The reality that Atlanta Public Schools still requires meaningful improvement has been quite obvious for a long while. However, the nature of meaningful improvement APS requires may be less obvious, yet it is exactly that which embodies an essential challenge for new superintendent, Meria J. Carstarphen.
Clearly, APS’ improvement by “urban school reform” ideology failed, horribly so, predictably so. The failure ultimately showed up as a culture of cheating. APS today is as much two systems in one – one white, one black, with black lagging – as it was in 1999, when Beverly Hall became superintendent.
Some students still succeed in spite of APS, rather than because of it. And many students still fail because of APS, rather than in spite of it.
But to focus on APS’ failure to improve is to focus on what is not working for APS. It is more useful to focus on what will work. And to focus on what will work for APS is to first settle the one essential question: What is APS’ purpose?
By settling on the purpose, it then becomes reasonable to think about meaningfully improving APS with purpose in mind. To settle purpose is to agree on values, beliefs, and reasons for being. What is one’s purpose in life? Does it benefit others? Similarly, what is APS’ purpose? Does it benefit life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Such questions drive for deeper insight than asking about vision and mission.
Necessarily, APS’ purpose must be native to APS rather than be adopted from interests outside APS. Only APS’ own purpose can take account of local human, cultural, social, and economic variety. Then, the need to improve APS can be offered as transforming APS to realize its purpose tomorrow better than it did today.
To improve APS with purpose in mind also requires knowing about kinds of transformation, whether transformation of place, time, form, or state. For example:
1. APS turned into an online school district would be a transformation of place.
2. APS turned into a year-round school district would be a transformation of time.
3. APS turned into an Innovation for Educational Excellence (IE2) district, a System of Charter Schools, a Strategic School System, or a Charter System would be a transformation of form.
4. APS turned into a learning organization freed from “urban school reform” ideology would be a transformation of state.
Arguably, pressures to transform APS in terms of place, time, and form invariably originate with external interests as their behaviorist designs to fix APS from the outside in. By acquiescing, APS allows its purpose to be, by default, the collection of status quo-keeping purposes of the external interests.
However, only transformation of state brings to Dr. Carstarphen the servant leadership challenge to provide for APS to continually experience meaningful improvement from the inside out, with purpose in mind.
After all, genuine education happens from the inside out, never from the outside in.
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