The Clean Sheet of Paper Exercise

Thanks to all of you who have responded to the blog, The Band Aid Curtain. The main question has been, “What are you asking us to participate in?” I will try to explain. I used the “clean sheet of paper” process successfully several times in my management career in the private sector. The process goes like this. You start with the assumption that you have no process for educating kids in place at the current time. Thus, you are free to design an optimal system going forward. In the exercise you are not constrained because it would be too big a change from where we are now. That will be dealt with later. I know you are thinking what is the use? We do have an entrenched, dysfunctional system in place and it resists change at every turn. It turns out that the pay-off for this sort of exercise is that it provides a standard against which all future decisions can be measured. Is each decision getting us closer to or further away from getting to the desired ideal system we have designed?

I am proposing a series of questions (not meant to be exhaustive) to help you think about the exercise.
• Funding considerations
o Federal
o State
o Local, property taxes, etc.
• Educator Performance Management System
o Merit Pay vs. the current Step Pay system
o Tenure?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Education leadership
o Merit pay system?
o How to train?
o Responsibilities?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Legislative/Bureaucratic Control
o Performance incentives vs. process specification leaving no room for creativity and fostering a one-size-fits-all approach?
o Results oriented?
o Grant process?
• Curriculum/Standards
o Wide & shallow?
o Narrow and focused?
o Foundational to higher learning
o Foundational to trades type jobs such as plumber, auto mech,
electrician, IT tech, etc.
• Learning systems
o Technology use?
o Discovery learning?
o Direct instruction?
• Extra-curricular priority
o First?
o Last?
• Certifications
o Require rigorous subject knowledge test to begin teaching?
o Ed school based?
o Performance based?
o Needed?
o Not needed?
• Funding higher ed for those working in education
o Give tuition reimbursement, no automatic raise on completion, pay
related to performance which should improve if the education experience
was worthwhile
o No tuition reimbursement but automatic pay raise upon completion of
advance degree
• Discipline
o Rigorous?
o Weak?
o Focused on learning and creating the learning environment?
• Collaboration
o Everywhere?
o Only with education “insiders?”
• Management Style
o Team oriented?
o Laissez Faire?
o Values intellectual honesty? i.e. facing truth of own performance and fixing it

As I said, this is not an exhaustive list but should help you understand the type of issues I would like your input and discussions about.