Leading to Change with the Change Toolkit
By H. 'Bud' Meyers, Associate Professor at the University of Vermont and former Deputy Commissioner of Education for Vermont

Federal legislation known as the No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in 2002, has signaled the need for change in America's schools. This law has forced educators, government leaders and parents to acknowledge the serious gaps that have existed for decades in the performance of students from widely different backgrounds. These gaps, coupled with global economic challenges, have made "business as usual" a non-viable alternative for education leaders. Change towards more effective schools with more effective principals and more supportive communities has become a gathering movement across the country.

To help support this movement, colleges, universities and state departments of education are attempting to provide better and more effective knowledge about school improvement to leaders who must guide the change processes for their schools and communities. Recently, some of this work has been criticized as weak - deemed more appropriate for yesterday's schools rather than those of today and tomorrow. For example, Levine (2004) speculated that many efforts did not have direct application to the change process of schools, lacking the requirement that leaders demonstrate that they can bring about education change in practice, not just in theory. The attempt to improve leadership preparation programs is made more difficult because licensure regulations in many states rarely require that leaders demonstrate competence or the study of proven models of organizational change processes.

Findings that identify deficiencies in preparation demonstrate that programs should include focused experience in a "laboratory of change." Groups such as the National Staff Development Council, in Leading to Learn (2002), recommend:

Principals' professional development should include deep knowledge of individual and organizational change processes and effective staff development strategies. Additionally, administrators should learn how to use data in planning for continuous improvement.

• Continuous organizational development for a district-wide special education program
• Repositioning a museum for partnership with schools and the community
• Creating a transition program for special education students (became district wide)
• Changing to a consultative model in intensive special needs education (district wide)
• Creating a technology and business learning community at a high school
• Creating a community-based school recreation program
• Creating an after-school, community based enrichment program
• Aligning a supervisory union's middle school mathematics curriculum with Vermont's grade expectations in mathematics
• Creating an evaluation process for teacher competencies in a district's special education program

• Assessing one's own skills with the "Change Master" self assessment and colleagues assessments was particularly important in understanding the change being attempted.
• The Change Toolkit's school improvement tools and content were particularly helpful to planning, especially when combined with other tools from other resources (no one model of change has sufficient scope and detail to be sufficient).
• Case studies in the Change Toolkit and the other resources were important in helping students to conceptualize the process of evaluating the change as it was occurring.
• Change is a process and not an event, and
• It's always darkest before it becomes pitch black.