Alignment to the mission, to the culture, to what we do around here--this is critical, because in changing times, we can't rely on a static hierarchy to manage people. We have to lead them instead, we have to put decision making power as 'low' (not a good word, but it's left over from the industrial model) in the organization as possible.
The "static hierarchy" Seth talks about made me think of Sizer's chapter on sorting. On p. 72, it says,
"A school which asserts that everyone will proceed in that school in a carefully prescribed way at all times is profoundly discriminatory, and thereby extraordinarily ineffective." Right now I'm visualizing boxes on an assembly line representing our students (Sir Ken Robinson talks about this "assembly line" in his Changing Education Paradigms TED Talk). As time passes, more and more packing tape is being put on allowing little flexibility, creativity, or decision making power. Do we want our students in nice neat packages in the end? Should all the boxes look the same? Do teachers appreciate the diverse talents each student brings to class? If schools spend the majority of their time "taping down" those individual talents and making sure each box is the same dimension and only contains the required standards, our end product will not be ready for "shipping". The students we are educating today are entering a world of professions that haven't been created and will confront global issues that haven't even occurred. Will standardized tests help our students in these situations? I think not.
We are at a crucial point in our education system where some tough questions need to be asked. Senge gives several questions on p. 324 related to the purpose of school and the quicker we start addressing some of our long-held beliefs related to compulsory education, the faster we can move out of the industrial model and catch up to the 21st century which is well underway.
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