I am a huge fan of quick wins thinking for schools and school districts and implemented it strategically with a number of successes. I'll add some details below but also want to present some challenges that I saw in the field with the approach.
From a leadership standpoint I benifitted greatly from an inclination towards action...and having a thick skin. This led to more bold moves early in my leadership positions that would fit into the quick wins framework that you describe. This allowed us to rapidly shift math programs, Tier II support programs, and assessment structures, to name a few. We also radically restructured parent communication, after school services, and arts programs. Fortunately most of these changes went well, and built the type of credibility you describe, but even the failures led to greater understanding, and improvements in credibility in their own way.
A challenge with quick wins and incremental approaches, though is that they can be swallowed up by the system and easily fall into the "change, not improvement" category. This is a serious issue in the U.S. education system. While Cragmont Elementary (my first principalship), made significant improvements during my 10 years as principal, we tended to make changes incrementally...but each change impacted the previous ones and the progress in some ways was tedious outside of a fairly substantial push in years 2-4. I learned from this and discussed it explicitly when I became principal at King Middle School. There, the staff undertook an ambitious change effort where we improved nearly every significant system in the school (plan year 1, implement years 2 and 3). You might call this "Big Quick Wins" where the change is significant enough to radically improve a school or district in a long term sustainable way, but in a relatively short time. In many school districts, unfortunately, this type of thinking and work will be required because we definitely don't have time for a 10 year strategic plan, but incremental improvement is likely to be too insignificant to hold off the coming wave which could completely break the public school system.
I also want to mention the importance of quick wins and credibility thinking when it comes to work with historically oppressed populations. I specifically delayed deeper and bigger asks of our African-American parent community until we had demonstrated improvements in instruction, performance, and communication. This does not mean I did not engage- I did, but more as a listener and to introduce myself. When African-American students showed some of the largest gains in the state of California (within a few years of when I started as principal), then I could engage with more credibility and in a different way. This approach applies to all stakeholder groups, but is critically important for people who have been marginalized and for very good reasons do not trust the system.
Great topic for discussion. Thanks for writing about it!
I am a huge fan of quick wins thinking for schools and school districts and implemented it strategically with a number of successes. I'll add some details below but also want to present some challenges that I saw in the field with the approach.
From a leadership standpoint I benifitted greatly from an inclination towards action...and having a thick skin. This led to more bold moves early in my leadership positions that would fit into the quick wins framework that you describe. This allowed us to rapidly shift math programs, Tier II support programs, and assessment structures, to name a few. We also radically restructured parent communication, after school services, and arts programs. Fortunately most of these changes went well, and built the type of credibility you describe, but even the failures led to greater understanding, and improvements in credibility in their own way.
A challenge with quick wins and incremental approaches, though is that they can be swallowed up by the system and easily fall into the "change, not improvement" category. This is a serious issue in the U.S. education system. While Cragmont Elementary (my first principalship), made significant improvements during my 10 years as principal, we tended to make changes incrementally...but each change impacted the previous ones and the progress in some ways was tedious outside of a fairly substantial push in years 2-4. I learned from this and discussed it explicitly when I became principal at King Middle School. There, the staff undertook an ambitious change effort where we improved nearly every significant system in the school (plan year 1, implement years 2 and 3). You might call this "Big Quick Wins" where the change is significant enough to radically improve a school or district in a long term sustainable way, but in a relatively short time. In many school districts, unfortunately, this type of thinking and work will be required because we definitely don't have time for a 10 year strategic plan, but incremental improvement is likely to be too insignificant to hold off the coming wave which could completely break the public school system.
I also want to mention the importance of quick wins and credibility thinking when it comes to work with historically oppressed populations. I specifically delayed deeper and bigger asks of our African-American parent community until we had demonstrated improvements in instruction, performance, and communication. This does not mean I did not engage- I did, but more as a listener and to introduce myself. When African-American students showed some of the largest gains in the state of California (within a few years of when I started as principal), then I could engage with more credibility and in a different way. This approach applies to all stakeholder groups, but is critically important for people who have been marginalized and for very good reasons do not trust the system.
Great topic for discussion. Thanks for writing about it!