision

their

ideal picture of how they will be operating at their best. Both need to

become the central criteria on which you regularly assess your

actions and effectiveness and on which you make decisions about

programs, staff, and students.

Remember, you don't undertake strategic design just to have a lot of

nice paper to show to your staff and constituents. Through it you

build the bedrock criteria on which your learning community will

operate, so use it that way in your accountability and improvement

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process. This enables you to foster a continuous improvement way of

doing business that develops and empowers everyone to improve as

a continuous learner and performer; creates and uses feedback loops

to improve decision making and performance; supports and manages

your organization's purpose and vision; restructures your organization

to achieve future empowerment; rewards the positive contributions of

employees toward achieving your purpose and vision; and expands

your organization's capacity to perform effectively in a world of con-

stant technological and structural change.

Using Your Learning Circle/Learning Cycle Strategy

The third thing you must do to make continuous improvement and

future empowerment a way of life in your learning community is to

consistently and systematically use the Learning Circle/Learning

Cycle strategy (see Chapter 6). This, more than anything else, will

send the message that learning and improving are what your schools

are all about.

As you review the Learning Cycle, keep in mind that its most power-

ful element is acknowledgment the conscious acceptance,

expression, and description of the new learning that has occurred.

When colleagues openly acknowledge what they have learned, they

also openly acknowledge that learning is important in the organiza-

tion. Honest acknowledgment of this kind is the clearest sign that

the closed system orientations promoted by the Educentric Iceberg

have given way to the open system character of the Future Empower-

ment paradigm.

Once this occurs, no one will want to seek refuge on a melting iceberg

whose credibility is lost and whose days are numbered. Instead, you can

celebrate the paradigm transformation taking place in your learning

community and the role you have played in making it happen.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William G. Spady is internationally recognized as one of the major

theorists, writers, developers, and leaders in future-focused outcome-

based educational reform efforts. He is also a noted authority on

strategic design and alignment strategies, systemic change, and

leadership development. Bill serves as director of Breakthrough

Learning Systems in Dillon, Colo., a consulting company dedicated

to increasing personal and organizational effectiveness in education

and business.

Bill is a native of Milwaukie, Ore., and holds three degrees from the

University of Chicago

in humanities, education, and sociology.

Between 1967 and 1973 he held academic appointments at Harvard

University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He

served as a senior research sociologist at the National Institute of

Education from 1973 until 1979 when he joined the staff of the

American Association of School Administrators as associate execu-

tive director in charge of its National Center for the Improvement of

Learning. Bill left AASA in 1983 to become director of the Far West

Laboratory for Educational Research and Development.

Bill has two adult daughters, Jill and Vanessa, and a host of highly

involving hobbies and pursuits, including classical music, stereo sys-

tems, history and science documentaries, skiing, bicycling, golfing,

windsurfing, and fond memories of 30 years as a classical trumpeter.

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