“Paths to Change is top-tier in so many regards… I can assure you that to this day, the lead consultant and other team members remain beloved by dozens of people throughout the community and District who admire the consummate skill, educational reform advocacy, and caring and compassion consistently brought to reforming their schools.”
— Laura Moran, former Director of Organizational Development, The Stupski Foundation; Executive Coach, Pivot Learning Partners
Outcomes of this work:
According to the client, “The overall engagement was a huge success. Three to four years after the initial work of Paths To Change, the District realized significant gains in educational outcomes.”
- Effectively influenced and facilitated the expanded community participation necessary to sustainable educational reforms
- Successfully navigated discordant local politics and ‘disintegrating political climate’, resulting in ‘unprecedented civic commitment’ and collaboration amongst community leaders
Client overview:
The Stupski Foundation is a private foundation whose mission is to improve life options for children of color and poverty through educational reform. In its first decade of operation, the Foundation identified approximately twenty low-performing, large, urban school districts, and invested millions of dollars in technical support for educational reform. The aim was to demonstrate that with the right support, such low-performing districts could be transformed into high-performers. One of the Foundation’s main approaches involved having their school districts adopt rigorous organizational disciplines and business practices, while also embracing the best research-based pedagogical practices. In most of these districts, all of these strands of educational reform got aligned and coordinated through a comprehensive strategic planning process.
The Director of Organizational Development for the Foundation was familiar with the work of Paths to Change, and invited Paths to Change to tackle one of the Foundation’s most challenging districts, Paterson Public Schools in Paterson, NJ. Paterson is a fairly poor community resting on a local economy that tanked after the demise of its manufacturing base. Its school district was extremely low-performing – so much so that it had been in state take-over for eleven years when Paths to Change arrived.
Paths to Change approach:
- Coordinated the efforts of ten Stupski professionals and the District administration to produce a comprehensive strategic plan, using methods that required broad-based involvement from the community;
- According to the client, “Paths to Change convinced the Foundation to embrace an approach that involved community participation in ways far greater than the Foundation had ever seen.” Over the course of a year, led seventy people on five task forces representing the District and the community (including several local officials and prominent civic leaders) through a highly engaged process;
- Blended conventional consulting approaches with innovative complexity-science approaches in ways that were easily assimilated by the community. Client notes that, “Many of the more innovative processes were adopted as part of the larger community culture in places such as meetings in housing projects, gatherings in churches and the like;”
- In second year of project, worked directly with the District’s newly formed Community Liaison Office to deepen community ownership of educational reform;
- Consistent emphasis on community involvement inspired what client calls, “a spontaneous and unparalleled display of civic commitment in a situation where local politics were often characterized by discord and drama;”
- Constantly interacted with elected and appointed local and state officials – from superintendents and State Department of Education officers, to Board of Education representatives and grassroots community leaders, resulting in, “profound influence on leadership throughout the entire city,” according to the client.