Who Is Our Customer, Pt. II
September 19, 2013Yesterday I posed a question: who is the customer of our schools? Many of us believe the future of schools, both public and private, will depend on increasing the value proposition of a school; lacking this, “school” as we know it may be an endangered species. Here is the logic; if the logic is not…
Who Is Our Customer!?
September 18, 2013Based on a Twitter discussion yesterday, here is a question that needs some pondering…I don’t believe the answer is either easy or evident. Who is the school’s customer? I ask this within the critical context of value, which by definition is viewed through the eyes of the customer. Several people responded that the customer is…
Every Teacher Yoda?
September 17, 2013Just watched the Charlie Rose interview with Thomas Friedman, Joel Klein of Amplify, Amy Gutman, President of UPenn, and Art Agerwal of EdEx. The subject was MOOCS, and I am not sure they told us anything new, but I had two thought take-aways: We have asked if change in K-12 is, or needs to be,…
Not Making Connections via Social Media? Bypassed by the Highway
September 17, 2013This morning I was asked by Mari Brown to contribute thoughts (along with Peter Gow and Michael Ebeling) to an upcoming article in NBOA Net Assets Magazine on the growing role of social media in educational professional development. Here are a few excerpts of my responses: We have seen an explosion of authentic network participation…
Design Lab School Pointing the Way In Spite of Long Odds
September 12, 2013Last September I reported on my visit to the second-year Design Lab school in inner city Cleveland. (I urge you to review that post.) Principal Eric Juli and Design Lab are front and center in the introduction to the book I am writing about my trip last fall because of the long odds and…
Listening to Customers: D-Thinking at Design 39 Campus Parent Events
September 11, 2013Old school: “Don’t ever ask a question of the audience unless you are sure of the answer.” New school: “Learn to be flexible; deal with ambiguity and the unknown.” I took these yesterday at a meeting for prospective parents of the new Design 39 Campus K-8 in Poway Unified, opening in 2014. (I posted more…
Powerful D-Thinking With Future Parents: Huge Win for New School
September 6, 2013If you are a learner/leader at a private school and think about how to generate or ensure continued admissions demand in shifting markets, read on. If you are a leader/learner at a public school and think about aligning student outcomes to community expectations as well as a forward-leaning vision, read on! As I will detail…
One Year Ago…
September 5, 2013Exactly on year ago, I jumped off a cliff. I packed my Prius and drove east to visit more than 60 schools over three months and 10,000 miles. I had a couple of parachutes: some financial sponsors and the moral support of family and friends. It was a long trip, lonely drives punctuated by jolts…
Are You Imagining a Future Unlike Your Present? Someone Is.
September 3, 2013You may already know this story; I did not and am always on the lookout for creative solutions to problems in education. Thanks to John Thorsen, Asst. Head at Asheville School for posting a query to some of his PLN about major issues facing education, I cyber-met Bill Bugg, head of Thetford Academy in Vermont.…
Euclidean Org Charts May Be the Tombstone of Schools
September 2, 2013Is your organizational chart bound by the geometry of the piece of paper it is drawn on? Does your school have an org chart? Does it promote connectivity or preserve isolation? Do your employees have allegiance first to their own tribe or to the value-driven goals of the whole school? Are resources distributed within hard…
Simple School Performance Metric
August 30, 2013I just Tweeted “If more kids watched and identified with Miley Cyrus than MLK this week, then our schools are doing a bad job. How is that for an easy metric?” Girls at a local public high school were suspended last spring for twerking in a video. None had ever been punished for vastly more…
Public/Private Schools Collaborate on Faculty Growth and Assessment
August 29, 2013Independent schools often state that they have a public purpose and try to share resources with their local public schools and districts. I want to give a special shout-out to one school that really lived that part of their mission yesterday. Yesterday I organized a Skype communication between David Monaco and some of his leadership…
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