EQUIP

Leadership for School Partnerships
By Rosabeth Moss Kanter
© Copyright 2004 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, rkanter@hbs.edu.


Regardless of the preferred brand of curriculum or school improvement model, school leaders everywhere increasingly depend on partners outside the walls of the building and beyond the ranks of professional educators for resources vital to the performance of their schools.

I know that many leaders in financially-strapped schools salivate at the idea of business partners, because they envision a windfall of money, supplies, or warm bodies. But a donation is not a partnership, nor does a check by itself produce change that can raise students' achievement. So it's important to think about partnerships in creative ways and use them as catalysts to improve outcomes. Consider two of my favorite partnership opportunities.

Parents occupy spot #1 on any list of partners.
It's common wisdom that parent involvement makes a major difference in their children's achievement. Yet, for too long parents were kept at arms length, confined to occasional conferences or PTA meetings, as Harvard's Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot wrote in her book about the tensions between teachers and parents as they "competed" for "control" of the child. Luckily, that's changing, but connecting families to education and bringing the school home is still an area ripe for innovation.

Technology can now offer parents virtual access to their children's work, to teachers' notes, or to school assignments, through online innovations such as Learning Village. Numerous Parent Universities have been developed at schools to teach parents the same skills their kids are learning. Parents can also be resources; an elementary school principal in Memphis built a security force of Dads for drop-off and pickup times, which not only helped school safety but also ensured paternal involvement.

Community partners put the "public" back into public education.
A wide range of local organizations, including businesses, can offer opportunities for children's skill development through their own daily activities and often on their own premises, which in itself enlarges students' horizons. For example, Citizen Schools offers after-school apprenticeships for middle school students in a range of schools in about a dozen cities; these are led by a wide variety of adult experts and professionals law firms, architects, newspapers and more, while Citizen Schools' staff works with teachers to coordinate students' learning.

Museums and symphonies are increasingly extensions of the schools in their areas, opening their doors for visits or research and developing innovative curricula for use in the schools. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, enjoys a close working relationship with the public schools; when teenagers vandalized the aquarium and killed several sharks in a petting tank, the partnership was invoked to turn the tragedy into a teachable moment through an essay contest widely publicized by the local newspaper and reverberating throughout numerous classrooms.

Tapping "collaborative advantage" takes leadership.
As exciting as partnerships can seem, they are not easy to manage - whether creative new alliances or traditional business partnerships that produce cash, athletic uniforms, or tutors. Learning to lead partnerships is essential for their success. Here's a starting point:
Remember that effective partnerships involve give and take - which doesn't mean "they give, we take." True mutuality means that each group's goals are met. It's important to thank as much about what one can give a partner as what they can do for you.
Reach out to learn about each other's organizations and cultures, to go beyond stereotypes and to avoid misunderstandings. This also ensures that relationships develop beyond superficial exchanges to reach their full potential - which makes them more satisfying to both partners and more likely to last.
" Take partners seriously and devote management time to communication, planning, and reporting. For example, the Shaw Middle School in Philadelphia dedicates a staff member to managing its many partnerships - including one with NASA, whose presence in the school makes inner city kids contemplate careers as engineers and astronauts.
Thinking about partnerships and discussing them with your team is valuable in and of itself.
Inviting current and potential partners to the school provides an occasion for sprucing up, like when the relatives come to visit. It can focus school and district leaders on an honest assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, in order to determine just what it is that they need from and can offer a partner. And it opens everyone's minds to new ideas and new possibilities. This exercise alone can trigger innovations with the potential to improve school performance.

-- Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ph.D., is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School and author of the new bestseller Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End, published by Crown (Random House) in September 2004. She has written 16 books in total, many of them award-winning bestsellers, and has received numerous national honors, including 21 honorary doctoral degrees and the Academy of Management's Distinguished Career Award, its highest honor. Her frameworks for leadership, innovation, and change, co-developed with Barry Stein, Ph.D., President of Goodmeasure Inc., are the basis for the RMK/IBM Reinventing Education Change Toolkit.

posted by AcrosticGuy @ 3:24 AM