Someone recently said to me that if you look at how the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) seems to ‘work’, nothing much has changed in the past 20 years. And I concur.
Of course, this is unlikely to be a ‘truth’ that is unique to CBE. In my best guess, it’s probably true not only of most large education systems, but more broadly of any large institutions or systems. CBE just happens to be the one I know most about, having had internal experience (1997-2016) and having had the opportunity to observe from the outside, more recently (2016 to present). So, CBE is the context of my musings; but the ideas may well generalize beyond this particular context.
In order to talk about why change in education is so hard, I’d like first to show that it must be, in fact, hard. That’ll be the topic of this first instalment.
Then (starting next instalment), I’ll make a few comments on why I think that is. (Spoiler – we need to understand that 1. people are weird, 2. change management matters, 3. there’s a science of changing things that we ignore (at our peril), 4. organizations are psychological beings just like people, and 5. power and politics rule everything.)
Finally, I hope to make a few suggestions (that will mostly be wishful thinking, but might be of interest, anyway). Don’t know how many installments in we’ll be, before I get there. Depends how long-winded I get, I suppose.
What makes it seem that change is hard?
To me, it seems that change is hard because it’s hard to see change. A desire for change is talked about all the time. But we see no change. It must be hard.
In my view, there’s truth to the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
Children haven’t changed
When I started working in public education settings, in the late 80s and early 90s, my job was to assess children and to help adults understand (and program for) their individual needs. It was hard. School systems expected children to progress similarly to one another. Children were expected to progress through the work of one grade to the next, with little variation. But they didn’t. They didn’t then, and they don’t now. That hasn’t changed. There are now more children, with more complex needs, but the fundamental truth that children don’t operate as monoliths, hasn’t changed. They don’t all progress the same.
Adults haven’t changed
The adults have always said that they want to know about each child’s individual learning needs so that they can program appropriately. That was true then. And it’s true now. It hasn’t changed. But frequently, nothing actually changes even with added information (e.g., that obtained from an assessment). Group instruction hasn’t changed much, if any. Small groups may abound, but the instruction provided frequently remains haphazard, at best. And the individualized instruction (if there is any) hasn’t really changed much. It was hard for adults to individualize 25-30 years ago. It’s hard for them to do that now. It was hard to think of teaching ‘this child’ versus ‘my class’ then; and it’s hard now.
Schools haven’t changed
When I first stepped foot in a school as a professional, it was an elementary school. Kids could come there for Kindergarten. They had to come by the time they were 6. They moved from an elementary school to a middle or junior high, and then on to high school. There were 12 grades. There were subjects that had to be taught, and rules about how much time had to be spent in total, and on each subject. There were ways of identifying children with special needs and IPPs to be written for them. This was true in rural schools (where I mostly worked before coming to Calgary), suburban schools (I worked in these too), and of course in urban schools. There were children (and families) doing well, there were children (and families) doing not so well, and there were children (and families) in crisis.
And now? Same.
Schools run K-12. Same subjects are taught (with some new variations and content), same kinds of rules apply with respect to instructional hours, and so on. Children (and families) continue to do well, or children (and families) continue to do not so well, or, children (and families) are in crisis. There’s bit more choice (and a bit more controversy about that). There’s more technology, but it’s not created any fundamental change in teaching or learning. I’m sure there are lots of other surface level changes. But fundamentally? Schools haven’t changed.
Funding concerns haven’t changed
Throughout my entire time working in public education or around it, people have known that there are funding issues that impact the success of systems in making sure all students become literate (or well educated, or whatever we hope for, from schools). In good times, funding has increased and people make sure to remark how the increases only return us to earlier, better times. In bad times, funding is frozen (occasionally decreased), resulting in less resources available for teachers and support staff and fewer teachers and support staff available for the money. Never have I seen a budget cycle where everyone agreed that there was enough money going to support every child. Funding concerns haven’t changed.
Administration hasn’t changed
This one is trickier. Of course, the individuals in positions have changed, over time and they have all set their own ‘stamp’ on their portfolios. So, why do I think administration hasn’t changed? Well, because every administrator is human, and every administrator’s biggest issues are dealing with the other humans. They all have their own interests, some of which are at cross purposes with others’ interests. They all have their own values and priorities, some of which conflict with the values and priorities of others around them. The thing about each individual administrator is that they are an individual. There isn’t much in the way of ‘collective administration’ (that I can see, at least). Are there exceptions in small pockets? Sure. But I’m referring to the larger ‘system’ as a whole.
In the time I’ve watched and been part of public education, the idea of leadership in administration and leadership teams has been spoken of, but not lived. How do I know? Well – mostly because, in my experience, most of the staff in schools (and outside of ‘downtown’) could tell you almost nothing about the organization that they work for, as far as any unified themes of values, priorities , or system interests outside of what’s been imposed on them. They can tell you that ‘every school has to have a well-being goal on their school development plan’ or ‘very few children are offered placements in special schools or programs’. But, very rarely can they actually tell you about ‘system thinking’ that has lead to those things being true.
The insularity of public education hasn’t changed
Here’s a big theme that will come up repeatedly, I expect. Public education doesn’t want to be impacted by outside influence. Never has, as far as I’ve seen. The system itself doesn’t really believe it is ‘public’. It believes in itself, and not in anything outside of itself. As far as what would be good for public education, the system knows those answers lie within. As far as what the public wants? The system knows better. Questions? The system knows that those are dangerous to its state of equilibrium. Oversight is insulting, and freedom of information is seen as inconvenient at the least, and highly dangerous, more often. Questions are threats that no one has time or energy to handle graciously. So they are dealt with aggressively. Is this always true? Probably not. Have I seen it play out more often than not? Definitely. And I know for sure, ’cause I was there, that public consultation is often designed to try to *get the public to say* that what they want is what the administration is prepared to give them. (Ask me to write about the sordid history of CBE’s ‘literacy strategy’ if you want more of the sad details of this truth.)
Trustees haven’t changed
Trustees, some with and some without any real understanding of school systems, get elected. Sometimes they have personal agendas. Sometimes they have political agendas. Sometimes they believe they’ll be able to influence public education in their city, and they are just there to ‘do good’. Mostly, it seems, they’re wrong. They don’t (have much influence). And they don’t get to do much good. Lots of them have been/are, very good people. But in my opinion, they rarely find or create true inflection points for real change. None of them can do it on their own. And, individually, or as a group, they’d have to be pretty radical to create the conditions for change. And mostly (for good reason) there’s caution in the public about how radical they’d want their Trustees to be. Lots of people have no idea how broken public education actually is. Why would they want to elect Trustees to radically change it? How dangerous would it be if the wrong sort of radicals tried to change it?
Politicians haven’t changed
In Alberta, especially, little needs to be said about this topic. So, I won’t.
(Most of what actually needs to be said on this topic will be covered under the ‘people are weird’ heading (see below)).
We’re left with the question how come none of those things have changed? (By the way, there’s plenty more things that haven’t changed. Those were just a few off the top of my head).
A few reasons for why things haven’t changed will be the subject of following installments. They include:
1. human nature (I call that one ‘people are weird’);
2. change doesn’t happen without certain conditions being met (we need change management);
3. even when we know what to change and have all the elements aligned, we still need to be able to implement our ideas and we often don’t know how (implementation science);
4. systems have a psychology all of their own that we need to understand (organizational psychology);
and
5. power and politics overlay all of these things.
(Again, these are probably just the tip of the iceberg – they’re merely the things that tumble out of my brain when I ponder ‘why is change hard’.)
Stay tuned for the instalment #2 – ‘People are Weird’.
Sara Peden 