"School reformers have repeatedly tried to bash the system and confront it head-on. A major lesson from our studies of innovation is that disruptive innovation does not take root through a direct attack on the existing system. Instead, it must go around and underneath the system. This is how disruption drives affordability, accessibility, capability, and responsiveness."
"When the task simply is to improve individual components, the organizational structure facilitates these improvements. But when a system needs to be fundamentally reconfigured (and that is what we have been talking about in Chapters 1-7), an organization's compartmentalized structure impedes the work it must do.. they often need to use the tool of separation."
Functional teams work on the "simplest category of improvement, a functional or departmental problem that occurs at the component level within a product or at an individual step within a process."
Lightweight teams handle a project that has "a predictable interdependence between groups...to ensure that their work fits together" across multiple units.
"When the architecture of a product or process needs to change, however, unpredictable interdependencies often arise...to address these challenges, organizations must create heavyweight teams."
"Schools are built on functional and lightweight teams.....Only heavyweight teams can functionally redesign schools."
The tool of separation is "a space where heavyweight teams can have the power and the authority to rethink the architecture...Though the specifics of how and where they (heaveyweight teams)are implemented might differ, the principles that underlie them do not...Architectural change requires a heavyweight team. We are not engaged in an effort to find a single best architecture that fits all students. We need 'If.... , then...' statements: We must define school architectures that work best for teachers and students in specific situations...the definitions of those situations is just beginning..."
This is where the connection between CreateWV and Disrupting Class becomes very visible. There are "definitions of these situations" in communities across our state right now that need "heavyweight teams". Situations include: teacher compensation, teacher shortages, where/when school occurs, seamless curriculm, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Academies, community schools, early education and 21st Century Learning to name a few.
In the future, I will be posting some examples of different "school architectures" for your review.
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