Location: Title I Public High School

Number of students: 3,700Number of teachers and support staff: 400

School district contains:2 High Schools

5 Middle 15 Elementary and Other Schools

STRUCTURE: HIERARCHY(Beach, 2013)

Superintendent

Assistant Superintendents

Principal

Vice Principals

Department Chairs

Teaching & Support Staff

Students & Parents

34.5% Hispanic30% Black25% White

10.5% Other ethnicities50% from low income households

4.1% have limited English13.1 have learning and/or physical

disabilities15% mobility rate

83% White7.1% Black

5.3% Hispanic4.6% Other ethnicities

Description of SWS: Description of SWS: Contained only students who

did not meet expectations according to the EXPLORE test.

Students have common group of teachers

All classes co-taught with a Special Education teacher

Co-teachers share a planning period

SWS teachers develop thematic units across subject areas

Smaller class sizes Team meetings 2x/week during

common plan time to discuss student progress.

Support:Support: Department chairs “pop-in”

to weekly meetings Listen to teacher

complaints/issues Provide suggestions for

interventions Communication via emails New responsibilities Provide

academic/behavioral interventions

Motivation for Staff: Motivation for Staff: (Beach, 2013)

Fear – of the school closing, loss of all jobs if the State took over the school.

Co-teachers not meeting regularly during common plan time

Poor teacher attendance for team meetings

Teachers limit time for before and after school hours to help students

No attempt to develop thematic units

Department chairs stopped attending team meetings

No teacher accountability for performing new responsibilities

“Fewer than 10 per cent of companies succeed in building a winning culture.”(Rogers & Meehan, 2007, p. 254)

Change leaders did recognize the external and internal pressures to improve academic success by attempting to address student difficulties as they entered high school.

They correctly identified the need to make

a revolutionary change quickly in response to the demands placed upon the school by the Illinois State Board of Education to meet AYP. (Beach, 2013)

They also identified some of obstacles to

student academic success – behavioral and emotional issues.

What leaders should have done differently is to follow the “components of a sound process for change.”(McAllaster, 2004, p. 322)

They should have researched the problems further and found out that academic failures were often a result of stressors they are continuously exposed to, not being placed in appropriate academic classes, not having support for education at home, and not being held accountable for their academic success until high school.

They should have found a program that has been successful in the past, not one that has been tried three years earlier and failed.

They should have executed the program with continuous attention to how it was progressing.

They should have considered teachers’ suggestions for change and made modifications to the program. “We’re all familiar with managers who pride themselves on having an open door. But how many pride themselves on keeping an open mind when an employee offers a process-improvement suggestion?”(Lee, 2008, p. 28)

Finally, they should have provided some type of reward system that would promote support for the program. .(McAllaster, 2004)

The continued method of imposing changes without a humanistic approach, without caring about how the changes would affect teachers and students, creates resistance that becomes more deeply embedded in the school culture after every change initiative. It imposes change that “feels very demanding, top-down.”(Laureate Education, Inc., n.d.) A change implemented in this fashion does not promote support. The creation and implementation of SWS was done in the same manner as most of the other changes in my school. They begin and end quickly. The internal and external pressures for change are well understood. What is not understood is how to develop, implement, evaluate and modify, and sustain a successful change. With each successive change poorly planned and implemented in the same imposed fashion as SWS, there is less and less support and attention from the high school staff. “If it looks to them as though there is a strong likelihood of failure, they will resist.”(Beach, 2013, p. 80)

References

2011 Illinois State Report Card. (2011). http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/getReport.aspx?year=2011&code=S56099365U0007_E.pdf

Anderson, D. L. (2010). Organization development: the process of leading organizational change. : Sage Publications.

Beach, L. (2013). Leadership and the art of change: a practical guide to organizational transformation (custom ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2008). Reframing 0rganizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Hitt, M. A., Miller, C. C., & Colella, A. (2009). Organizational behavior: A strategic approach. : John Wiley & Sons.

Kotter, J. (2006). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. In J. Gallos (Ed.), Organization developoment: a jossey-bass reader (pp. 239-251). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Laureate Education, Inc. (n.d.). Transformational leadership [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com

Lee, T. J. (2008, July/August). Actions speak loudly. Communication World, 25(4), 24-28. McAllaster, C. M. (2004). The 5 p’s of change: Leading change by effectively utilizing leverage

points within an organization. Organizational Dynamics, 33(3), 318-328. Rogers, P., & Meehan, P. (2007). Building a winning culture. Business Strategy Series, 8(4), 254-

261. Schermerhorn, J. R., & Osborn, R. N. (2008). Organizational behavior (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ:

John Wiley & Sons.