TEAMWORK TO PROMOTE STUDENT SUCCESS IN JEFFERSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY Participation: beyond the catchword phase Dr. Donald W. Ingwerson -- Jefferson County Public Schools: Louisville, Kentucky In Jefferson County Public Schools, participation has moved beyond a catchword to permeate every aspect of our school district. Significant teamwork occurs at every level of the system, and meaningful involvement has deepened among all stakeholders. The ultimate result of this expanded participation has been increased success for the children we serve. When I came to Jefferson County some 12 years ago, I challenged everyone in the district with a simple, but radical notion: all children can learn at significantly higher levels. From there, we began addressing structural aspects of the system that were preventing us from realizing this vision of increased student learning. At every turn, establishing a quality and participation paradigm helped us move closer to our goal. Flattening the pyramid, challenging the bureaucracy One of the challenges of any organization of our size and scope* is to prevent the development of a choking bureaucracy which cuts off the oxygen, to the customers. I like to say that as public educators, we exist to serve our customers, not to serve a bureaucracy. If the bureaucracy prevents us from meeting that goal, it must be changed. The beginning: delayering and decentralizing -- Ten years ago, there were three levels of management between the superintendent and the principals. Not only did this system reduce our effectiveness, it sent out a powerfully negative message that principals, as leaders at the school sites, were low on the totem pole. We decided to eliminate the layers of management between the principals and the superintendent. Today, all the principals in our district report directly to me. The result is a more decentralized system with schools at the center. Our operating assumption is that principals know better what is required for their schools to be effective than someone who is not at the school site. Facilitating communication The principals at each level (high school, middle school and elementary) choose four or five liaison principals who serve as communications conduits between the other principals and the central office. One senior-level administrator is assigned to each principal liaison team as a lightning rod, to assist them in obtaining the services they need from the central office. These self-regulating workteams have achieved a great deal to improve and customize the operations of schools. Key to a school-driven system: decentralizing the budget A key component of this decentralization effort has been to turn more of the budget over to the schools themselves. As the district becomes more school-driven, the role of the central office has obviously had to change from a regulatory and monitoring function to a support function. This shift has caused the central office to recognize the principals (and hence, the schools) as their internal customers; and it has clarified the central office mission as being to provide the support to schools that allows them to increase student success. Participatory management -- a teacher union/district partnership Two of the most important stakeholders in a child's education are his/her teachers and parents. In a decentralized model, these stakeholders need to have a real voice in setting the vision and instructional programs of the school. Therefore, we initiated a Participatory Management Project in 1988. Beginning with 24 schools, participatory management (PM) was negotiated as a part of the bargained agreement with the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA). Teachers have elected to expand the number of participating schools yearly, and currently some 128 of 151 school centers decide the makeup of such components as: Staffing Budget Scheduling Community/business partnerships Inter/intra-school teaming Curriculum and nongraded primary programs were added to this list with the advent of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Budgeting for training and planning at PM schools Each PM school has a separate budget which supports a wide range of training and planning activities that are developed in light of the pupil needs at that school. Examples include: Workshops on group process skills, management skills, budget and finance issues, and staffing decisions School planning retreats Several sessions per year on vision-building and change issues. In a partnership with Rohm & Haas Kentucky (a company that had already established self-regulating workteams) PM committees also received training and consultation in the participatory management approach. The PM committee -- The model for a PM committee is somewhat flexible; some include parents and classified staff, for instance, and others are limited to teachers and the principal. Regardless of the make-up of each PM committee, the participatory management experience has generated more innovative programs at the school site and has ensured that dollars are spent where they can have the most impact for each individual school. The Jefferson County Teachers Association has shown true leadership in the movement toward participatory management. This partnership between JCTA and the district is just another example of teamwork that has proved beneficial for students. Community participation For many years, schools were strangely isolated from the community's decision making process; in spite of the fact that as educators, we are literally in charge of creating the future by educating our future citizens and workers. Education and business didn't really talk to each other. New partnerships -- Happily, that has changed. In the Jefferson County Public Schools, we now have more than 700 school-business partnerships. That's important -- not so much for the monetary contributions, which are significant -- but for the dialogues these partnerships create. The impact of partnering Through partnerships, we are able to work together to assess current and future needs for our community. As educators, we can become more in touch with other sectors of the community. And by the same token, our business and community partners are listening to us as educators. There's a recognition that we're all in this together -- and that can only be productive for the entire community. A few examples of the business partnerships that have made a difference in our district are described below: The New Kid in School Project. Over several years, businesses, individuals and other organizations contributed approximately $9 million to match the district's investment in computers. The result has been that 100 percent of our students have access to computers, as compared with a national rate of 46 percent. By the mid-1990s, JCPS will be the first school district to graduate a class that has had computer training at every grade level. The Gheens Foundation and professional development. A manufacturing plant would never dream of restructuring without investing in retraining its human resources. Neither should schools. That's why the Gheens Foundation, a proactive charitable foundation interested in creating systemic change, provided the seed money for a professional development center as part of the Jefferson County Public Schools. Called the JCPS Gheens Academy, this partnership provides an ongoing infrastructure for support as teachers and principals tackle the challenges of restructuring schools for the 21st Century. The BellSouth Leadership Partnership. Through the JCPS Gheens Academy, all JCPS principals had the opportunity to undergo the same rigorous leadership training as do BellSouth executives. Formal training as well as informal dialogue with BellSouth employees helped build the leadership skills of our school leaders. The Henry Vogt Company and technical education. This Louisville-based manufacturer has been a driving force in the restructuring of technical education in the district. The company supported the development of a new CAD/CAM and Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory through funding and loaned employee/trainers. Their contributions were recently recognized by a prestigious national award from the Harvard University School of Business. Partnering with parents -- We have also encouraged the participation of parents as key partners in the educational process, more than doubling our PTA membership during the past decade from 34,000 to 74,000. There are many more examples I could list of partnerships that have made a significant impact on our ability to increase student success. Clearly, the teamwork between the community and schools has increased the quality of education available to the children of Jefferson County. Teamwork in classroom Last, but most important in the overall picture, is what occurs between students and teachers in classrooms. How has the quality and participation paradigm affected this critical area? Creating a climate for collaboration and risk taking The total effect of the teamwork which I have described (among central office and principals, the teachers' union and the district, the community and schools) has been to create a climate of collaboration and risk-taking in our district. As they have become empowered through participatory management, teachers have initiated numerous, innovative small tries that have produced positive results. Teams and innovation Teams of teachers have piloted new assessment and student grouping methods, and flexible scheduling to allow more time for instruction in certain areas. Cooperative learning In the primary grades, cooperative learning has taken hold as a teaching strategy that promotes teamwork among students from an early age. Interdisciplinary instruction Teachers are themselves teaming at all grade levels to allow interdisciplinary, thematic approaches to instruction. Again, this level of teamwork is focused on benefitting students. Has participation improved our education? While the challenge of ensuring that all children learn at higher levels is profound, it provides a powerful lens through which to evaluate all our efforts in the Jefferson County Public Schools. During the last decade, our students' test scores have increased, attendance has improved and drop-out rates have decreased. Has our insistence on a model of participation made the difference? It's hard to isolate any one factor, but a recent study by an outside evaluator showed that schools who approached change systemically and encouraged broad participation in reforms outperformed other schools in the district in a number of continuous improvement, or kaizen, indicators. This study seems to confirm what we intuitively believed: that increased participation and empowerment of all our stakeholders will result in better schools and greater student success. Dr. Ingwerson is superintendent of Kentucky's largest school district and the nation's 19th largest district. Dr. Ingwerson has published many articles in the area of restructuring education. Most recently, Ingwerson was named 1992 National Superintendent of the Year, as well as 1992 Kentucky Superintendent of the Year. This article first appeared in a special Excellence in Education issue of the Journal for Quality and Participation (Jan/Feb 1993): AQP 801-B W. 8th. St., Ste. 501, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203, Tel. 513-381-1959, Fax 513-381-0070. Call Sara Olberding at AQP Information Center for more articles and conference presentations on TQ in K-12 education and other topics. Nominal fee for reprints.