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Educators gain momentum from a model for continuous improvement
"Good is the enemy of great. We don't have great schools principally because we have good schools."
- James Collins in Good to Great, (2001, p. 1)
On the eve of receiving a fourth Blue Ribbon Award in spring 2002, staff at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., met with a U.S. Department of Education representative for an exit interview. He told the joint faculty, staff, and administrative committee he had discovered our school community had one primary fear for the school's future. Every group he had encountered - parents, teachers, administrators, staff, and community - echoed the same thoughts: Would our school continue to embrace change? Would we continue to get better? Would we strive to improve?
Collectively, our fear was we might stagnate. We might settle for being just "good." We might rest on our record and achievements. And we might stop seeking to improve student learning. Then all of our efforts to become a great place for students to learn would become a distant memory.
The challenge was clear. How does a school such as ours continue to improve on already high levels of student learning? How do we sustain momentum for continuous (and never-ending) improvement and avoid the human tendency toward entropy?
In its simplest sense, the answer is obvious: Stay focused on our individual and collective adult behaviors and respond to any manifestation or source of student failure. Pound away at an intensive, singular mindset that we, as educators, will do whatever it takes to help kids learn. Yet the answer to sustaining quality effort, quality achievement, and high levels of demonstrated student learning is more complex. As a professional learning community, we must embody the preserve/change model James Collins described in Good to Great (Harper Collins, 2001): "Enduring great companies preserve their core values and purpose while their business strategies and operating practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. This is the magical combination of 'preserve the core and stimulate progress' " (p. 195).
Collins' strategy fueled the Stevenson learning community cycle for continuous improvement (see figure on p. 17) - a process that has addressed our collective fear of failing to continue to grow. Our...