Taking Action. Austin Buffum
a school or district does not start with implementing a sequence of tasks but with clarifying the organization’s direction—its fundamental purpose. This chapter focuses on how an organization builds agreement on a mission of collective responsibility and what foundational conditions must be in place to successfully build a multitiered system of supports to achieve this outcome. The five essential actions we discuss are:
1. Establish a guiding coalition.
2. Build a culture of collective responsibility.
3. Form collaborative teacher teams.
4. Create time for collaboration.
5. Commit to team norms.
In this chapter, we explore each of these essential actions required to build the right school culture and collaborative structures that serve as the foundation of an effective system of interventions.
Action 1
Establish a Guiding Coalition
Leading by example is perhaps the purest form of leadership and the one over which each of us has the most control. You can lead only where you will go.
—Roland Barth
Creating a culture built around the concept of every student succeeding represents a major shift in thinking for many schools. In his book Leading Change, John Kotter (1996) asserts that such shifts in thinking (cultural change) often fail due to the lack of what he calls a “guiding coalition” (p. 52).
We recommend that a school’s leadership team serve as the site’s guiding coalition. Because of this recommendation, we use two terms—(1) leadership team and (2) guiding coalition—which are interchangeable throughout this book. To achieve this goal, many schools need to redesign or repurpose their existing leadership team, as we find that most site leadership teams rarely function as a guiding coalition dedicated to ensuring high levels of learning for all students. Instead, traditional leadership teams, at the site or district level, often focus exclusively on managing the school’s day-to-day operations. RTI represents an almost overwhelming level of change compared to how schools have functioned for more than two hundred years. We know that even slight levels of change can be hard for people. Unless the right team leads the RTI process—a team that focuses its efforts on the right work—the anxiety and inevitable obstacles inherent in this level of change will overwhelm the best organization’s intentions.
Here’s Why
To transform an organization, Kotter (2007) states:
No one person, no matter how competent, is capable of single-handedly developing the right vision, communicating it to vast numbers of people, eliminating all the key obstacles, generating short-term wins, leading and managing dozens of change projects, and anchoring new approaches deep in an organization’s culture…. Putting together the right coalition of people to lead a change initiative is critical to its success.
In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, Jim Collins (2001) similarly asserts that the first step to implementing successful change is to “get the right people on the bus” (p. 41). Collins (2001) says, “If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great” (p. 41). The right people don’t need to be closely managed or constantly fired up. Rather, they are capable, self-motivated, and eager to take responsibility for creating something great.
We find it both fascinating and tragic that many schools give more careful consideration to forming their varsity football coaching staff or school social committee than to forming the best possible school guiding coalition. Random practices, such as the following, often determine positions on the school leadership team.
► Seniority: “I should be department chair because I have been here the longest.”
► Novice: “Make the rookie do it. Pay your dues, kid!”
► Rotation: “It’s Sally’s turn to be grade-level leader.”
► Default: “Bill is the only person who applied.”
Forming an effective guiding coalition is unlikely to happen serendipitously. It takes carefully considering both the essential tasks that the leadership must accomplish and the research behind effective leadership.
Here’s How
In selecting the right people for an effective guiding coalition, it is important to consider the essential tasks that this team will take responsibility for in the RTI at Work process. They include:
• Build consensus for the school’s mission of collective responsibility.
• Create a master schedule that provides sufficient time for team collaboration, core instruction, supplemental interventions, and intensive interventions.
• Coordinate schoolwide human resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including the site counselor, psychologist, speech and language pathologist, special education teacher, librarian, health services staff, subject specialists, instructional aides, and another classified staff.
• Allocate the school’s fiscal resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including school categorical funding.
• Assist with articulating essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects.
• Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students in need of Tier 3 intensive interventions before they fail.
• Lead the school’s efforts at Tier 1 for schoolwide behavior expectations, including attendance policies and awards and recognitions.
• Ensure all students have access to grade-level core instruction.
• Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 2 interventions for students in need of supplemental support in motivation, attendance, and behavior.
• Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 3 interventions for students in need of intensive support in the universal skills of reading, writing, number sense, English language, motivation, attendance, and behavior.
• Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning. (Buffum et al., 2012, p. 36)
In addition to administrative representation, the guiding coalition should have teacher representatives from each collaborative teacher team because many of the outcomes listed relate to supporting and monitoring these teams’ work. At the elementary level, this most likely will be grade-level leaders; at the secondary level, this mostly likely will be department or course-level leaders. Additionally, representation from classified and support staff will help the leadership team best allocate schoolwide resources to support the school’s system of interventions.
Traditionally, school leadership teams have included representation from administration, teachers, and support staff. But beyond just departmental representation, Kotter (1996) states a successful guiding coalition must comprise four essential types of power.
1. Positional power: These individuals have a certain level of defined authority because of their title or office. For example, schools afford the principal the ability to make certain decisions because of the defined responsibilities of this position. Kotter (1996) says that if a guiding coalition does not have enough positional power, it will not have the authority to carry out essential actions. In other words, are enough key players on board so those who disagree cannot easily block progress?
2. Expertise: When reviewing the previous list of essential tasks, what types of expertise must the leadership team possess to successfully achieve these outcomes? For example, because RTI requires coordinating data about specific students, we have found that having at least one member with a deep level of expertise in the school’s education technology