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Is your school or district “missing the wave of change” that is propelling many other innovative schools and districts forward? What exactly is it within the DNA and thinking of your educational organization that is causing it to resist efforts to reform, transform, or change? We only need to look to business in recent times to learn what the consequences are for “failing to adapt to the enormous wave of change” that is all around us.

In Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, Ken Robinson writes:

“Organizations that stand still are likely to be swept aside, and corporate history is littered with the wreckage of companies and whole industries, that have been resistant to change. They become stuck in old habits and missed the wave of change that carried more innovative companies forward.”

Many of our schools are “standing still” and stuck in "old habits" and are in danger of being “swept aside.” It is difficult to believe in an era of reform, but there are still educators, policymakers, and politicians who are “stuck in the old habits” of seeing education “as something done to kids,” and who see children’s learning as a “process of adding value.” Those, who hold tight to this conception of education where children are passive participants in learning, will be standing among the “wreckage” of a public education system that stubbornly held on to past era.

Believe or not, I experienced this “wave of change” at an early age. At only seven or eight years old, I experienced firsthand Ken Robinson’s phenomenon of companies “standing still in a wave of change” way back in the 1970s. My father worked for the trucking industry, which at the time was a way to make a good living. Then, deregulation came along, and many of the trucking companies refused to adapt and cope with the new world they faced, and they went under, one by one. My father worked for a series of successive trucking companies, each folding the tent when they could not longer adapt and cope with rapidly changing transportation industry. Instead of adapting to the change, they tried to ride it out, only to ride into nonexistence.

Fast forward to more recent times and we see the same thing happening again and again with businesses. If you glance back four of five years, the names of companies like Circuit City, Blockbuster, and Borders come to mind. Each of these companies stood still in the face of change and it cost them dearly. More recently, news reports speak about the struggles of Best Buy, a major electronics retailer, who is trying to cope with the rapidly changing retail environment, and who seems guilty of the same kinds of thinking these businesses had. Each of these businesses found themselves in a changing environment and made decisions, based on specific and stagnation-generating kinds of thinking. With the exception of Best Buy at this point, that thinking ended in their demise. They could not adapt.

If you examine your school or district closely, you are likely to find this same self-destructive thinking that is causing your educational organization to “stand still in a wave of change.” If it continues, then you could find yourself standing in the wreckage.

What are these kinds of thinking that are clearly obstacles to adaptation and transformation? Over the years, I have come to see them in very simple terms. Here are the top 7 Kinds of Thinking, or what I might call “Resistors to Change.”

• “We’ve always done it this way thinking.” In public education, I have found this kind of thinking the most common. You can easily run up against this thinking by simply questioning a policy or procedure, or by suggesting a new way of doing something. Immediate replies by the institutional-preservation police are, “You can’t do it that way. We've always done it this way.” Or, more simply, “I like the way we've always done it.” At the heart of our schools and school districts are thousands of these “ways of doing things” that are protected vehemently by others, not because there is anything special about them. These are valued because they are wrongly seen as  not negotiable for change. The best antidote for this kind of thinking? Asking the simple “Why” question. If the answer is, “Because we’ve always done it this way,” then the underlying rationale might be suspect.
• “Head in the sand thinking.” I can’t help but wonder if this was the kind of thinking Blockbuster was guilty of. They had to see streaming video services coming, especially if they were reading anything about industry trends. But just as deadly as ignoring the “waves of change” can be, so can the same head-in-the-sand habit of getting so caught up in “the doing” that you don’t see the change coming. In other words, sometimes organizations are so busy caught up in doing what they do, that they don’t pause and connect to the world around them. In that environment, it is extremely easy to miss the “wave of change” right in front of you. Schools are sometimes notorious for adhering steadfastly to motions they've always carried out, and with change roiling all around them. Each of these businesses certainly had to be guilty of some of that. They did not notice the change until it was too late. That can happen to schools too. Antidote for this kind of thinking? Simply being informed. Having the latest information goes a long way helping education organizations avoid being blindsided by change. But there must be a willingness and courage to act on that information.
• “It’s someone or something else’s fault thinking.” Back in the 1970s, many of those trucking companies complained that is was the government’s fault they had to go out of business, after all politicians brought about deregulation. In more recent times, I am sure there were those at Borders who blamed cheap electronic books and Amazon for their demise, and currently I read  where Best Buy is blaming Amazon for their problem of decreasing sales. Schools, school leaders, and policymakers do the very same thing. It’s the teachers’ unions fault. It’s the politicians’ fault. It’s the parents’ fault. In the interest of honesty and confession, I have been guilty of this thinking myself. Still, there’s no productivity in searching for a boogie man on which to place blame. There’s certainly enough blame to go  around anyway. If you spend all your effort and time trying to find someone or something to blame, you are wasting energy and resources that could be used to adapt and meet solidly the “wave of change” that is upon you. The best antidote for this kind of thinking is perhaps to engage in looking for solutions. That way, there’s no energy to expend on blaming.
• “You have to do it this way because policy says so thinking.” I honestly find this one of the most ridiculous reasons why we defend so much of what we do in education. Educational institutions are notorious for this kind of thinking, and often they do it much more than businesses. Businesses, to exist for any length of time, are most often forced to question what they do, and when they become too entangled in “policy-think” they lose sight of their reason for existence: making money. Then they simply cease to exist. On the other hand, schools do the same kind of thinking too, and they continue to perpetuate it. They get so caught up in “policy-think” they lose sight of their purpose too. This is most evident when decisions are made, clearly not in the best interest of kids. When adhering to a policy is more important than meeting the needs of kids, the school or district has lost sight of its purpose, and it’s reason for existence, and the world will move on without it. Antidote for “policy-think?” Spending some refocusing on why we do what we do, the kids.
• “I’m right and everyone else is wrong thinking.” In our polarized society right now, there is a great deal of this kind of thinking, and it can have a detrimental effect on an organization facing a “wave of change.” There was a time when being “open-minded” was a virtue, and compromise was not a dirty word. Tolerance ruled the day. Now, our polarized “”I’m right thinking” has bled over into our schools too. Polarized debates on topics such as school vouchers, sex education, prayer in schools, and teachers’ unions only serve to widen the divide between people. If someone questions the effectiveness or usefulness of these measures, they are immediately attacked.We can’t have an honest look at policy change without one side or the other cooking the data, which in educational research is all too easy to do. An immense amount of effort is going into establishing the “I’m right and you’re wrong” view, and the waves of change meanwhile are slamming hard into our educational institutions. There is greater interest in proving the other side wrong, than learning the truth of what really does work. What is an antidote for “polarized thinking?” Realizing that there is nothing sacred about being right in the debate, especially when it’s more important to do what’s right for the kids.
• “Protect our turf at all costs thinking.” I have often thought, the only people who have a claim to “turf” in public education should be the kids, and that turf is “What’s in their best interests.” When the “waves of change” started battering the trucking industry in the 1970s, I remember well how trucking company owners held strongly to their turf of wanting wage concessions and benefit reductions to preserve the company. Union trucking company workers held equal ground on these same issues of turf, and in the end, both sides lost. Companies closed, and no one had any turf to battle over any more. Fast forward today, and the recent complaints by Best Buy about Amazon seem to be the same kind of turf battle. Best Buy does not appreciate Amazon’s selling electronics and appliances to undercut their prices, so there was talk about Best Buy refusing to sell Amazon’s Kindle readers. The end result of this turf war would not improve Best Buy’s current situation against the “wave of change” that is upon them. There is just too much money to be made in electronics and appliances. Protect the turf at all costs thinking in both these cases results in both sides losing. Amazon loses satisfying customers who want to go purchase an e-reader locally. Best Buy loses that customer who came to their store to purposefully buy an ereader. In education, protect-our-turf-at-all-costs thinking is happening on multiple levels. It is most insidious at the local level, where individuals fight hard to preserve what exists because it is their turf, and they’re not giving it up. Antidote for “turf-protecting thinking is simple. Keep your eyes focused on the real reason why we do what we do, the kids. Recognize that we share a common purpose.
• “Change for Change’s Sake thinking.” With everyone yelling about the need to reform our education system, this is perhaps one of the most increasingly common forms of thinking that keeps a school or district from moving forward. This kind of thinking is perhaps best illustrated by the argument many make for certain reforms, by simply stating, “Well, we’ve got to do something.” This kind of thinking is responsible for the endless wheel of reform, education often finds itself on. Educators and policymakers institute change because, in their view, change is called for. Never mind whether the change is sound or really addresses the issues. Many people accuse those who speak out against such reforms or proposals as “defending the status quo” or as “advocating for what is.” But “We’ve just got change this” thinking is just as dangerous to an organization as well. When Borders decided to enter the ebook market, a great deal of blood between Barnes and Noble and Amazon had already been spilt. Their decision was late, and more importantly, it was reactionary thinking. Change for change’s sake thinking is reactionary thinking without deliberation. It is deciding to take a course of action, not because it is the best course of action, but because “We’ve got to do something.” I can’t but wonder whether a great deal of our current national ed policy under Race to the Top is this kind of thinking. There is no research to support that having Common Standards, instituting merit pay for teachers, or using value-added measures is going to raise student achievement. In fact, there is some research to the contrary, yet there’s the push to implement reform, and anyone who questions it is said to be guilty of “supporting the status quo.” Change of change’s sake thinking submits to simply taking a course of action, because there’s a perceived obligation to do so. The antidote for the reactionary thinking of this kind is simply pausing and resisting the urge to do something immediately. By pausing, you buy time for level heads to prevail. 

There are certainly many other kinds of thinking that would cause a district or school to miss that “wave of change” that propels other schools and districts to successful innovation. In my experience, the forces within a school or school district employ any and all of these ways of thinking to preserve things just as they are. Let’s just hope those schools and districts don’t end up like Circuit City, Borders, or Blockbuster.

In 2012, the powerful inertia to keep schools and school districts the same continues to dampen and  neutralize any efforts to innovate and change how schools operate. We are still on a march to obsolescence.

A recent example of this inertia in North Carolina, was when school districts tried to innovate with changing their school calendars. School districts shifted their calendars to better align their semester schedules with student needs. But it was the powerful tourism lobby, Save Our Summers,  that then pushed lawmakers to set legal limits when schools can start and end because, as their web site says, they “seek to establish, protect and maintain a more traditional school calendar.” Maintaining a “traditional” school calendar was not about helping schools do a better job teaching kids, it was mostly about preservation of the status quo, and preserving the school calendar they enjoyed while attending Industrial Age schools, not to mention profit.

These kind of efforts are simply attempts to keep the same Industrial Age schools of the previous century. These forces of inertia are making our schools obsolete simply because too many of them are made up of people who hold tightly to a nostalgic view of an ideal standard school that never really existed, except in the minds of the few of them for which schools worked. As Frank Kelly, Ted McCain and Ian Jukes write in their book, Teaching the Digital Generation: No More Cookie-Cutter High Schools,

“The most important issue facing schools today is the reluctance of those in control of education to let go of what they are used to, whatever their role in the system.”

The people and forces at work to preserve our education system as it is are powerful and strong. There are the politicians who see nothing wrong with the school systems that provided them with opportunities, so they continue to make laws that prop up the Industrial Age schools and districts they know. Policymakers are often beholden to politicians because they are left with trying to create policy that follows the letter of the law and regulations developed by politicians. Teachers, who very often excelled under a 20th century, standardized, Industrial Age education, are reluctant to change teaching methodology because, after all, “It worked for me.” School and district administrators and staff are more engaged in carrying the dictates of policy from on high, and often do not see their place as “One to question why.” Then there are parents, who very often had positive school experiences when they were in school, so they want the exact same schools for their children.

Is it any wonder with all these forces at work, that most reform occurs at the edges of our school system as Milton Chen describes in his book Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools? Is it any wonder we spend most of our time tweaking schedules, lengthening school days, implementing new sets of standards and new testing, and trying to force technology to help us educate students as we always have done? And yet our drop out rates only improve marginally, student measures are down. Our schools are still on the road to obsolescence, because we are still engaged in practices that preserve 20th century Industrial age schooling.

Here’s a list of some of those practices that are really moving our schools to obsolescence:

• We still design and build schools structurally the way they always have been. While I certainly do not advocate building the open school buildings of the 60s and 70s and causing that fiasco, today, it seems little thought seems to go in the designs of our school buildings. We are still building structures containing distinct classrooms to house students in assembly-line manner to push them through the grades, like products. Perhaps we should be building schools with flexible learning spaces with walls easily removed and reconfigured to meet the needs of students, rather than fitting students to the needs of the building. Perhaps we shouldn’t even build high schools all with the same departmental classroom groupings. Maybe to meet the needs of students, classrooms are arranged by areas of interest or study, with core content teachers working within these instead of departments. Or, maybe one high school need only have art studios, music studios, or an acting theater rather than a football stadium and science labs. Such a school would be structured to meet the needs of art students, rather than STEM or athletics. In other words, we need to design school buildings to meet the needs of all 21st century students, rather than trying to fit students in predetermined school structures that have no flexibility

• In many of our schools, we still have teachers engaged in teaching the same ways they have always taught and were taught. The argument that lecture is a perfectly fine method of teaching because it worked for me is a step toward obsolescence. We need to stop trying to fit students to teaching and instruction, and instead, fit teaching and instruction to the needs of students. Students need to have the options of learning traditionally if they wish, but they also need to be able to learn through project-based or problem-based learning if that fits their needs. They need to be able to engage in online learning and internships if those fit their learning needs. They need to be able to engage in the kinds of learning that fits them, instead of schools trying to force students to learn in ways that do not work for them.

• We still are too often engaged in finding ways to get technology to help us educate as we always have instead of using technology to reinvent teaching and learning. Students typing 5 paragraph essays on computers hardly qualifies as technology integration. Having teachers use PowerPoint to enhance their lectures hardly makes for 21st century teaching. Using the Internet solely as an information source, instead of a tool to engage in global learning and connecting, hardly means using it for 21st century learning. Our schools still plod toward obsolescence because we still think of technology as a means to do the things we’ve always done better, rather than using it to reinvent what we are able to do.

• We still sacrifice kids to uphold policy and procedure rather than developing policy and procedures to meet the needs of kids. How many times do we prevent a student from taking a higher level course simply because they do not have the requisite “seat time” in another class, especially when we know that student is perfectly capable to being successful in that class? How many times do we keep students in our buildings all day simply because our regulations say they have to be in the building 7.5 hours, when it would be to their advantage to spend some time working at the animal shelter? How many times have we had to purchase “state adopted” textbooks and materials because the rules only allowed us to purchase those items, when other materials would work better for our kids? Our march toward obsolescence also includes a hard-headed unwillingness to enforce and abide by policy, procedures, and regulations even though they are not always in the best interest of kids.

• We are hard at work standardizing our schools, our curriculums, our tests, and even our instructional materials. In public education, there is a strong force that says anomalies and differences are bad. We push for schools that are same, from how they are arranged to even how their web pages are designed. Our government pushes for a standardized curriculum for all in spite of the fact that we know all students do not learn the same way, and don’t even have the same interests. We tell ourselves,  “We’re going to make scientists and mathematicians of them whether they like or not.” We give standardized tests, so that we can “measure” both students and educators and see if we have “added any value” to our students as they have progressed through our Industrial Age assembly line schools. We have policymakers pushing for e-textbooks and tablets that merely make books electronic and encourage the same kinds of learning we’ve always done. Never mind that some students do not learn best from text whether it is electronic or paper. Our efforts to standardize everything demonstrates that Industrial Age thinking still has a tenacious hold on our schools in the march toward obsolescence.

• We are still caught thinking of school as something “done to kids” between the hours of 8 AM and 3 PM. We force teenagers into classrooms at 7:30 AM when all the research in the world, and common sense, says their intelligent thinking capacities don’t really kick in until much later in the morning. We allows bus schedules and lunch schedules drive when teaching and learning occurs instead of fitting those things to teaching and learning. We allow sports practices to dictate when school ends for all high school students, when there are some who would excel under a class schedule that extends into the early evening. We march toward obsolescence because we refuse to fundamentally rethink the school day.

I do not advocate change for change’s sake. It is just as easy to get caught up in the thinking that we have to change something because it needs changing. Many of the tweaks and changes being made to our schools are the product of this kind of thinking. Yet, our schools continue to march toward obsolescence because we are not willing to fundamentally let got of our own nostalgic view of schools and school districts. The key to moving away from obsolescence to innovation and invention is perhaps in not holding anything sacred. We must be willing question everything about our schools and school districts. By trying to find ways to preserve and better what has clearly not worked for all students in the past is a sure way to continue our march to obsolescence.

Today, I was attempting to read an article from our local newspaper's website. I was trying to access an article through my RSS Reader, when I got the following pop-up:



Our small town newspaper, The Hickory Daily Record, is a mediocre newspaper at best for a number of reasons. First of all, I was once a subscriber, but I stopped home delivery because there would be stretches of days I would not receive it. I would then have to call their office, and the paper seemed content to just give me a credit when I did not receive it rather than find a way to deliver a paper. They inevitably did this rather than resolve the issue of delivery. Secondly, there's not a been a great deal of content in its pages for quite sometime. The paper edition is primarily advertisements, and the paper has had to cut its reporting staff back so much, they aren't even capable of providing the news, except what  news comes to them. Finally, the Hickory Daily Record has become irrelevant as a news source in our region. I can access free news channels such as our local TV stations, and the Charlotte Observer's site and get more information about the happenings in my hometown  than I can in my hometown newspaper. In all honesty, The Hickory Daily Record has become little more than a neighborhood newspaper with absolutely no impact on the community. It is a dinosaur that is still trying to avoid extinction. In some ways, I think public education is trying to avoid the same fate.

As you can see from the pop-up message I received, I could continue reading the article I wanted to see if I paid them $4.95 a month, but I won't pay them and I won't read the article. The whole problem is, the content offered by the Hickory Daily Record isn't worth $4.95 a month to me. You can scan their web site in less than 5 minutes. Unlike the larger newspapers, there isn't a wealth of content, certainly not 5 dollars a month worth. All this brings me to my point, "Newspapers basically still do not get it." While I have no idea how profitable the Hickory Daily Record's efforts to charge for online content is, it can't be sustainable. A glance at their site tells your they offer no amazing exclusive content you can't find elsewhere. A lot of the articles are from news wire services that offer the same text free. And, there is so little news content to begin with, in comparison to larger news sites. The bottom line is my small town newspaper is still caught in 20th century ways of delivering content and appears to be doing little to change. I can't help but wonder if our schools are still caught in the same time warp. We still try to deliver education the way we've always done too. So what can schools learn from my small town newspaper's predicament? Here's three things for thought:

1. In a digital age, we can't simply take what we've always done and post it online or digitize it and call it education. Our technology is clearly disrupting how we do things in our schools, and we'll not contain that force by trying to simply package what we're doing into 21st century packages. We need to fundamentally re-think and re-engineer everything we do in schools and take full advantage of the possibilities of the digital age.

2. We need to fundamentally re-think our digital content which is student learning. If newspapers want to have a hope of surviving online or off, they have to focus on content. People will only pay for content if they see it as engaging or useful, and if they can't get it elsewhere. As schools in the digital age, we must focus on our own "content" which is student learning. Everything we do, from front office procedures to instructional strategies in the classroom need to be about student learning. We need stop being distracted by everything that is not about student learning.

3. Twenty-first century schools need to acknowledge the competition. Newspapers like my small hometown paper haven't done this very well. They are still holding on to the belief that they offer something readers can't get elsewhere. They haven't acknowledged the competition. Whether charter schools, private schools, or virtual schools are better at raising student achievement is still debatable. That argument probably will not be settled any time soon, and most likely it will never be settled. The reality for public schools is that we have competition. Instead of expending large amounts of time discrediting the competition, let's use that energy to make our public schools better. Let's focus on what is most important.

Everyone knows newspapers haven't fared well under the onslaught of web content. Most barely survive. Some have learned that users will pay for content, if that content is of high quality, and if users can't get that same content from elsewhere. My hometown newspaper is still caught in an old paradigm that believes they can approach web content like they did paper content. They can simply post the same content from their newspaper online and people will pay for it. Of course they have tried to add some unique content like videos and information data bases, but its hard to say they've changed their content delivery model very much.  Maybe some will pay 5 dollars a month for this content, but I won't and I am sure many others won't as well. The newspaper is losing me as potential customer and I am sure there are others. If they want me to click that "Pay $4.95 Month" button they need to give me something I do not already have. Public schools would do well learn from this too. If our students aren't getting the education our parents want them to have, they aren't going to keep paying for our schools either. We have to give them the kinds of student learning they can't get elsewhere.

In October, I posted “Top 10 Signs Your School Is Caught in a Time Warp: List for School Leaders.” Of course the whole idea behind that post was to call attention to those leadership proclivities that are actually hindering movement toward a 21st century learning environment.

Now, let me be just a bit more direct in this post. Here’s the list of indications that your school leadership is obsolete and in need of a big upgrade.


1. You actually find yourself defending school policies that ban the use of cell phones in your building. Cell phone bans need to go the way of the slate and chalkboards. Instead of prowling the halls to catch students with cell phones out, how about getting students to use them constructively? Besides, if a cell phone disrupts class, it is the user that actually disrupts the class, not the phone. Cell phone bans are a waste of administrative energy and time.

2. You defend adamantly the use of Internet filters on your school networks. I know all about the CIPA compliance issues and all, but perhaps your leadership is just a bit outdated and your knowledge of computers inadequate if you actually think filters work. Let’s face it, most districts put filters on their networks, not because they work, but because they allow them to keep their funding. If you really want to know whether your Internet filters are working, just ask a student. The smile on their face says a great deal. Heck, some of them might even show you one way they use to get to Facebook even though it’s supposed to be blocked.

3. You brag about the number of computers, smartboards, or iPads you have in your building. I have to point the finger to myself a bit on this one. It’s darn hard to resist boasting about your computer-to-student ratio when a fellow administrator brags about his, but the truth is, it really doesn’t matter if you have 3 computers to every student if no one is using them effectively for learning. Administrators have historically boasted about needing an iPad for every student or a laptop for every student. I’ve even heard school principals boast about having Smartboards in every classroom. Truth is, it’s not the numbers that matter; it’s what students and teachers are doing with those devices that matters.

4. You see Facebook and other social media as one of the biggest menaces of modern society.  Granted, I will admit I’ve dealt with enough “Facebook-connected issues” that I sometimes think “Zuckerberg” should be a bad word. But, social media is our reality; it’s our students’ reality. We can’t keep blocking it out with the hopes that it will go away. It will, in some form, outlast us all. Instead, let’s figure out some way to use social media educationally. We all might learn something.

5.  You think learning occurs only within the confines of your building’s classrooms under the direction of your teachers. Our students are learning about things they care about in spite of us. Classrooms are not the only places where student curiosity is satisfied (if they ever were). Our students are engaged in massive learning on their own while sitting with digital devices wherever they happen to be. It’s time to measure learning by something other than seat time and length of class periods. Perhaps we could even figure out a way to channel all that energy to learn to accomplish our educational goals.

School leaders suffering from “obsolete leadership” really do prevent schools from becoming 21st century learning places. Perhaps someday we’ll quit trying to defend the rules and question why the rules exist in the first place. That said, I am positive there are others indicators that could be added to this list.