Opportunity: the other half of crisis: in this time of budget crisis exists greater opportunity for improving effectiveness.

In communities across California, school districts are repeating the downside of a cyclic theme: raise budgets in good times, cut them in down times. It's a down time. Only this cycle carries a different tone: such cuts are deep enough to create system shock.

Anticipated dollar resources do not exist at the same time that expectations of schooling have increased; we've changed abruptly from input focused education to a results focus; and wide ranging political, economic, social, demographic, technological and values shifts across state, national and international arenas have created a setting for action as solid as the clouds that swirl past my window this gray January morning. This is crisis time.

Every crisis is a Janus twin: it has two faces. The face of threat--large and looming--always is easier to see. The face of opportunity recedes to the background, where shape and color dim. In a Western-style painting, primary images usually dominate the foreground, distinguished easily by size, definition of form and clarity of color. Character and tone play out in midground and background--separate, yet interplaying with the primary image.

This metaphor is not without relevance for education in California today. Budget reductions and anticipated loss, blame, defense, projections and fast-fix solutions dominate the foreground; in the background rest assumptions, definitions, distinctions often unnoticed and unexplored. It's fertile ground for uncovering opportunity, and here are two areas to explore.

Background assumption: Language

Assumptions of language are often hidden in the open via commonly used education words or phrases. Here are a few examples.

* Meeting the needs of all students

In whatever venue I talk with administrators and teachers, this phrase pops up. (It scorns to have replaced a prior phrase in equally common circulation five or six years ago--"Success for all students.") The phrase is never defined, yet broad use suggests agreement on the assumption that public education exists to meet the needs of all students. This implies at least that (a) such a thing is possible; (b) such a tiring is desirable: (c) educators can indeed identify, all needs of all students.

If this kind of catch phrase were a barometer, I'd watch carefully the language trending from "success" to "needs," particularly absent any adjective like "learning" or "educational." Muddling in this environment appears to be a roadmap to random activity, not Focused action.

* Curriculum

The accompanying assumption goes something like this: "The central activity, in schools is curriculum." Often I've asked two questions around this word: What does it mean? Who is responsible for it? These may seem like silly questions, yet they always elicit different responses--from place to place and within the same organization. Curriculum is "everything," "what I teach," "the textbook," "the standards," "the program," "the test," "content/subject area/standards/themes that I am responsible for covering with my students in a year...."

Who's responsible? Nearly every certificated employee acknowledges some responsibility for curriculum. The issue here is one of distinctions; it's the specificity of arenas and boundaries of individual accountability and the points at which primary and support responsibility intersect and shift that spawn fuzzy focus and diluted effectiveness.

* Lifelong learners

Sometimes this phrase makes its way into a mission statement; e.g., [We will] create [develop] lifelong learners. Assumption: Schools cause lifelong learning. The question here is one of cause and effect vs. condition. Is lifelong learning an effect caused by schooling? Does it occur without formal education, simply in the condition of being human? If specific elements of ongoing learning are desired in a school or district, what are they? And what's the game plan to cause the intended effect?

If the above examples point to assumptions absent clear definition, distinctions or causal action, the following suggest opportunities for focus that emerge from shifts in understanding of school districts themselves.

Background assumption: Organization

In "Leadership and the New Sciences." Margaret Wheatley introduced to a broader audience some findings from the physical sciences that suggest the basic building block of matter may well be relationship.

In her latest book, "Turning to One Another," Wheatley follows on this theme, documenting our world's urgent need and desire for simple conversation (from the Italian "conversare," which means to spin and turn the meaning of) if we mean to build a better world.

Earlier, physicist Neils Bohr had urged dialogue as the grounding for new discoveries. Without conversation or dialogue as system habit, discussion usually prevails, often an excuse for interchanges of positional thought. (I am ignorant of the root word for discussion, but often think of it as discus, as in the throwing of--you hurl your position and explanation at me, I'll throw mine in return, and there they lay on the field, separate and empty of life.)

In "Strategics: The Art and Science of-Holistic Strategy," Bill Cook moves the conversation to education organization explicitly. He suggests that the answers to four questions set the context for effective organization in the local school district: 1. Who are we? What do we believe an human beings in this place? (These being neither enterprise specific nor behaviorist aphorisms, but moral imperatives that spring from the common core of our humanity.) 2. What is our noblest purpose for exist rag? 3. What kind of system do we choose to create? 4. How do we define the nature of wealth? Retaining the "th" invites one set of meanings; eliminating the "th" brings out another around common weal, or the common good.

Cook posits sets of organizational relationships--four dimensions and two dynamics. The dimensions form two sets of intersecting axes: On one axis lies beliefs/mission, and on the second, capacity/action. These form an explicit graphic for considering questions of capacity and action that are contextual.

The two dynamics bring to the foreground additional questions of organizational relationships: How essential is X, for example, to achieving the purpose of the organization? To what extent are individual accountability, authority and information commensurate in the organization?

Whatever the viewpoint, there exists a relationship between language and meaning and between organizational assumptions and results. In up times and down times such relationships invite exploration.

In times of crisis, questions become even more essential; for when the ordinary question produces no satisfactory answer, it's time to reframe the question. Herein exist opportunities for greater effectiveness and efficiencies in our present-day schools or the nascent greatness of our next kinds of schools and school systems. The answers are always in the questions. What are yours?

Kathy Ohm is director of the ACSA Planning Center.