In Jim Collins bestseller, Good To Great, he discusses common practices of successful companies. One of those is called the Hedgehog Concept. The idea is that hedgehogs choose one thing to be good at and put all their energy into that which ensures their survival despite being small and otherwise defenseless. Collins argues that weaker companies are involved in too many ventures and haven’t found the one thing they can be the best at. Schools function in the same way. OSPI lists a “clear and focused goal” as one of its Nine Characteristics of High Performing Schools.
There are many goals in a school. As we have seen in our weekly discussion on these topics, departments, grade levels and even teachers all have different goals for students. The federal government has dictated some of these goals through standardized testing, NCLB and AYP. It is easy for schools to become disullusioned and fractured with so many objectives. Our school is going through a valuable and necessary process of creating a common mission statement and school-wide goals as part of the accreditation process.
A recent staff development day began by looking at raw data from student, teacher and parent surveys regarding a variety of topics. We also analyzed test data and school demographics. This provided us with a big picture of our school’s successes and shortcomings. The second half of the day was spent reworking our mission statement and goals to account for what was discovered in the data.
The objective of this day was to come up with our Hedgehog concept. What can Kentridge High School, given the faculty, students, and community, do best? We did not finish this work but I am excited about what we have discovered so far and hope we can come to a consensus in the next six months about what our Hedgehog concept will be.
Posted by ryanewest 
