From Cowboys to Pit Crews

I’ve spent 10 years focused on the lessons that high-performing and rapidly improving high-poverty schools have to teach us, and what I’ve found is that they have all achieved a level of coherence that eludes many schools. All the systems and processes work together in service of helping all kids learn.

I find myself increasingly interested in how schools make the transition from the way they are traditionally organized — around the isolated individual practice of teachers — into coherent organizations where teachers work together to pool their expertise in the service of their students.

It is the same transition that, in medicine, surgeon and writer Atul Gawande has called going from a cowboy mentality to that of a pit crew.

In this week’s Huffington Post column, I give an example of a school that is working to make that transition — and I’m crossing my fingers that it will be successful.