Anticipating System Behavior

School districts are made up of many components, including district staff, individual schools, teachers and administrators within those schools, parent councils, and students. The sheer number and variety of these actors make it difficult to see their interdependence and to notice how an action in one part of the system affects the others. Add to this complexity policies originating from agencies outside the district, such as state education departments and the U. S. Department of Education, and the task of assessing how best to direct resources to meet students’ needs becomes almost hopelessly confusing.

Systems thinking and system dynamics tools, including casual loop diagrams, stocks and flows, and computer simulation, can shed light on the interrelationships among components and, perhaps more important, illustrate how outcomes may result from feedback loops rather than from simple, linear chains of cause and effect. These tools also make explicit the delays that often occur between a change in one component of a system and its effect on others. The interplay of feedback and delays can produce unanticipated system behavior, as shown by the mandating of smaller class sizes in California. When the legislature passed the new law, schools had to increase the number of classes they offered at each grade level to accommodate the same number of students. To do so, they needed to hire more teachers. Because becoming a teacher through traditional means requires at least four years of pre-service training, the number of teachers available fell short of meeting the needs of all schools. Suburban districts with greater resources filled their spots by recruiting teachers from urban districts, leaving those schools woefully understaffed. Proponents of the new law had failed to anticipate this unfortunate outcome of the change in class size.

By showing the potential behavior over time of multiple scenarios based on specific inputs, computer modeling offers policymakers and administrators the ability to visualize the long-term effects of specific decisions before those decisions are implemented. We can also use models to identify unexpected interactions between system components; ask “what if questions about changes in system parameters; run no-cost experiments that compress time and space; and reflect on, expose, test, and improve the mental models upon which we rely to make decisions about difficult problems. Thus, computer modeling could allow school-system leaders to make more effective decisions by building their understanding of long-term consequences of resource decisions in a complex environment.

Evaluating Professional Development Programs

To illustrate how a district can use computer modeling to analyze its options, I have created a simulation that explores the impact of professional development programs for teachers. Many school districts have responded to the call for better educational performance by implementing a standards-based curriculum. They offer professional development workshops to increase teachers’ ability to communicate this new curriculum to their students. The workshops are often formatted as multi-week summer programs.

Research has shown that teachers can learn to communicate the new curriculum through professional development training, so the question for a district is not whether summer workshops can build capacity, but whether they can do so for a critical mass of teachers in a reasonable time period. What factors play a role in this issue? Which workshops are most effective? What are the costs associated with this form of professional development? These questions are amenable to modeling because we can determine quantitative values for most of the important variables — such as the number of teachers in training and the turnover rate of teachers — and reasonable estimates for the qualitative variables — such as the effectiveness of the workshops and the relationship between the length of the workshop and the willingness of teachers to enroll in it.

I followed these steps to build the model:

1. Define the teacher stocks. All the teachers in the district fall into three stocks: Those who are not familiar with the standards; those who are attending a workshop to learn about the standards; and those who are familiar with the standards.

2. Establish the flow between stocks. Teachers who aren’t familiar with the standards can take a workshop to gain familiarity; teachers in the workshop may become familiar with the standards and move into the “familiar” stock or may not gain much from the workshop and return to the “unfamiliar” stock; and both “familiar” and “unfamiliar” teachers may leave the system each year.

3. Identify and assign values to the important system parameters and variables.

4. Incorporate funding components.

The model is based on the following assumptions:

• The number of teachers in the system remains constant at 10,000, and at the starting point, 10 percent of the teachers are already familiar with the standards-based curriculum. Workshops vary in length from one day to five weeks.
• Ten percent of the teachers leave and are replaced each year (with 10 percent of new teachers entering in the “familiar” stage), and the rate at which teachers leave the system is higher for teachers in the “unfamiliar” pool than in the “familiar” pool.
• In the baseline simulation, 1,000 teachers participate in the three-week workshop; this number can vary up or down by a factor of three.
• Fewer teachers participate in longer workshops, more in shorter ones. However, longer workshops are more effective. The initial success rate for teachers reaching the “familiar-with-standards” stage in a three-week workshop is 30 percent. This base rate increases linearly over time as more and more teachers (those for whom training was not effective the first time) retake the workshop.
• There are 25 teachers in each workshop. The cost of the workshop includes a stipend of $300/week/ teacher for each of 25 participating teachers and an additional cost of $2,500/week for the instructor, supplies, and space.

“Modeling Professional Development” illustrates the model’s basic features.

Analyzing Results

The simulation yields several non-intuitive results, the most important being that these workshops alone cannot adequately deal with the problem of building the necessary capacity in the teacher workforce. Even after 10 years of providing three-week workshops, only 52 percent of the teachers are skilled in presenting a standards-based curriculum — and this number includes teachers who were capable before they enrolled in the workshops. The results clearly show that the workshops do not produce a critical mass of teachers with the desired capabilities in a reasonable amount of time.

Another unexpected result of this analysis is that the five-week workshops result in the largest number of trained teachers over a 10-year period, even though the smallest number of teachers enrolls in them. Holding all else constant, approximately 5,200 teachers achieve the desired level of ability after participating in a five-week workshop, while only about 2,800 teachers reach this stage through one week workshops. The longer workshop is also the most cost-effective per teacher trained: $2,300 per teacher for a five-week workshop; $2,635 for a three-week workshop; and $3,100 for a one-week workshop.

We can generalize this kind of model to other areas of professional development, because the results are independent of the workshop content. Administrators have access to the quantitative data for their district (such as number of teachers in the system, distribution by length of service, teacher leaving rate, funding available for workshops) and can reasonably estimate values for the qualitative variables (such as percent of teachers who require specific professional development, workshop effectiveness, relationship of workshop length to teacher resistance and workshop effectiveness) from prior experience. Plugging these numbers into a computer simulation would give them a general tool for predicting the impact of a summer workshop on professional development in any content area.

Similar models could let stakeholders examine other questions, such as the impact of rationing workshop participation depending on teachers’ average time of service in the system.

Should administrators concentrate on those who will remain in the system longest, that is, younger teachers? Or is there value in offering training opportunities to experienced teachers, who can serve as opinion leaders in changing the system’s culture? This analysis could also be incorporated into an expanded model to include the use of mentors and school and web-based professional development. By exploring these variables as well, districts might come upon a formula for producing a multi-component professional development system with the capacity to bring a critical mass of teachers up to speed on new curriculum requirements in an acceptable time period.

As I hope I’ve shown here, computer modeling offers a valuable planning and decision-support tool for school districts. This approach permits “no-risk” analysis of competing policy choices and resource allocations and, while it does not offer definitive answers, it can help school-system leaders understand the impact of their decisions and guide them toward making better-informed allocations of scarce resources.

Daniel D. Burke, Ph. D., has a broad understanding of K-graduate educational systems. As deputy director for education, the CNA Corporation (CNAC), he leads the research and analysis activities of CNAC’s public education group. Before joining CNAC, Dan was a researcher in molecular biology and produced an extensive record of curriculum innovations. He also played an important role in the National Science Foundation’s K-12 education reform programs.

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Since his appointment in November 2001, Spence has been thinking deeply about the paradoxical nature of the child welfare system. Chosen for his long and impressive record of advocating for children and families, providing fiscal stewardship, and understanding complex systems, he says that one of the first things he initiated for himself was “an analysis of the coherence among the organization’s values, structure, process, praxis, and content.” In the course of his analysis, Spence came upon studies that showed that the gap in child welfare agencies between espoused theory and theory in practice is as great as any recorded in organizations that have been studied.

He attributes this gap in part to the enormous stress the child welfare system is under at any given time— particularly the stress that frontline workers face by constantly having to make life and death decisions with little real support from their own organizational culture or the culture at large. People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

Aligned Values

People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

One of the first steps Spence and his staff took to close the gap was to draft six clear, aligned statements that help people understand and agree on what constitutes good work. They have called these statements “practice values” for the agency’s work: it is child-driven, family-centered, strength-based, community-focused, committed to diversity and cultural competence, and committed to continuous learning. “These values are not radical in the child welfare world,” says Harry. “What would be radical is actually figuring out how to achieve them, which is what we’re trying to do.”

After they drafted the value statements, he and his staff set about building consensus around and commitment to achieving them at every level of the organization. First, they met with senior managers in Boston to revise and hone them; then they took the discussion to all senior managers throughout the state. Next they conducted their first statewide DSS leadership conference to include parent and family representatives, many of whom had been found to place their children at risk through abuse and neglect, in the conversation. Now DSS is planning to hold discussions at the local level. The reason for developing the value statements in a collaborative way — that is, in dialogue with DSS leaders and client representatives — is to link the value statements powerfully to daily practice.

Another step has been to recognize and make explicit the three levels of child welfare practice: clinical (the frontline social workers working with particular families), managerial (the management system that oversees, guides, supports, evaluates, and organizes the work of those social workers), and system of care (the organization’s partnership with other public services such as mental health systems, school systems, and private providers, including foster families and adoptive parents). Spence asserts, “To create coherence among these three, we need to drive the same agenda at each level and constantly maintain awareness of how they work together and reinforce one another. Otherwise, signals and incentives to everyone in the system become confused.”

Quality Improvement

Simultaneously, Harry has been working to implement quality improvement systems. He observes, “The big challenge here is that child welfare involves immense discretion all the time. I learned early in my life that no matter how many bureaucratic categories you create, the next case you take up will immediately confound those categories. The varieties of human misery are simply too complex to be captured in 10, 100, or 1,000 boxes.”

Acknowledging that regulation does play a foundational role in setting minimum standards, the commissioner believes that to truly succeed, the real work has to go beyond regulation. He fosters excellence by advocating for a mutual accountability system, which he defines as the responsibility each of us has to help others above and below us in the organization to do their very best work. He’s also careful not to impose solutions that worked elsewhere. “While certain things we learn about organizations and their management are transferable,” he explains, “this learning is only of value to the new organization you enter if it’s linked to a deep and profound regard for the craft of that organization. Otherwise, the systems you put in place can be powerfully destructive.”

One system in the queue for improvement is the current individual accountability model for social workers, which Spence believes runs counter to DSS practice values. After observing the disparity between the level of support that social workers need to do their jobs and the actual support they get, he initiated research into moving toward a team-based accountability system. In the process, he discovered that every state in the country works on the solo practitioner model, in which single social workers are responsible for an enormous number of children. These caseloads range from 11 cases per day in New York to 18 cases in Massachusetts to roughly 35 cases in Florida. Interestingly, the teams that do appear in child welfare are “expert” teams, composed of child psychiatrists, pediatricians, lawyers, and other specialists. The results of this research prompted DSS to apply for a substantial grant from a foundation (which they recently received) to develop and test a team-based model for social workers.

“To realize continuous improvement, we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes.”

—Lewis H. (Harry) Spence

What the commissioner considers the linchpin of the child welfare accountability problem, however, is public pressure. He notes that, in general, child welfare appears on our radar screen when we read about the death of a child in DSS custody. The public then puts pressure on the agency to fire the “guilty” social worker so we can assure ourselves that we’re not culpable for that death. “Within child welfare, that is an experience of deep betrayal,” Spence says. “What yesterday was perfectly acceptable work today becomes grounds for firing because suddenly the boss, to remove himself from the public spotlight, needs to find someone to take responsibility for the death of the child. He usually turns a perfectly innocent party into a sacrificial lamb.”

Rather than ruthlessly penalize individuals, Spence wants the community to hold DSS accountable for instituting strong learning systems, similar to what the healthcare system has been developing in the last few years around fatalities in hospitals. “To realize continuous improvement,” he says, “we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes. We cannot accomplish this by constantly punishing ordinary human error. Certainly, there need to be consequences for negligence or dereliction of duty, but if I were held to an error-free standard, I wouldn’t survive a single day of work here, nor would anyone else.”

In the face of these long-standing challenges, Harry knows he cannot expect his staff to immediately trust the new systems he’s striving to put in place. Instead, he asks them to maintain a healthy skepticism while he tries to give voice to their hope of making a real difference in child welfare. He says, “We all struggle with questions such as, ‘Do I act on the thing that first brought me here—a genuine desire to help parents and families?’ or ‘Do I drive my practice on what I know about the punitive accountability system — the risk of being publicly flayed alive?’ All I’ve tried to do is operationalize the part that says, ‘I came here to deeply care for children and families.’”

Kali Saposnick is publications editor at Pegasus Communications. Harry Spence will be a keynote speaker and session presenter at this year’s 2003 Pegasus Conference in October, where he will share the learnings that he acquired at DSS as well as in his previous positions as deputy chancellor for operations for the New York City Public Schools; governor-appointed receiver for the bankrupt city of Chelsea, Massachusetts; and court-appointed receiver of the Boston Housing Authority.

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Police departments are strictly command-and-control operations. It’s always been that way. But in Carrollton, Texas, police have forged a hard-won model of servant leadership that defies traditional definitions. A dramatic example of this involved a team of volunteers that drastically lowered motor vehicle break-ins in several sectors of the city.

The servant leadership philosophy was first introduced within the CPD by Chief David James, who had read Robert Greenleaf’s essay, “The Servant As Leader,” which defied the “hero-as-leader” model so popular in America, then and today (see “What Is Servant Leadership?”). In its place, Greenleaf described a leadership path that puts the growth of others ahead of personal ambition for power, rank, or pay. James knew immediately that this was what he believed about leadership.

“Servant leadership is one critical component of an effective management style. It is one thread in the law enforcement tapestry that brings consistency and compassion to bear on everyday citizen concerns,” says James.

“We have been encouraged by other organizations committed to servant leadership, like TDIndustries and Ann McGee-Cooper & Associates,” James continues., “When these two companies organized the Servant Leadership Learning Community (SLLC) in Dallas, we jumped at the opportunity to join.”

Chief James has since stepped back to allow Assistant Chief Mac Tristan to represent the police department in the SLLC. For Mac, these quarterly sessions serve to refresh his own commitment as well as connect with other leaders of servant-led organizations in Dallas. Mac always brings an honest disclosure of his own challenges and celebrations. As a result, he has earned the respect and gratitude of everyone in the SLLC. So, the great dream of Robert Greenleaf came to the CPD through David James, then found another servant’s heart in Mac Tristan. And Mac didn’t hesitate to take what he was learning at the SLLC sessions back to his team.

The police/citizen ratio is about 1/1000, so typical police work is reactive. Officers can spend all their time on “urgent” matters and routine operations (, “Driving for Dollars”), never getting around to the important work of solving chronic problems, developing leadership, or practicing the disciplines of a learning organization. Max wanted to create a new model for policing after years of command-and-control hierarchy.

CPOP Traction

Mac’s enthusiasm for empowering officers has inspired a Community Problem-Oriented Policing (CPOP) unit composed of volunteers within the department. CPOP began in May 2004 when Mac invited officers to meet and talk about how they could improve their department as well as their service to the community. His idea was to ignite the passion of these officers by allowing them to act on what they already wanted to do.

Mac also wanted to provide a forum for honest feedback without repercussion, as well as act on urgent crime trends in Carrollton. As a result of his openness and willingness to share power with this group, the officers began to believe in Mac’s sincerity, his “walking the talk.”

The team’s first goal was to communicate more effectively between four sets of 22 patrol officers in different shifts and divisions throughout the CPD. Their second goal was to tackle a tough problem and show the effectiveness of this kind of voluntary servant leadership. The 10 officers on the team ran the meetings, and chose the CPOP name and a chairman. They met twice a month, and Mac made sure he missed some of those meetings to send a consistent message that the officers were the decision makers.

Mac handed out some simple guidelines within which these officers were free to make decisions. When considering solutions to any problems, the team must have a consensus in answering “yes” to each one of these questions:

• Is it ethical?
• Is it legal?
• Is it the right thing for the community?
• Is it the right thing for the CPD?
• Is it within our policies and values?
• Is it something you can take responsibility for and be proud of?

If the team’s answer to all of these questions was “yes,” then it could plan the implementation and do it!

Solving the “Impossible”

The first crime problem the team decided to tackle came in response to an ongoing problem in the community with vehicle break-ins (BMVs).

“What if we could eliminate vehicle break-ins in our community?” Mac asked the team. Some of the officers laughed (not out loud) at this preposterous suggestion. It was an example of a solution that seemed impossible, but Mac believed that it could be accomplished with the collective wisdom of the group and the spirit of servant leadership.

The department was spending 30 hours for each investigation of a BMV and wanted to cut that down drastically. So, they began by targeting the area where most of the break-ins were taking place. This became a significant ingredient in their success. If they had tried to focus on the entire city, they might well have failed.

Then they communicated with neighbors in that part of the community by going door-to-door, leaving fliers when people were not at home. The night shifts reported areas where street lights were out. Street signs were put up advertising the “H. E. A. T.” (help end auto theft) effort.

Officers created a report card that they left on car windshields as they walked or biked the beat. The car got a passing grade if it was locked and no valuables were visible within. Conversely, a failing grade was given (and the reason for it) if the car was unlocked or there were valuables visible. Eventually, as the local media caught on and asked what was happening, the CPD got a lot of free publicity to help further their efforts.

The results were remarkable. The total number of BMVs reported dropped 94 percent in the first eight months. There were only two BMVs reported in 2006. The team moved into the second and third targeted areas and received no reports of BMVs in the first three months of 2005. There was an 83 percent reduction through mid-2006.

To talk to the officers that pulled off this “impossible” feat is to catch the spirit of servant leadership — to see, feel, and hear the passion and energy that is released when those in the best position to effect changes are empowered to do so.

Ann McGee-Cooper, Ed. D., is founding Partner of Ann McGee-Cooper & Associates, a team of futurists and consultants. She is the author of You Don’t Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted, Time Management for Unmanageable People, and The Essentials of Servant-Leadership: Principles in Practice.

Gary Looper, Th. M., serves as Project Leader of the pace-setting Servant Leadership Learning Community, a consortium of 11 organizations that meet to develop unique, leaderful cultures and the learning organization disciplines. He is coauthor of The Essentials of Servant Leadership: Principles in Practice.

Duane Trammell, M. Ed., founding Partner and Executive Vice President of AMCA, has been working with Ann for 25 years. He manages the operations and finances of the company. He is coauthor of Time Management for Unmanageable People and You Don’t Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted.

This article is reprinted with permission from Being the Change: Profiles from Our Servant Leadership Learning Community (AMCA, 2007).

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