Lack of professional development for teachers and administrators
From the beginning, it is important to realize that, even with the most carefully laid plans, the change process is complex and messy; people will make mistakes. But a stream of unconnected initiatives, avoidance of problems, and fear of the unknown are hugely detrimental to any efforts to innovate and change.
A lack of coherent information and dialogue with students, teachers, administrators, school board members, parents, and community members usually means that bad information infects the culture. Issuing directives or presenting plans without formative dialogue leaves individuals and teams with a sense of helplessness when working through challenges. Worst of all, when bumps and turbulence occur, avoiding the work or becoming cynical has a hugely negative impact. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is time to put culture and technology together.
Culture and Technology Together
Digital content is loaded with great new functionality that can potentially benefit students, teachers, and administrators. Many times, however, schools build the professional development around the use of the technology without allowing for personal and collective growth. For example, supporting principals to grow in leading change, as well as inculcating teachers in leadership, are essential and vital to digital innovation work. The real digital energy comes from the opportunities to connect learners to their work and constructing collaborative projects that mirror real-world work.
Neglecting the important work of building human, social, and decisional capital is at the root of widespread mediocrity and dismal progress in many digital initiatives, as Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan (2012) so thoroughly document. The working conditions that support the new pedagogical dynamic we see on the horizon require a level of systemic alignment and leadership continuity that constantly lifts and reflects on classroom work. In the rest of the book we show how one district—Mooresville Graded School District in North Carolina—got it right, and how other districts are taking up the lessons it learned. There is nothing mysterious about implementing the strategies and processes leading to success. It requires a strong sense of moral purpose to serve all students, but more than that, it involves a clear and persistent approach to change and mobilize a collective culture devoted to adult and student learning linked to measurable impact.
chapter two
DEEP LEARNING
Achieving stratospheric success in implementing technology in education is like an iceberg. The technology is clearly visible, but below the surface is something much larger that really counts. This something is where we find deep learning, a melding of skills and attributes that range from critical thinking and problem solving to citizenship and creativity. The deep learning process also includes the necessary pedagogy transformation to develop these new competencies. In this chapter, we outline the effective deep learning programs in the Mooresville Graded School District, where Mark A. Edwards was superintendent.
Andy Hargreaves and his colleagues (2014) describe the lens through which to view a district’s success in Uplifting Leadership—successful systems learn from, but never imitate, other effective organizations. We explore how you can establish your district’s own cultural transformation, the driving factors that catalyze innovation, and the people and groups working to extend connections that advance knowledge across both district and country lines. We conclude with a threefold model for professional capital that sets up much of the rest of this book.
Mooresville Graded School District
Both Every Child, Every Day (Edwards, 2014) and Thank You for Your Leadership (Edwards, 2016) outline the MGSD transformational process. This district has approximately 6,200 students in seven schools and a technical education center affiliated with the high school. Free and reduced lunch eligibility has increased to about 40 percent of the student population since the economic downturn in 2008. The student population is 72 percent Caucasian, 18 percent African American, and 8 percent Hispanic.
In 2007, MGSD embarked on a digital conversion of all schools—from a paper-based to a digital world in which every student and teacher has access to a computer device and to anywhere, anytime Internet. This is the tip of the iceberg. In 2015, MGSD ranked 99th of 115 North Carolina districts in per-pupil funding from all sources (local, state, and federal). Despite this disadvantage, the district’s graduation rate jumped to 93 percent (second in the state) and its academic performance to 89 percent (third in the state) in 2011. The district has maintained this improvement. In fact, all academic and attendance performance indicators have increased steadily since 2008. For example, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (n.d.a, n.d.b), academic district performance increased from 73 to 90 percent between 2007 and 2015; graduation rates from 70 percent in 2007 to 90 percent in 2015; and so on. Table 2.1 and figure 2.1 illustrate the district’s stark improvement.
Table 2.1: North Carolina District Achievement, 2014–2015
| Rank | District | 2014–2015 Proficiency |
| 1 | Chapel Hill-Carrboro | 77 percent |
| 2 | Union | 72 percent |
| Polk | 72 percent | |
| 3 | Mooresville Graded | 71 percent |
Figure 2.1: Four-year cohort graduation rate at MGSD.
Based on the MGSD experience, we developed a set of guidelines to help districts move rapidly and soundly to stratospheric deep learning performance on a systemwide basis. The following eight guidelines reflect the elements of whole-system change (Fullan, 2010).
1. Moral imperative (high expectations for all students)
2. Culture of caring (caring for all with a push for efficacy)
3. Digital resources and infrastructure (support, ubiquity of access)
4. Evolutional capacity building (individual and team)
5. Instructional transformation (new pedagogy for student and teacher engagement)
6. Daily date with data (building an evidence-based culture)
7. Resource alignment (establishing priorities and repurposing resources accordingly)
8. All-in collaboration (everyone counts and is implicated)
These elements gain their power through their interaction with each other. A cookbook recipe or an organizational change model is impossible because the dynamics are often subtle and many issues are peculiar to a given culture. However, schools can do a much better job of getting at the key factors and their interactions. The following key factors played a major role in the MGSD results.
• Coalescing leaders at all levels around a shared vision (developing coordinated leadership at the school and district levels)
• Establishing leadership for high performance (adjusting to the push and
