ICYMI: Closing the “Knowing-Doing” Gap

By Leslie Weber
Presenters: Ken Ashman, Board Member; Nick Begley, Board President; Joanna Ford, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services; and Anthony McConnell, Ed.D., Superintendent, Deerfield SD 109

Deerfield School District 109 is continuously working on closing the gap from knowing what is right and best for children to doing what is right and best for children. The district continues to grow through this process and through this Panel Session at the 2019 Joint Annual Conference, leaders from the district shared their progress, struggles, and hopes for continuing to move forward in this journey. They compare this journey to losing weight: you have the information and you know what to do and what would make a difference to change things for the better, but the struggle is putting it together and making it happen to get the outcomes that you want.

SD 109 based its work from the text The Knowing-Doing Gap, How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. The district leadership team was able to use some of the strategies in the text to push forward in what they wanted for their students. They looked at what keeps schools, districts, and themselves from reaching goals: What are the barriers? First, in education there is a lot of talk about what sounds smart and should be done, but often there is no action. Another barrier is facing past precedent: Everyone has gone to school before, if their experience is good and things worked why must things change? One of the most impactful barriers is the fear of failing: what if we fail and have not achieved our goal? 

One of the first steps members of the panel discussed was to “measure.” Find out where you are and then decide where you want to go in that specific area for improvement. Look at what a program is doing for the students and look at the results to see if it is fitting the needs of the learners. The panelists stressed that it is an ongoing process. The first goal you set will need to be reviewed, identify what was missed and if you are not hitting the outcomes, go back and reset the goals. Board member Ken Ashman stated that to know is obvious, but it is implementing that is difficult in this process. Sometimes what is obvious to you may not be to others; it needs to be explained. 

One of the focuses in Deerfield SD 109 was the change in their math pathway. The district previously had three pathways for math: regular, accelerated, and advanced. Looking at data, they found that students who were in the regular math pathway were not making significant growth, as they should. The district was able to identify that the reason these students were not making growth was due to the lack of exposure to certain math concepts and skills. The thought was to eliminate the regular pathway and only have two: accelerated and advanced. Several barriers arose that the district needed to address, such as not enough staff members, parent and faculty concerns, and meeting the needs of all learners including special needs students as well as students who would not meet the criteria for their Algebra 1 course. As part of the process, teacher feedback indicated they did not feel equipped and supported in order to do the work. The district added more support and training for teachers in order to give them the tools they needed. 

There were many challenges through the journey and the panelists discussed that it takes a team to accomplish these tasks: members of the school board, teachers, and the community.

Doing what is right for students is challenging and difficult work. Superintendent Anthony McConnell noted that it was not easy, and is still not easy, as the district continues to make adjustments. The district team members believe in what they are doing and will continue to move forward based on the data and feedback that they gather.
 

Leslie Weber is Director of Curriculum for Elmhurst CUSD 205 and was a participant in the Educational Administration Intern program, a collaboration of IASB and the Illinois Council of Professors of Educational Administration. ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) features panel reports from the 2019 Joint Annual Conference.