Systems vs Goals

I do a lot of thinking about systems. But I don't always reflect on goals. Lately I’ve been considering that - perhaps because of new year resolutions, but more than likely because we’re currently reviewing and renewing our district’s strategic plan.

Goals provide us with the endpoint, the rationale for why we are doing something, and where we are heading. My goal may be to run a marathon, earn a degree, or attain financial solvency. And organizationally, goals serve similar functionality - a marking point, the (hopefully) ubiquitous compass heading.

But that’s as far as the reach of our goals - the marking point. Goals may be the compass heading, but they don’t tell us how to get there, how to achieve them. For that we need systems, and systems engineering.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear states that “goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making process” (2018, p. 24). While I don’t necessarily agree with his premise of 1% change, I do concur with the need for attention to systems - both for maintenance and improvement.

And each of us are responsible for that system engineering.

In education, everyone of us says some variation on the theme of wanting high student achievement … great - how? Well, we’ll outline district and school action items. Great - how are we going to meet those? Well, we hadn’t thought about that, we figured we’d just keep doing what we’ve been doing. Cynical? Yes. But I contend for the majority of districts and schools (private and public), that is exactly what occurs.

I’ve seen this with staff behavior, student behavior, instructional practices, budgeting, and on. Most disappointing is when I see this reactive behavior and I see that the individual or organization has the capacity to effect the change. Gandhi famously extolled that we must be the change that we wish to see in the world.

So do it. Be the change. Stop whining about external factors, about the state department, or the status of funding, or about various stakeholders. Be the change. Change your system to meet your goals.

If our goal in education is high achievement for all students, then we must review and revise our systems to move us towards that goal. We cannot expect to meet that goal by good wishes - we have work to do.

We have to examine our practices, what works, what doesn’t. If it works, then we have a responsibility to know why it is working. If our practices doesn’t work, then we have a responsibility not only to research what will work, but to implement that, analyze and revise that. We’re seeing this now with the growing cadre of teachers, administrators, and professors who are engaging with the science of reading. For nearly 30 years we have been teaching reading (arguably our most important endeavor) with whole and/or balanced literacy methods. But now, more and more of us are learning and applying the science of reading. If the research holds, the benefits for our systems, and more importantly, for our students, will be awesome.

We have standards, and we have summative exams, so that we can have a mutual endpoint. How we get there, how we achieve that, is up to each of us. We can choose to wallow and allow our systems to continue as they always have, and wonder aloud why we aren’t getting any closer. Or we can engineer our systems to affect change.

Don’t expect to magically meet your goals. Don’t expect to meet your goals by continuing to maintain the system you have today - unless you’ve already taken the occasion to review and revise your system. And even then, with review and revision, you need to continue that as you progress - check your heading, and adjust your course accordingly.