No Need for the Dictator Approach
Last month, McKinsey & Company released a report titled How the World's Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better. The report is a follow-up to a great study McKinsey released in 2007 called"How the World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top". These reports dedicate significant ink to the human capital strategy of professional development. Both are worth reading.
The 2007 report shows that collaborative professional development is a critical practice in high-performing schools. The new report confirms this fact, but adds an important nuance, implying that the type of professional development must match the performance level of the school system. Specifically, the study suggests that schools in the lowest category of performance must have high levels of prescription and tight control from the system leaders. The report notes that, "Systems on the journey from poor to fair, (are) in general characterized by
