Time To Shift Our Thinking About Public Education And Community Development - And Response

  • Saturday, May 27, 2017

There’s no denying that the month of January brings about new beginnings. But there is no reason why June or any other month can’t jump-start your desire for doing something you’ve never done before. Summertime is refreshing. It’s the ideal season to take a leap of faith and jump into something new. It’s a good time to shift the way you think; which will cause you to change the way you do things.

Technology essayist William Gibson is credited with saying, “The future is already here; it’s just not widely distributed yet.”

It seems that everyone these days is looking for a disruptive business model.

But a business model is only one part of the equation. Equally important is the mental model behind the business model, as well as a measurement model for both. It’s the combination of mental, business and measurement models that allows real transformation to occur.

 

Think about this for a moment. The lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has decreased from 61 years in 1958 to 18 years today. Gartner predicts that one-third of jobs will be replaced by software, robots, and smart machines by 2025. Productivity is rising but jobs and income haven't kept up.

 

We’ve been through transformative change before, but the rate of change was much more gradual. A century ago, it took generations for the economy to transform from agriculture to industry. Before the printing press, monks laboriously produced written manuscripts and few people could read. The printing press changed all that, ushering in an era of mass communication.

 

The combination of the Internet, social media, and mobile devices has ushered in an era of mass collaboration. These new technologies allow anyone to connect to anyone and everyone, at any time — and there are already signs that the relationships we have with ourselves, with each other, and with our institutions are changing in response.

 

The press no longer has a monopoly position as an information source. The role of the press has changed from that of a gatekeeper to more of an information broker, connecting suppliers and consumers of information by providing expertise, context, and credibility.

 

We are in an era of unprecedented consumer power. ‘What I want, where I want it, when I want it, and how I want it’ is the credo of the emerging consumer.

 

It’s easy to blame a failure on doing the wrong things, but rarely do leaders realize that the failure lies in their own thinking.

 

Here are two examples to apply this theory:

 

First, the National Urban League’s (NUL) 2017 “State of Black America” (SOBA) report was released on May 2, 2017; it is titled, “Protect our Progress,” and again contains the “Inequality Index. Since 1963 the NUL has used the mantra, “To be Equal,” as part of its overall goal.

 

NUL report is has good information, it's informative, professionally written, and packed with statistics from which we all can learn and move forward.  However, this is the same shit we’ve been reading for over 40 years.

 

Again, it’s good information, but Black folks continue to suffer from the same problems and have been in the same predicament for over 40 years. Don’t take my word for it, here’s an excerpt from the report: 

 

Over the past 30 years, the average household wealth of white families has grown 85 percent to $656,000, while that of blacks has climbed just 27 percent to $85,000 and Latinos 69 percent to $98,000.

 

Again, we have not moved.

 

Second, for over a decade, the Tennessee Department of Education has been warning Hamilton County officials of the need to turn around schools. In these schools year after year test scores have shown that students aren't making adequate progress in reading and math, that the students continue to score below other students across the state and that they have nowhere near the aptitude to make it through college. During the same time these warning sirens were going off, the state was also allocating additional dollars to help support education reform efforts in Chattanooga, for example, the I-zone Grant.

 

The I-Zone Grant was restricted for use in the same five schools that are now under scrutiny. Under the grant, monies were allocated, administrators were moved around and given some discretion to make whatever changes they deemed necessary to move these schools further along. There were some positive gains. However, as we see now, this experiment failed. Perhaps, because we did not shift our thinking? Perhaps, we should have taken a more comprehensive approach and paid attention to what else was happening in Chattanooga.

 

During that same period of time, our city and county officials, local foundations and business leaders were busy orchestrating the mass movement of mostly poor, African-American Chattanoogans out of downtown and into areas like Brainerd and East Chattanooga. Everywhere you looked new condos and townhouses were springing up downtown, on the Northshore, and in other parts of our communities. Housing that the people who once lived in these areas, could no longer afford.

 

A 2012 Chattanooga Affordable Housing Report showed that 1 in 2 households in Chattanooga’s urban core were living in houses they could not afford were burdened by housing costs. The same report showed that more than a quarter of all renters were severely burdened, paying more than 50 percent of their total income on housing costs. With numbers like these and a deliberate practice and pattern designed to move the poor, Chattanooga now has two of the top 15 most racially gentrified ZIP codes in the United States – and this all happened within the past 10 years. Over the past decade, six of Chattanooga’s public housing communities have been demolished, resulting in the loss of well over 1,000+ units. A New York Times article on American’s growing poor and low-income populations featured Chattanooga as a highlight of disturbing new trends. The article found that 27 percent of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, nearly double the national average.

 

Poor people have been moved to concentrated areas and we then ask teachers and administrators to not only educate children, but also deal with the complicated socio-economic issues that characterize poverty and follow “gentrification” (increased crime, lack of resources, blight and unstable neighborhoods)?

 

GOTFOH!

 

The end result - poor performing schools like Brainerd, Woodmore, Dalewood, Orchard Knob and Orchard Knob Middle.

 

It might just be time to shift our thinking about our local priorities and how the decisions we make in one area affects others.

 

Far too many people are being left behind.

 

We are in the midst of a massive migration in business and community development models, from managing assets and delivering services to creating technologies and orchestrating networks. Research tells us that technology- and network-based business models are more profitable, enable faster growth, and are more rewarded in the marketplace.

 

Many companies have “platform envy” and are trying to mimic the network-based business models of companies like Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, and Paypal. But before you start copying their business models, understand this. Copying a business model without copying a mental model will lead to disappointing results. We have to change how we think before we can change what we do, and then change what we measure to close the loop.

 

The key to becoming the “Uber” of something is not creating another app-enabled delivery service but instead applying platform thinking. We have to update how we think. If we change what we do without changing how we think, we will get more of the same. But change how we think, and we will naturally change what we do. So the real question is how should we think to the future?

 

The digital revolution is forcing every company to move from business models focused on products and services to those that leverage networks and platforms. This shift requires embracing new organizational models, and unlearning old habits. It’s a fundamental change in how you think and what you measure. But once you align your mental, business, and measurement models, you will be well on your way to a successful digital transformation.

 

In this social age, people don’t like to be pushed. They don’t need brands to tell them what to buy, where to buy, or when to buy. Their social networks do this for them.

 

Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Companies that help customers shift their thinking will be more effective at solving problems and ultimately selling products.

 

Start thinking about news ways to do business, new ways to market your product/service and new ways to lead. Evaluate how your organization is functioning. Are you really affecting change? Are you making a measurable impact? Consider this. If your organization went away, would you be missed?

While trying something new is exciting, a sense of uncertainty is bound to linger. What’s most important is to push past that doubt in pursuit of the adventure that lies ahead. Either way, life is meant to be lived so take the jump and enjoy the journey.

Time to shift our thinking.

Jermaine D. Harper 

* * * 

Jermaine D. Harper's piece, Time to Shift Our Thinking, is both well written and thought provoking.  There are many problems with our under performing schools, and they are not all with the schools.  We will have to attack the problem on many fronts.  

Congratulations, Mr. Harper for the best letter published for quite awhile. 

 

Don Moon
Signal Mountain

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