Improve the process or reengineer it?

From Could Newark Have Achieved More? by Neerav Kingsland.

An interesting set of findings from the Newark effort to spend $100 million of Mark Zuckerberg's money to improved education in a failing education desert. Most studies to date have found that the money was spent and education not improved. This study finds a small improvement; "The Harvard study found that the Newark reforms, in the most recent year of the study, had a positive impact on ELA (.07 SD) and no impact on math."

What Caused the Positive Effects?

While the authors didn’t calculate the cumulative effects of the reforms, they did do something wonderful.

The authors separated out the effects of two different strategies: (1) improving existing schools vs. (2) expanding high-performing schools, closing low-performing schools, and facilitating the transfer of students out of low-performing schools and into high-performing schools.

The improving existing schools approach included replacing large numbers of principals, renegotiating the union contract, implementing new data systems, and extending learning time.

The open / close / shift enrollment approach included adding to the enrollment of high-performing charter and district schools, closing underperforming schools (11 traditional schools and 3 charters), and implementing a unified enrollment system that made choosing schools much easier for families. These reforms increased charter enrollment from 14% to 28%.

The results are striking.

In math, the improve strategy achieved a .08 negative effect in math while the open / close / shift strategy had a positive .04 effect.

In ELA both strategies had positive effects, but the open / close / shift was responsible for 62% of the overall positive effect.

Perhaps most importantly: the open / close / shift strategy achieved positive effects in every year of the study.

Opening and closing schools, and shifting student enrollment, increased student learning.

I have done a number of business turn-arounds over the years. You always have a strategic choice at the beginning: Do you improve the existing system or do you remake the existing system into a new one? That is the equivalent of Newark's improve versus open/close/shift.

The improve versus remake is especially pertinent when it comes to personnel. I am a great believer in the culture of an organization and sometimes in a failing organization you have individuals with bad behaviors who are subverting the culture. The humane thing to do is to try and coach them into the appropriate behaviors (and skills) yet sometimes you do not have the luxury of time that might be required. Hiring/firing/retasking can occur quickly but it can have at least a short term (and sometimes long term) detrimental impact as well.

You have to use judgment to strike the right mix of improve versus remake and it is easy to get it wrong. I have had successes with both approaches but perhaps the most dramatic success was through a highly targeted hiring/firing/retasking of selected individuals. Once the poison was drained the cultural system revitalized itself quickly and grew dramatically.

Interesting to see data and metrics for the comparable education reform process in Newark.