Introduction
Generally speaking, an educational discourse is an institutionalized way of thinking and how it affects the views and practices in all areas of individual and organizational work.  The discourse that emerged in the Saline Area Schools in the late 1999-2000 was one of Equity and Excellence.  Excellence was not defined by standardized testing and sub-group comparisons but was intended to refer to a commitment to personalize education for all students.
 
The underlying assumption embedded in the discourse was that each and every student deserves an equitable education regardless of his/her race, class, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, or gender. It is the responsibility of all educators in the district to ensure an equitable and just education for all students by valuing and respecting the varied backgrounds and lived experiences each student brings to the educational setting and providing a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy.  Today as well as then the promotion of multi-culturalism was at the heart of the dialogue.
 
Context
Two consultants were brought into a regional county district in the Ann Arbor, Michigan in the county of Washtenaw. The regional superintendent, Dr. William Miller and his ten local district counterparts were invited to re-visit countywide plans and initiatives and a team from Indiana University was asked to facilitate the ten year plan that he envisioned. One of the ten, Dr. Ellen Ewing has begun her own planning effort and invited the facilitators to discuss the purpose and core values that they thought should drive the future of her small, suburban town with little diversity economically or in terms of ethnicity. After a few meetings, the facilitators captured the dialogue of the district prepared the following statement.
 
The Saline Dialogue
Getting to a clear vision and understanding of what this discourse means as well as to promote a common direction with common language and beliefs guiding a multicultural orientation and instructional framework throughout all the Saline Area schools was a primary focus  This discourse had the potential of dramatically changing the way education is perceived and practiced.  All students, whether or not they have a label indicating entitlement for services, would receive instruction that meets their needs, interests, and aspirations.  This required a shared responsibility among all educators for all students’ learning, flexibility in organizing and providing instruction, and a commitment to providing an authentic education for all students.  It required re-conceptualizing curriculum such that students move through the curriculum as they grow and demonstrate mastery.  Students are encouraged to make informed choices about their learning and the curriculum is personalized for all students and is known by their families.  Assessment is understood to be an integral part of instruction, is ongoing, and is used to continually inform progress and reported out to the student, teachers, and parents.
    
The new discourse required that the district full staff quit pretending not to know what we know.  We know schools fragment and compartmentalize learning.  We know we are trying to “cover” too much content and need to make better decisions about what is meaningful and relevant while still complying with the ongoing changing state curriculum mandates and now state standards. We know some groups of students are marginalized and are not receiving full access to the school’s curriculum and resources. Even more devastating is we know some groups of students are treated as invisible and their cultural differences are dismissed and treated as a pathology. We know schools are organized in ways that are constraining and rigid. We know that schools and classrooms are non-neutral spaces and different groups of students may have access to more power and influence than others with their teachers and school administrators. Most importantly, we know students don’t care what the teachers know until they know the teachers care about them.
 
Making It Happen
Shifting an educational discourse is highly complex and requires that we examine our guiding values and beliefs, create new structures to do our work, and implement new practices that support any new vision.  This clearly requires ongoing dialogue to begin to create a shared understanding of the meaning of this discourse and a commitment to be a part of this emerging process.
 
Guiding Values and Beliefs
Dialogue is certainly critical in this whole process so as to develop new educative relationships, deepen our understanding, and in turn lay the groundwork for changing schools in ways that will enhance equity and a commitment to multi-culturalism and cultural competency.  Even when we have different perspectives and ideas about this work, dialogue is a dynamic force that holds us in relation to others and keeps the process moving forward. 
 
We believe engaging in dialogue about our values and beliefs is an important process.  A helpful starting point may be asking what it means and what it takes to be a responsible, authentic, and present educator and leader (Starratt, 2004). 
 
Perhaps the following type of questions could begin the process:

• Who are we responsible to?
• What are we responsible for?
• What does it mean to be authentic with our students?
• What does it mean to have an authentic curriculum?
• What does it mean to be present in this work?
• Are these things we want in our schools? 

 
It might also be helpful to make some distinctions between the work representing a discourse of equity and cultural competency and a different discourse that represents solid education, but not with this critical lens.  For example, the following table represents a distinction between “good leadership” and “social justice leadership” (Theoharis, 2007).  Dialogue surrounding these issues may prove extremely enlightening and uncover deeper issues that need to be explored over time.   
 
Good Leader
Leadership for Equity and Excellence

Works with sub-publics to connect with community
Places significant value on diversity, deeply learns about and understands that diversity, and extends cultural respect

Speaks of success for all children
Ends segregated and pull-out programs that prohibit both emotional and academic success for marginalized children

Supports variety of programs for diverse learners
Strengthens core teaching and curriculum and insures that diverse students have access to that core

Facilitates professional development in best practices
Embeds professional development in collaborative structures and a context that tries to make sense of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and disability

Builds collective vision of a great school
Knows that school cannot be great until the students with the greatest struggles are given the same rich opportunities both academically and socially as their more privileged peers

Empowers staff and works collaboratively
Demands that every child will be successful but collaboratively addresses the problems of how to achieve that success

Networks and builds coalitions
Seeks out other activist administrators who can and will sustain her or him

Uses data to understand the realities of the school
Sees all data through a lens of equity and diversity

Understands that children have individual needs
Knows that building community and differentiation are tools to ensure that all students achieve success together

Works long and hard to make a great school
Becomes intertwined with the life, community, and soul of the school

Adapted from Theoharis, G. (2007).  Social justice educational leaders and resistance:  Toward a theory of social justice leadership.  Educational Administration Quarterly, 43 (2), 221-258.
 
Guiding Structures and Practices
It is also critical to make a distinction between the type of structures and practices that are needed to support a discourse of equity and multi-culturalism from a discourse that does not have a critical lens.  Following are some examples to begin the dialogue: 
 
Good Schools
Schools with Discourse of Equity and Multi-culturalism

Teaming
Deep collaboration with teachers, students, parents, and community

Recognizes individual learning styles
Culturally responsive teaching

Use of data
Use of data to uncover and erase systemic inequities

Professional development opportunities
Ongoing and embedded collaborative professional learning

Focus on accountability
Focus on the responsibility to create the conditions for all , student learning

Schedules collaborative planning and teaching when possible
Schedules created with collaborative planning and teaching arrangements as a priority

Curriculum, instruction, assessment is program driven
Curriculum, instruction, assessment led by general education

Resources are program driven
All resources are used for all students

 
For those of you who would want to add even more current information about critical transformative leadership (Shields, 2013)  see her eight key tenets of critical transformative  leadership theory which include the following tenets:
 
1 - The mandate to effect deep and equitable change;
2 - The need to deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge frameworks that perpetuate inequity and injustice;
3 - A focus on emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice;
4 - The need to address the inequitable distribution of power;
5 - An emphasis on both the private and the public good;
6 - An emphasis on interdependence, interconnectedness, and global awareness;
7 - The necessity of balancing critique with promise; and finally,
8 - The call to exhibit moral courage
 
Planning Processes
A comprehensive planning process is needed to begin this work as well as stay the course as the discourse comes alive.  Some guiding principles for planning such a complex and large-scale effort include the following starting with a deliberative democratic participatory planning process:
 

• Dynamic and changing
• Inclusive and collaborative
• Focus on the five dimensions of well-being (Seligman, Flourish, 2011)
• Emphasis on district and each school’s positive core of talent and existing capacity to move the organization into the future
• Requires ongoing monitoring guided by internal accountability indices designed by all stakeholders
• Plan for dissemination of information and on-going renewal

 
Concluding Remarks
It is important to continually recognize the necessity and complexity of this work.  This work is necessary to ensure that all students, regardless of race, class, ability, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, receive an equitable and multi-cultural education.  It is complex because it not only challenges us to do our work differently, but it also requires us to confront our personal beliefs, biases, and convictions.  This is the work of the 21st century in education and Saline Area Schools have the opportunity to lead the way.
 
Originally prepared in 1999 and updated in April, 2017 for the Superintendent of the Washtenaw County School System, Ann Arbor Michigan

If a teacher grabbed a girl by her crotch and kissed her, he would be suspended without pay and fired.
 
If a principal ridiculed a staff member before her peers, he would be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation and transferred back to the classroom—or he would have his contract revoked outright.
 
If a superintendent became intimately engaged with another senior staff member, they would both be placed on administrative leave and, eventually, terminated.
 
It seems, then, that the public holds educators to a higher standard than that to which it holds the president of the United States.
 
David Brooks (2017), referencing Spanish philosopher Javier Gomá Lanzón, says that “moral education happens by power of example. We publish the book of our lives every day through our actions, and through our conduct we teach one another what is worthy of admiration and what is worthy of disdain.” Boards of education have little tolerance for amoral behavior and even less tolerance for the public embarrassment of their school systems; public confidence in public schools is, after all, a precious commodity.
 
Yet even still, it is my contention that educators have been subjected to a limiting set of success criteria that needs to be expanded. Educators themselves need to step up and set up their own commitments to a set of internal accountability measures. Civility, order, and respect need to be privileged—even if such character traits aren’t ranked and quantified in teacher evaluations—for as Brooks (2017) reminds us: “Public figures are the primary teachers in this mutual education. Our leaders have the outsize influence in either weaving the moral order by their good example or ripping it to shreds by their bad example.”
 
Schools are melting pots, drawing together diverse ingredients to produce a well-balanced meal appealing to many distinct palates. As such, they should serve to highlight each and every contribution to the stew. Our challenge is to find our voices again as educators, to band together to find the common ground that has made public education an indispensable institution—and to create a public in spite of inequalities of resources, opportunities, and outcomes.

​https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/opinion/how-fear-of-falling-explains-the-love-of-trump.html?_r=0

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the decreases in funding for public education at the university and K-12 levels, then you will likely find these data helpful in analyzing the funding trends and their implications for career opportunities and the ever-worsening issue of income inequality.
​
Decreasing Government Support for Higher Education

The precipitous fall in public funding of higher education was detailed recently in a New York Times article by David Leonhardt (2017), who suggests that “[t]he country’s most powerful engine of upward mobility is under assault.” In fact, he sees this assault on colleges to really be an assault on the American dream itself, as more and more state institutions recruit out-of-state students who pay a higher tuition than their in-state peers so that the universities can meet budget deficits. The consequence is that universities reject economically diverse students who might have less money and lower grades but the same academic potential as their wealthier counterparts. Cutting funding thus means limiting opportunities for economically depressed students to earn a degree and to move into the middle class (Leonhardt 2017).

Leonhardt uses the increasingly infrequent issuance of Pell grants to make his point; of all the public colleges measured in the 2017 College Access Index, the average percentage of last year’s freshmen who received Pell grants dropped from 24.3% between 2011-12 to 21.8%. At the University of California’s San Diego campus, the percentage of freshmen students receiving Pell grants dropped from 46% to 26% in five years. Private universities, meanwhile, continue to consistently supply 16% of their freshmen with Pell grants from year to year. Only a few outlying states are still increasing their funding of higher education instead of decreasing it, and as of May 2017, Alaska, Wyoming, and Wisconsin are some of those outliers (Leonhardt 2017).

Another is North Dakota. John Hageman with The Bismarck Tribune reports that the state raised its funds for higher education by a dramatic 38% from 2011-2015.  This translates to a boost from $657.8 million to $910.6 million. The state funding then dropped, however, from 2015-2017 to $837.8 million (Hageman 2017).

Decreasing Government Support for K-12
​
Likewise, state funding for K-12 has also suffered in a similar pattern over the last ten years. Michael Leachman and Chris Mai’s (2014) report for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that “[a]t least 35 states [were] providing less funding per student for the 2013-14 school year than they did before the recession. Fourteen of these states [had] cut funding per student by more than 10%.” And while some states, like New Mexico, had increased their funding, the amount was too small to offset previous years’ cuts (Leachman and Mai 2014). 

Some Conclusions for Reflection

Leonhardt’s (2017) conclusion is that “the declines in state funding are stunning. It’s as if our society were deliberately trying to restrict opportunities and worsen income inequality.” In other words, the nation is curtailing its commitment of resources to college education at the same time that the call for education is ringing louder than ever. Gaps between college graduates and non-college graduates in the areas of unemployment, wealth, and health are all glaringly clear, and the world as a whole is suffering for it (Leonhardt 2017).

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concurs, arguing that the decline in state investments in education is uniquely startling “[a]t a time when the nation is trying to produce workers with the skills to master new technologies and adapt to the complexities of a global economy” (Leachman and Mai 2014).

​And finally, to make matters worse, all of this is occurring in the midst of a national conversation on student loan repayments and as President Trump’s 2018 budget proposes further cuts to economically diverse students’ education from K-20. 

Burnout. A timely topic for these last few weeks of the school year. Because as burned out as our students might feel, many administrators probably feel even more so.
 
Writing for The Harvard Business Review on November 16, 2016, Monique Valcour makes some poignant observations about burnout and what might be done about it to avoid workplace dysfunction.
 
Exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy: these, she says, are the underlying causes of burnout. “It’s essential,” she writes, “to replenish your physical and emotional energy, along with your capacity to focus, by prioritizing good sleep habits, nutrition, exercise, social connection, and practices that promote equanimity and well-being” (Valcour 2016, 100).
 
And speaking of social connection, an administrative team is just that¾a team. Sometimes, Monique’s advice tells us, we need to strive at the end of the year to work better with each other during these stressful times. Workplace conflicts might arise from something as significant as the need to restructure duties and responsibilities of different administrative team members. Or maybe someone feels like others are crowding in on her personal work space.
 
Monique also went through the trouble of building us a framework for preventing burnout, which I am condensing for you here and which is built upon and around the importance of sound leadership. Leadership, Monique believes, is needed to give people, not only structure, but also the courage to be flexible and to be adaptive when one idea or plan doesn’t pan out. Because if good communication and mutual respect between administrators are essential to keeping burnout at bay, then leaders need to help to facilitate that respect. They need to take responsibility for helping team members care for each other so that the team can work well together and so that the administrative ladder can keep intact from superintendents to principals to teachers and then, finally, to students.  
 
So Monique offers eight themes to consider—which I have condensed into seven. They are to:

1. Watch for the warning signs of burnout: A lack of focus, tiredness, depression, hostility, and hopelessness.
2. Set limits on individual workloads—because everyone, from students to teachers to superintendents, needs to be protected from unreasonable expectations.
3. Insist on renewal by setting the example. You need to rest and relax, to take the appropriate time off, and to simply take care of yourself.
4. Boost control by clarifying your expectations of your team, by advocating for resources your team needs, and by providing uninterrupted time for your fellow administrators to get their tasks done.
5. Meaningfully recognize individual successes. Connect them to their impact on the collective work of the team. Reward individuals for helping others, and make collaboration the norm and not the exception. Make it okay for administrators to ask you for help, and make clear your willingness to help.
6. Emphasize learning by providing every team member with a personalized learning plan. Check in with them four times a year, and have them share what they are learning and how they are finding the time to learn.
7. Build community. Do not recognize or tolerate willfully negative behavior; in fact, set a norm that negativity in any form is disruptive. On the flipside, practice civility by being compassionate and respectful towards everyone. Remember that leadership is about helping people do their jobs. It means creating an environment which cultivates high performance and which is built up around how others learn and work. Come to know your team outside of work. Be known to them. Share yourself with them as they share themselves with you.

 
So if you take nothing else away from today’s memo, then take this: A lack of resources or an unmanageable workload are not the only reasons for workplace burnout. They might play a part, but the fastest way to burn out is to be immersed in a negative and uncooperative environment.
 
For more tips and another perspective on how leadership can be used to solve this problem, check out this Simon Sinek interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldh8E6LCLhM. In particular, watch from 4:00-22:00 and from 35:00-39:00. That’s where the interview comes alive.
 
Hope this helps, and we here at the Center wish you the best as you close out the school year.
 
-Leonard

Middletown School District, New York

Introduction to the Interview
 
This inquiry is guided by the need for new transformative narratives which provide inspired ideas for how to improve public education. It is our intention to study and learn through the eyes of the top leadership and thought partners in the field the sorts of positive actions we can take to advance this transformation of public education at the local, state, and national levels.
 
Today, there is the ever-intensifying challenge of educating all students equally and individually in the face of damaging orientations towards students of poverty, of color, and of disability. How can we change the narrative of public education in America to dispel these orientations? How can we further develop a public system of schools that retains support from the federal, state, and local communities which must contribute resources? How can we ensure public education’s relevance and build on historic gains to benefit twenty-first century stakeholders? How can we help the public schools to beat out private schools as superior educational institutions?
 
To this end, we are gathering and sharing the stories of public educators who have committed themselves to bettering the lives of students, families, staff, and whole school communities in this country. We think that public school communities, and the educators who lead within them, are in a challenging place. It’s clear to us that now, more than ever, there is a great need for hope and inspiration to stimulate action based on the idea that public schools can better our society. We’re looking to leaders like yourself to help us generate that hope and inspiration by asking you to reflect on your own work – and to assist us in empowering others by sharing your story.

If you would like to share your story as a school administrator, please email Leonard Burrello at leonard@aoeducation.net. 
 
Some Interview Questions to Get You Thinking
 
Before we present the data from our interview with Dr. Eastwood, here are some of the questions we used during our interview to provoke conversation and dialogue – and so you might start thinking about how you would answer these questions yourself.

​We would like to start by exploring your leadership story and what you have found to be the positive core of your leadership and of the schools and district you are now leading as superintendent:

• What do you see as the keys to the “evolution” of the district? What was the district like when you first arrived, and what did you envision as your major work then? What is it now, and what can it be in the future?
• Can you identify a positive success story in the district that you have been a part of?
  • What are the key elements of this story?
  • What role did you play in this story?
  • What are the strengths of the district from your point of view?
  • Can you identify what we call the “positive core” of your district?

 
And tune in next week for a full summary of the interview and an enlightening look into Dr. Eastwood’s philosophy and career of making great schooling better. ​

The Center for Appreciative Organizing in Education recommends that school districts consider Martin Seligman’s concept of well-being when defining their purposes, core values, and metrics for measuring student success. Seligman writes about five elements of well-being (PERMA) in his 2011 book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. Those five elements, summarized in “The PERMA Model: A Scientific Theory of Happiness,” are:
 

• positive emotions - at work, while in school, and throughout your life;
• engagement with one’s work, art, relationships, or play;
• Reciprocal and meaningful one-to-one relationships, as well as positive group relationships based around common interests;
• meaning and purpose, which come from living a life of fulfilling experiences which contribute to the world beyond oneself and to the good of others;
• and accomplishments and achievements in the performance arts, music programs, peer leadership activities, etc.  Accomplishment can only result from your having set realistic and realizable goals, and your aspirations must go beyond receiving high marks on an exam.

 
This all came to mind today after a casual reading of Adam Bryant’s interview with Bracken Darrell in The New York Times.
 
Darrell grew up with two educators as parents with modest incomes. They divorced, and the family’s financial security waned, but his parents continued to promote education. While playing basketball in high school and college, Bracken sought after meaningful and impactful student leadership experiences. He assures us that “[t]he single thing that’s made me successful over my life is drive. It’s not I.Q.  It’s not some luck of having social skills that somebody else doesn’t have. It’s just drive . . . It’s amazing how good life is if you work hard.” He also, of course, set goals. Goals do not cost anything in and of themselves - they are free, but they are so effective as a means of staying hungry and creating hunger in others.
 
Early in the interview, Darrell discusses the core values that he believes his company once lacked. One was speaking up. For years, he says, “everybody’s talking about problems. But if nobody listens to them they stop talking about problems, so you don’t know what they are.  The most dangerous thing is to be sitting in an office and nobody’s telling you what’s wrong. So I immediately started talking about speaking up and moving fast.”
 
We think his big “aha” moment was when he realized that “you have to inspire people to do stuff, just like in high school, even though they’re getting paid to work.” Darrell goes on to say something that exemplifies his outward-looking mindset: “It’s a volunteer world, even if it doesn’t look like it. If you treat people like volunteers, you’re much better off.”
 
Darrell has built a career and a successful business off Seligman’s PERMA model: his parents infused him with a positive attitude towards continued education and achievement. His incredible drive engaged him with his work. Beyond those he had always had with his parents, he built relationships with his employees and treated them like volunteers in a powerful cooperative. He derived meaning from those relationships and the work which he and his staff accomplished, from the work they did to solve the company’s problems together for the betterment of their consumers. And he has thus accomplished more with his team and his community than simply turning a greater profit.
 
Darrel is the CEO of Logitech, a technology accessories maker, but the lessons he’s learned are applicable to the world his parents so deeply respected - the world of education and educators.

“[T]he new America [is] more diverse, more inclusive, more than our ancestors could ever have imagined,” writes Charles Blow of The New York Times. In an article criticizing Donald Trump’s damaging influence on his supporters and opponents alike, Blow suggests that “making America great again” might mean returning to an America with a dark and violent past.
 
Indeed, individualism is on the rise in contemporary America, and I would argue that it is the individualists who continue to promote the focuses on limited government and on reducing federal investment in the public sphere which characterized this earlier, harsher America. What we lose in becoming individualistic is our sense of community. Making social and ethical choices in support of others who are less fortunate requires sacrifice and selflessness. In a time when we, as Americans, are too quick to forego humanity for brutality, I recall Robert Fulghum’s poem “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It is re-printed below, in case you forgot the things we learned:
 
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing and dance
And play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world,
Watch out for traffic,
Hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
​
I wonder about the purposes of education and about how we might replace violent rhetoric in the media with an emphasis on the need for returning to the simplicity of childhood, a period of time in our lives during which our education focuses largely on cultivating a sense of community and mutual respect. I reconsider my last blog entry regarding the cheat sheet Drew Houston created for 22-year-olds, wherein he describes a circle which represents you as the average of the five people who surround you¾so pick your friends wisely.
 
Alexander Hamilton’s best friends were his wife, his sister-in-law, his father-in-law, and George Washington. He had formidable enemies, too: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, and the entire leadership of the Southern colonies. The closing number of the new Broadway musical bearing his name is entitled, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.” Three of those famous men recalled after his death how indebted the emerging nation should feel to Hamilton and his financial and organizational genius; ironically, then, his enemies told his story much better than anyone else.
 
How would the enemies of today tell each other’s stories? Who will tell yours? Will they be both the friends in your circle and your enemies? Will their stories be positive, negative, or will they cancel one another out? Can we rediscover our sense of community, and can we again build a community of mutual respect in which even our enemies can be selfless enough to recognize our merits once our time has passed?
 
Best wishes in finding a good eulogist, but in the meantime, in life, be sure to remember that poem.

​We found this interview to be of interest because of the connections between the principles that we have studied in turnaround work in schools and Meg Whitman’s principles of turnaround in big business. Ms. Whitman had, when she joined Hewlett-Packard, already made her reputation as the president of eBay, a company which expanded and became vastly more profitable under her direction. She walked, however, onto the stage at HP in a time of turmoil, succeeding two unsuccessful CEOs.
 
Towards the end of the interview, she explains why she took the HP job: “ I took the job because I think companies like HP are the essence of what makes this country great and have had a very positive impact on the world.” You have heard often in this political season that we need to “make this country great again.” But who is defining greatness, and what era are we talking about?
 
With this starting point, have you ever heard a superintendent of schools or a schoolboard president make a similar statement? Well, Dayton and Indianapolis used to be great school districts in many people’s minds, and we are sure many administrators in those districts have said, “We need to make this district great again, to save it in order to do for this generation of students what we did for the previous generation of students. We need to return to a period of higher performance.”
 
Unless we determine a moral purpose, a transcendental and inspiring goal that means working for the greater good of society, we will not improve. And unless we communicate that goal relentlessly, we will not enlist our core constituents internally first and externally in time. Creating an inspiring place to learn and work that is values-centric and located within an environment of mutual trust and respect is empowering and demanding. When that occurs, internal accountability for results will follow.
 
What we liked about Ms. Whitman’s statement was that she could see into the deep values of this socially conscious private-for-profit company which has been historically very innovative with a focus on passionate customer care. These things have brought real value to customers and the communities where Ms. Whitman’s staff live and work. She notes, however, that the company had lost its urgency for change by the time she stepped up as CEO: “[It] had lost some of its commitment to run to the fire, jump on a problem, service it in 24 hours, resolve it in 48.” Like any large company spread across multiple communities and states, HP’s business is complicated.
 
Our business of education is also very complicated, reaching out to service all learners, families, and communities by being a teacher, social worker, drug counselor, and coach—all at the same time. Like in business, our customers’ problems do not get better with age; they can, in fact, worsen, as our data shows occurs when children are not learning to read by the fourth grade. The only way they get better is when you go fix the problem and ask yourself: Under what conditions does the child learn well? That is our task for each and very child¾to believe, first and foremost, that they can and will learn important stuff under the right conditions. Every child is unique and will demand different levels and types of supports to be successful in school and to be prepared for life after graduation.
 
Ms. Whitman’s turnaround started with this question: “What are the core values of this company? Let’s identify what it does really well and do more of that as the anchor for the turnaround.” Ultimately, she says, the core founding principles became the basis of the turnaround, “and the company responded” (98).
 
Once she named the work as turnaround work, told people how that work was going to be completed, and laid out milestones, Ms. Whitman says that “people knew they didn’t have to wait five years for something to happen. And we tried to be authentic as leaders, telling people:  Here’s the challenge, here’s what we are doing, and here’s how we’ll know whether we’ve been successful or not” (99). In essence, then, it’s all about communication.
 
School districts with multiple school communities wrapped around each individual elementary, middle, and high school demand communication. Teams of educators at each location need to communicate clearly and concisely to each other that they will achieve their objectives only with their fellows’ help. Success at achieving these objectives can be measured through academic, social, and non-academic value outcomes. Here, I remind you that Martin Seligman’s five dimensions of well-being should influence our selection of measurable outcomes that we can reasonably hold ourselves accountable for:

• Positive dispositions toward learning and work in school

• Engagement with the curriculum and school work that is meaningful and on-going
• Relationships with teachers and peers
• Meaningful and purposive learning goals for each student
• Accomplishment of student and school goals for each student in all areas of the curriculum and the school experience

 
Meg Whitman also talks about the basic lessons she is taking away from the HP turnaround work. “First,” she says, “you have to deliver results. You have to do what you say you are going to do to build credibility within your organization.” This is also the case with our teachers and school-based leaders, as well as with our students, families, communities, and partners.
 
“Second,” she argues, “you need the right people in the right jobs at the right time with the right attitude.” You need to push a can-do attitude, a “glass half-full” kind of mentality. Here, we are reminded of James Collin’s three points: discipline, empirically-based decisions, and paranoia are all necessary at the start to ensure you get the results you want later on down the line.
 
And, Ms. Whitman argues, leaders need to adopt an “all for one, one for all” attitude.
She also makes yet another profound observation which is of great relevance to the world of education. Besides untangling the complexity of the work and communicating continuously about the details of the project and the desired results, “[w]hen you’re trying to do a turnaround and lead people, it’s not about the facts and figures.” Rather, she argues, “it’s about the stories you tell.” Educators need to tell a story that matters to teachers, students, and parents.
 
In larger systems, it is crucial to monitor everything tied to your plan and the outcomes desired. As Ms. Whitman so astutely observes, “You don’t get what you expect; you get what you inspect. At scale, you can’t just feel it; you have to have the metrics . . . so the minute something goes off track, we know” (100).

​Since we started our work at the Center for Appreciative Organizing in Education (AOE), we have talked lots about purpose and secondly about values. The June 5th New York Times Business interview with the CEO of Dropbox, Drew Houston, offers us a lesson in simplicity about values. His company brought forward a list of five: (1) Be worthy of trust; (2) Sweat the details; (3) Aim higher; (4) “We, not “I”; and (5) an image of a smiling cupcake—so that they do not take themselves too seriously.  Short, powerful, and interesting, too.
 
Mr. Houston also offered a daily mantra, which I found appealing and seductive: for him, it was a sign of his healthy paranoia (and paranoia, we learned from James Collins, is an essential ingredient of success of the companies studied in Great by Choice.). For Houston, he asks himself, “six months from now, twelve months from now, five years from now, what will I wish I had been doing today or learning today?” Good stuff for a CEO or a principal or a superintendent to be asking. John Mann and I just finished an interview with Superintendent Ken Eastwood from Middletown, New York, where he emphasized the need to focus on the future from his superintendent’s perch and let his staff run the daily operations of the district. More in that interview and what, Like Houston, Eastwood plans to be asking or doing for his district in the future will be available in the next month.
 
Mr. Houston brought up another great point in his interview that educators and their superintendents alike can utilize as a key value. He said, he is drawn to hire “people who really love their craft, and treat it like a craft, and are always trying to be better and are obsessed with what separates great from good." For me, a teaching staff that is always trying to figure out how to teach the most vulnerable as well as the brightest would be the ideal team. He argues those obsessed with a significant problem of practice are those that will become the greatest among us. Some interesting interview questions surface like: How do you describe the teaching profession or the principalship? How do you intend to get better? What is your significant problem of practice?
 
Finally, Mr. Houston offered a zinger for us as he reflected on his graduation speech to M.I.T. graduates in 2013. There were three things that he thought he wished he knew at 22. His cheat sheet had three things on it: a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000.
 
First, the tennis ball represented a passion or an obsession—pursuing something that consumes your interest and learning. Second, the circle symbolizes you as the average of the five people you call your closest friends. Put yourself in a group of individuals who challenge and love you at the same time. Finally, the 30,000 represents the average number of days each of us has to live or about 82.5 years-of-age. His point is make every single day count.
 
His last observation reminded me of my mother, Rose Burrello, who lived to 94 years of age. Mother used to say that each day she strove to do something that was going to be crucial even though sometimes she did not know what it was first thing in the morning. She was a great lady who taught me lots about resilience and the importance of learning something of significance each day. She was also about preparing for the best that was yet to come. 
 
Enjoy summer, get some needed rest, and have some fun with family and friends.
 
Best wishes always,
 
Leonard