A Good Day for Education

It's a good day for education. No, not because of anything our North Carolina General Assembly has done, what with the starvation diet on which it has put public schools, rather it is a good day for education because of the official launch of the High Point University Educational Leadership Studio with which I have been working for nearly a year. As one participating superintendent asserted today, "The Studio has a lot of promise." I agree.

I have written about the Studio before but only in the context of the Design Team's work. Today the twinkle in the Team's eye was consummated by the Educational Leadership Doctoral Advisory Committee. Convened at the HPU Plato Wilson Ballroom, the purpose of the meeting was both to inform and create ownership for the Education Studio, a working place and a laboratory where public-school problems of practice are crowd-sourced, face-to-face and virtually, such that K-21 education professionals learn from and with each other. 

Present were superintendents of four NC Piedmont public school districts, central-service professionals, principals, university representatives, and Design Team members, including Dr. MJ Hall, founder of the Studio, and yours truly, consultant and thought partner to the initiative.

Although Design Team members were affirmed by the Committee's embrace of the Studio, it was clear to me that the heavy lifting lies ahead. In fact, it was de ja vu all over again. As readers of this blog know, I was co-founder and ultimately executive director of Triangle Leadership Academy, a public-private partnership of districts focused on leadership development and succession planning. We closed shop one year ago in July.

Certainly, the financial hurricane that blew in as a result of the recession was mainly responsible for our demise. In hindsight, however, there were deeper, more disturbing and intractable issues, some of which played out today in activities we facilitated for the Advisory Committee.

For example, we assembled Committee members in cross-district, cross-functional teams to consider and write one idea per sticky note things they thought their organization did well. After a brief working period involving independent writing, team conversation, and posting of notes to chart paper, we asked for a representative to report out.

It was hard not to notice that the superintendents posted and reported their good works in district-by-district fashion in ostensible disregard of their colleagues standing right beside them. One group stacked its sticky notes on chart paper chimney style, with as much space as possible between stacks. Not only that, each superintendent insisted on representing him or herself in the report out.

But why would we expect anything different? Our world is perfectly organized to create the behavior we are currently experiencing. The political reality is that every superintendent runs his or her own shop. In fact, one of them publicly lamented the limited opportunities superintendents even in neighboring districts have to share information, much less solve problems of practice.

Folks, it's not about ego; it's about culture, a culture of insularity that, in my opinion, weakens the greater system of public education. Our problems are neither created in isolation nor will they be solved in isolation. We are in this together or we are in this to fail. We need boundary-spanning leadership now more than ever.

The HPU Educational Leadership Studio is designed to strengthen the education system by connecting, convening, communicating, and co-designing in context. In the summer of 2013, the Studio will convene 100 professionals from Murphy to Manteo, classroom to boardroom, schoolhouse to statehouse. As we speak, the Studio has a web presence at http://educationstudio.highpoint.edu Check it out.

Given the assembled talent and committed professionals, I think it's a pretty cool dream that has a better-than-even chance of coming true. Today was a good day for education.