I told “reform” board president Bill Brooks two years ago that I would serve as interim DPS superintendent for a year without pay to demonstrate what I could do. Nonetheless, despite my and several other candidates’ interest in the job, only one person – the now-federally-indicted William Coleman – was interviewed and then appointed on the spot, perpetuating the insider-trading mentality that has been characteristic of too many DPS boards.

Last year, the elected board set about remedying this and other counter-productive board and administrative practices by using the Governor’s Transition Team’s December 2, 2005 document, “A New Beginning,” as a blueprint for reform. Part of our blueprint has been to hire a promising new superintendent, Dr. Connie Calloway. The board should also revisit the school improvement plan that Interim CEO David Adamany submitted to the original Reform Board on January 19, 2000, wherein he cited several things that had to happen for the beleaguered system to reform.

My March 9, 1999, Detroit Free Press column independently noted those same things. After retiring as Rochester deputy superintendent and being subsequently appointed by Mayor Dennis Archer to the first transition team for school reform, I came home to teach and coach in a Detroit high school (Southwestern) in 1999. While there, I wrote an 11,000-word exegesis on how DPS can be reformed, sharing portions of it in a lecture I delivered at WSU. My treatise sought to address those shortcomings by asking, “How can we re-fashion DPS into a learning organization that would be expert at dealing with constructive change?” To answer this, one must recognize that systemic change has components not always seen as compatible. In addressing change in DPS, we confront a perspective that at top administrative levels has regarded top-down reform as the only way. There is another seemingly irreconcilable perspective that favors bottom-up.

Actually, both can work together. As stated in a later (May 5, 1999) Free Press column I co-authored with former national ACLU legal director john powell (uses no caps in his name), we must tame that “internal frontier” characterized by the blighted neighborhoods and blighted hopes the DPS-educated powell referenced in an introduction he wrote to my treatise. In Detroit, we must tackle that frontier educationally by reformulating the schools and instituting genuine site-based management. Principals and teachers must decide what is best for students without constant interference from “experts” far from the front line. We need to get those “experts” back into classrooms and decentralize much of the decision-making in our diminishing but still-sizable system.

The pursuit of positive change accepts both individualism and collectivism as essential to organizational learning. Individualism is often suppressed by those in power, but constructive change can be generated by individual teachers and principals. In the long run, the individual will leverage change more effectively than the institution. While individual learning doesn’t guarantee organizational learning, no organizational learning can happen without it. Reform can occur best when teachers and administrators disregard rank and egos and deepen their interdependent connections.

Dr. John Telford served on the Governor’s Transition Team for DPS Reform. To receive his reform document or reach him for other reasons, e-mail john.telford@detroitk12.org.