Systems Expert Lee Jenkins: Disavow Failed Practices
By Rebecca Salon
School leaders need to think systemically to gain insight into the problems they confront and to be able to take effective systemic action, according to Lee Jenkins, an author and consultant from LtoJ Consulting Group in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Jenkins, a former district superintendent from California, tapped into his experience working with school systems to suggest 10 systemic actions that can benefit student learning. His first recommended action? Disavow failed practices and seek the root causes of problems.
Displaying data from a 2009 survey of more than 1,300 K-12 teachers who were asked the percentage of students in their grade level who love school, he showed a consistent loss of enthusiasm as children move through the grades. The display started at 95 percent of children in kindergarten who were viewed as loving school and bottoming out at 37 to 45 percent in high school.
In looking for the root cause for why students like school less over time, Jenkins posited there is a lack of an evident purpose for teachers and students, including the purpose for each subject area.
Jenkins also discussed his belief that a root cause for schools that fail to achieve adequate student outcomes is that students are given permission to forget. That is, schools don’t require students to review and build upon previous learning throughout a school year and from year to year. Rather, the students just learn for the next assessment.
As such, Jenkins said, the students are not held accountable for their own long-term learning.
His related systemic action item was that schools remove the permission to forget and replace it with a desire to learn.
Citing W. Edwards Deming, the father of total quality management, Jenkins noted that 94 to 97 percent of the problems confronted by schools come from systems. Therefore, some of his other recommendations to improve systems were to ensure that teachers and school leaders seek formal feedback from their “customers,” which for superintendents are teachers and families, reflecting on what they learn to determine root causes.
His other recommendations focused on how to make systemic decisions regarding professional development, budget reductions, alignment or curriculum, standards and instruction and school safety.
Jenkins stressed the importance of using trend data over time and using data to provide insights, not answers.
For more details about his work, visit www.ltojconsulting.com.
Jenkins is the author of the AASA book From Systems Thinking to Systemic Action. . Note: AASA members save 20% on the book using promotion code AASA20 when ordering from Rowman & Littlefield Eduation.
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