Pick out two trends or issues that particularly surprised you and/or hit home and explain why?
Piecemeal vs. Systemic Change -
Both of these approaches hit home for me because when we were changing from out old mainframe system to the new student system I had to take a Systematic approach to the whole idea. We were starting back at ground zero and rebuilding everything that we had already accomplished and working in the old system but we wanted to change our current processes to be more streamline. Now, 3 years later I am taking more of the piecemeal approach and just touching up certain areas that need to be tweaked.
Step-Up-To-Excellence -
The step up to excellence methodology seems to be a great idea. I had no idea that they had something like this in place for educational environments. There are so many schools in the area in which I live that need to jump on this bandwagon. One thing that amazed me is that there has been something like this out there for 40 years and it has never really been used by a school district. Maybe it doesn't work that well but from reading this book it seems like it would work perfectly.
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3 comments:
I think that with any change finances are always a bit thing. Even changes that may not cost much to implement can be met with political challenges when a big donor threatens not to donate anymore because they do not like the change that is to be implemented. Even if the change is great... money talks
Melissa,
“Maybe it doesn't work that well but from reading this book it seems like it would work perfectly”.
I have noticed that as well. I made this remark a couple of weeks ago, “maybe in a perfect world”. I personally feel the authors over simplified some variables, but they make a few good points. The item I found interesting was the timeframe issue. My personal experiences are that the academic world usually takes longer than the manufacturing world to institute change.
Jeff Tyler
Are you saying that the systemic approach actually caused you more work in the long run or just that the systemic approach is what you needed then and piecemeal fit the job for tweaking?
I have a feeling that with standardized tests and school of choice, we will be seeing more "Step-Up" type programs. It's a way for schools to show organized effort and document attempted changes.
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