Bureaucracies and learning organizations.

If student performance in America's public schools is to be improved in any significant way, school leaders must transform their organizations from bureaucracies into learning organizations.

The bureaucratic model has outlived its usefulness. The model of the learning organization is much more apt for the challenges that now face public education and American society. Bureaucracies simply cannot develop the kinds of thinkers and innovators that are now required for our common future.

Such a transformation will depend, however, on the insight and courage of leaders who understand systems and the dynamics of systemic change, for the systemic properties of schools are what sustain their bureaucratic tendencies, just as systemic properties are what can and will develop and sustain schools as learning organizations. Furthermore, leaders at the local level must begin to exert pressure upward to diminish the negative effects that bureaucracies have come to visit on our schools.

Profound Differences

The differences between bureaucracies and learning organizations are important and profound. They are "differences that make a difference" in the way schools operate. Ultimately, they make all the difference in the capacity of schools to embrace the types of innovations required if schools are to be adept at the business of continuous improvement.

In bureaucracies, impersonal evaluations drive the system. In learning organizations, disciplined dialogue and conversations that are informed by values and data drive the system.

In bureaucracies, evaluation is the primary means of controlling subordinates and justifying the distribution of rewards and punishments. In learning organizations, formal evaluations are simply a means of providing data to discipline conversations and to check on progress toward shared goals.

In bureaucracies, rewards accrue to the compliant and to those who master routine. In learning organizations, rewards accrue to those who develop or acquire new knowledge and who use this knowledge to contribute to the common good.

In bureaucracies, command, control and compliance are primary concerns. In learning organizations, persuasion, consensus and engagement are of great importance.

Social Systems

Six social systems shape the life of schools and school districts:

* The power and authority system governs the use of sanctions, defines the proper exercise of authority and gives structure to status relationships within the organization.

* The evaluation system defines the way merit and worth are determined, status is assigned, and rewards and punishments are distributed.

* The boundary system defines who and what are inside the organization and therefore subject to the control of the organization--and who and what are outside the organization and therefore beyond its control.

* The recruitment and induction system defines the way new members are identified and attracted to the organization and brought to understand and embrace the norms and values required for full membership in the organization.

* The knowledge development and transmission system defines the means by which knowledge related to moral, aesthetic and technical norms is developed, imported, evaluated and transmitted.

* The directional system shapes the way visions are developed and shared, goals are set, priorities are determined and corrective actions are initiated.

Changing Mindsets

In bureaucracies, the systems of most concern are the power and authority, the evaluation and the boundary systems. In learning organizations, the systems of primary interest are the directional, the knowledge development and transmission and the recruitment and induction systems.

Too many school improvement efforts have to do with strengthening the systems upon which bureaucracies depend. As a result, power and authority have shifted from local communities to state and federal agencies, evaluation has become an exercise of authority rather than a means of assessing quality, and the boundaries of local education agencies have been made increasingly permeable to influence from state and federal agencies.

The problem is that these changes do not touch on the sys terns that are likely to make a difference in what students learn in school or in how they are taught. Moreover, the ham-fisted use of blunt bureaucratic instruments, such as heavy reliance on standardized testing, has given "systemic reform" a bad name among educators, parents and community leaders concerned about the welfare of children.

Until policymakers stop tinkering with the power and authority system, the evaluation system and the boundary system and begin to support strategies to help local leaders develop better ways of establishing and maintaining direction, ensuring a disciplined approach to knowledge development and innovation and recruiting and inducting imaginative new staff, there is little likelihood of any significant improvement in schools.

Policymakers, however, will not be encouraged to respond to this challenge unless conversations at local school board meetings become more about direction and less about control, more about quality and less about compliance with mandates, and more about transforming the systems that sustain learning organizations and less about the practices that support bureaucracy. Local control is, after all, at the heart of the learning organization.

Phillip Schlechty is founder and CEO of the Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform, 950 Breckenridge Lane, Louisville, KY 40207. E-mail: pschlechty@schlechtycenterorg