From Reopen to Reinvent. Michael B. Horn

find themselves achieving victories that are empty, successes that have come at the expense of things they suddenly realize were far more valuable,” Covey said.

      Covey's basic argument is that “all things are created twice.” The first step is to create something in the mind. Then there's the physical act of creating something to make it real. If you haven't thought through what you want a school to do up-front, then it's easy to let past habits and inertia shape what schools accomplish by default.

If famed leadership and management scholars Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis are correct that “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things,” then management is all about executing, but leadership is about clarifying purpose and priorities, Covey argued in his book. To be clear, this can and should be an iterative and emergent process based on putting something into action, learning, and adjusting course. We talk a bit more about that in Chapter 10. But not deliberating about the end reduces educators to “straightening deck chairs on the Titanic,” but not ensuring that the ship isn't simply headed down.⁶

As Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe wrote in the context of education in Understanding by Design,⁷ good teachers start with the goals and how they would know if students have met them. They then backward map all the things they need to provide to get to those outcomes. The same is true for good schools.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO CLARIFY PURPOSE

      In line with the previous chapter, the pandemic isn't just a threat. It has created an opportunity to have a conversation within individual communities to clarify the purpose of schooling. Many communities are ready for and having this conversation.

Starting in March of 2020, phrases that were considered educational jargon became mainstream in the public conversation about schools. Things like remote learning, virtual learning, online learning, learning loss, hybrid learning, asynchronous and synchronous learning, microschools, and learning pods, as well as questions around what gets taught—like Critical Race Theory—entered the popular verbiage (see Figure 2.1).

      Many of the educators with whom I speak aren't thrilled that many of these phrases have become central. They wish we were having conversations about things like social-emotional learning, active learning, mastery-based learning, habits of success, personalizing learning, relationships, agency, skills, supporting the whole child, knowledge, character, lifelong learning, civics, and more.

Figure 2.1 Today's educational jargon

But by making education front and center in many parents' minds and creating radical transparency into what their children were doing every day, the pandemic has created broader and deeper interest in a conversation for which many educators have been clamoring: the purpose of school and how to prepare all students to achieve lifelong success.

      That's an opportunity to seize because where there are questions, there is space for answers and solutions.

      Without having a conversation to make the purpose explicit—and be clear about people's real differences—it's likely that many schools will return to how they operated prior to the pandemic when they didn't serve large swaths of the population well.

      Although there may be a high-level consensus across communities on the purpose of school, there may also be differences—some small and nuanced and others dramatic. That's okay as long as the differences don't result in reduced expectations for certain students just because of their zip code or background. Having different purposes is part of a robust pluralism underlying our democracy that values the fact that students sit in different circumstances and have different needs. Clarity in each schooling community, however, is critical.

A STARTING POINT FOR THE PURPOSE CONVERSATION

      Schools can tackle this work in different ways. The “tools of cooperation” framework that Chapter 11 explores shows that when a school community doesn't have alignment around what it wants or how to get there, public school leaders are limited in the tools they can use to create forward progress and change. If leaders can help stakeholders rally around a shared vision for the purpose of schooling, then they will have more tools from which they can draw.

One way to create a shared vision is to engage in the common exercise of constructing a portrait of a graduate.⁸ The idea is to sketch what an individual entering the world in some number of years would need to be prepared to lead a choice-filled and civically engaged life.

      When I have mentioned the importance of doing this sort of work, some have pushed back. They have said that starting with a blank slate when so many educators and school communities have already done great work on the portrait of a graduate exercise seems like reinventing the wheel—often in the name of a purposeless local control. This can be true. Yet going through the process is valuable. It can create consensus and clarify genuine differences in viewpoints.

      Although the headlines from such an exercise may be roughly the same, the nuances and what it will specifically take to fulfill a school's purpose will differ. That's why it's critical to not just make high-level statements about a school's purpose, but also to make clear how you would know if your school was successful in this pursuit. What are the goals and how would you measure them? Yes, government agencies require that public schools measure certain outcomes, but schools should also figure out what's important to them and then identify specific metrics to indicate whether they are on the right track. Specificity and clarity are important.

      To this point, this is a conversation that shouldn't just happen at the individual school level. It's one that should happen at all different levels, from states to districts and from charter management organizations to individual schools. Public educators are quick to point out that their autonomy is limited because of regulations that mandate they teach certain subjects, standards, and courses. Even in states that have created pathways for mastery-based, or competency-based, learning, they still often require that students take certain numbers of course credits in different subjects, for example. In many cases, portraits of a graduate at a state level are more aspirational than actionable. Still, the conversation is an important start to clarifying the destination.

      Utah

Many states are undertaking these conversations. Utah, for example, approved its “Portrait of a Graduate” model almost a year before the pandemic in May of 2019. The resulting Utah Talent MAP, which stands for “Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose,” identifies the “ideal characteristics of a Utah graduate after going through the K–12 system.”⁹

      In the category of mastery, the characteristics cover academic mastery; wellness—or the development of self-awareness and knowledge to maintain a healthy lifestyle physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally; civic, financial, and economic literacy; and digital literacy.

      Autonomy, which refers to having the “self-confidence and motivation to think and act independently,” includes the skill areas of communication, critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, and collaboration and teamwork.

      The last category is purpose. It's about helping