After working on this week's assignments, I realized that there was a correlation between the various elements of work done with the Deparment of Education (DoE), Fullan's model of change, and high tech high. I think, first and foremost, its pretty clear that all of them identify the need for change in our school systems. While each has different ideas or ways to move forward with this, the need for change is at the core of all three.
For the DoE reports, there was a lot of evaluation done over the course of two years. Unfortunately, the greatest significance was that there really wasn't much significance based on the selected applications with the selected schools. While this does not seem to be helpful, the primary failure could be with the lack of time to implement the change. Far too frequently, there seem to be haphazard attempts to change, and groups give up at the slightest sign of things taking a turn for the worse.
Fullan's model of change addresses this scenario with a curve showing that there will indeed be a turn for the worse, but if the implementation is done right, things will improve dramatically as time progresses. Change isn't received and accepted overnight and it takes time for implementation projects to gain enough strength and momentum to sway to the positive side of the scale.
High Tech High (HTH) is a great example of implemented change that is given adequate time to seek and observe improvement. Starting as only a highschool, HTH certainly had some hitches early on in the process. Although this was the case, the process continued and they now serve students from K-12.
Much like Fullan stated in his presentation, you can't sit around and wait for the change to happen, and you shouldn't just sit around and talk about change. You need to "ready, fire, aim!" If ample research and planning happens up to this point, the issues that arise after implementation will mostly be the typical shortfalls and bumps that one should expect with the change.
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