Press Release

August 1, 2000; publication date, September 12, 2000

Advance Praise for Schools That Learn

Schools That Learn:

A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education.

By Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Janis Dutton, and Art Kleiner
(Doubleday, October 1, 2000; $35.00; 624 pp.).

You can purchase a copy of this book through the secure site of our colleagues at The Resources Connection.

Authors of the best-selling Fifth Discipline Fieldbook describe how institutions of learning can become learning organizations,in a way that promises the revitalization of schools, classrooms and even communities around the world.

"Schools may be the starkest example in modern society," says MIT educator and bestselling management writer Peter Senge, "of an entire institution modeled after the assembly line. This has dramatically increased educational capability in our time, but it has also created many of the most intractable problems with which students, teachers, and parents struggle to this day. If we want to change schools, it is unlikely to happen until we understand more deeply the core assumptions on which the industrial-age school is based."

At a time when people around the world see education as the highest form of leverage to improve society, and when more people than ever are concerned about the ability of today’s institutions to live up to that goal, Senge and his colleagues have released Schools That Learn. This book of almost 200 pieces of writing from more than 100 educators, parents, and students — represents the first coherent effort to apply the principles of the "learning organization" to institutions of learning.

Schools That Learn is, in part, a kind of Whole Earth Catalog of approaches to effective school change, developed by some of the most innovative educators in America. But it is also a new and compelling twist on the debate about education in our time. Amidst arguments that schools need more money, more choice, more discipline, more standards, more experimentation, and more compassion, Schools That Learn suggests that no cookie-cutter answers will suffice. Schools are complex systems, grounded in industrial-age assumptions about learning; trapped by these assumptions, neither teachers nor administrators nor parents have the ability to change the system alone. Nor can policy makers (or the media) wreak effective change by setting standards and giving tests. Effective change can only happen by conducting long-term conversations among teachers, administrators, parents, and students — and by giving people the chance to act on what they have learned through those conversations.

The book Schools That Learn came into existence because educators demanded it. The story goes back to 1990, when Senge published The Fifth Discipline, a book on building learning organizations that has sold more than 600,000 copies since, and that the Harvard Business Review would later call "one of the five most significant business books of the 1980s and 1990s." The follow-up The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, put together by Senge and five coauthors, was a guide to hands-on implementation of the "learning organization" idea. It, too, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But in the years since, Senge and his colleagues discovered that as much as twenty-five per cent of their audience was composed of teachers and school administrators. These were people who recognized the importance of school change, and the difficulty of making it work from just a top-down orientation. Ever since, educators have regularly requested a book that focuses specifically on schools and education, and that can help reclaim schools even in depressed or ill-managed districts.

Created by Senge with educators Nelda Cambron-McCabe and Timothy Lucas, "learning organization" expert Bryan Smith, and writers Janis Dutton and Art Kleiner, the book brings together practices, exercises and case studies that have been used in the field around the United States and around the world. Some articles were written by prominent educators such as Howard Gardner, Jay Forrester, and 1999 "Superintendent of the Year" Gerry House; others describe specific stories like these:

• the creation of a "Sesame Street" production that bridged the gap between Israel and Palestine;

• the parents who remade their school system by interviewing each other, in St. Martin, Louisiana;

• the bold new form of kind of student teaching in Cincinnati, Ohio;

• the school governed by its students, teachers, and parents together in Chelmsford, Massachusetts;

• the students who mapped and saved a river in Creswell, Oregon;

• the Ministry of Education that learned to learn in Singapore; and

• the techniques that teachers have used in classrooms at every level from kindergarten to the university.

In a fast-changing world where school violence is not uncommon, the value of standardized tests is questioned, where rapid advances in science and technology threaten to leave students woefully unprepared, and increased pressures cause many teachers to burn out before retirement age, Schools That Learn offers much-needed grist for the dialogue about the future of educating children into the next century.

Biographies

Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the chairman of the Society for Organizational Learning, and a recognized pioneer, theorist, and writer in the field of management innovation.

Nelda Cambron-McCabe is a Professor at the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University and a nationally known expert on learning organization work in public education.

Tim Lucas has been a teacher and administrator in public education for the past 27 years, most recently as the superintendent of the Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey school district, and a recognized innovator with systems thinking tools in classroom and school administration.

Janis Dutton is an editor, writer and educational consultant who is active in community and school change efforts.

Bryan Smith is a vice president of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and a director of Innovations Associates; his work focuses on strategy implementation, corporate governance, and sustainable development.

Editorial Director Art Kleiner is a faculty member at New York University and the author of The Age of Heretics, a finalist for the Edgar Booz Award for most innovative business book of 1996.

Advance Praise for Schools That Learn

Today, more than ever, all the forces within society must join together to prepare our children to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing world. Schools That Learn is an important resource for all those wanting to tackle the challenge of integrating family, school, faith community, and policy makers into one coalition on behalf of children.
-- Dr. James P. Comer, founder, School Development Program, Yale University

I don't know of a country that is happy with its educational system. That is because most schools are crafted for the mass production ethic of industrial society. Changing this obsolete state of affairs is the best investment that a government (or a parent, for that matter) can make. This book can help; it shows how schools can reorient themselves to emphasize humanity, adventure, entrepreneurship, leadership, teamwork, problem-solving, and experimentation, instead of rote learning.
- Kenichi Ohmae, author of The Mind of the Strategist and The Invisible Continent.

I plan to read long passages to my daughter. Whenever I think about the world in which she (and her children) will grow up, the educational system seems to be the locus of both hope and despair. Reading this book is like opening the curtains and letting in rays of hope, illuminating an entire, systemic, detailed, map for change.
-- Howard Rheingold, author, The Virtual Community

School systems and institutions of learning from which stories are told in the book include:

ARIZONA

Orange Grove Middle School, near Tucson

Catalina Foothills School District, near Tucson

Northern Arizona University

CALIFORNIA

Institute for Research on Learning

Institute for Intelligent Behavior

Alameda School District (near San Francisco)

San Francisco School Volunteers

CONNECTICUT

Tri-State Consortium of Schools (with New York and New Jersey)

Yale University School Development Program (Comer Process), with associated schools all across the country

Jackie Robinson Middle School, New Haven

FLORIDA

Miami Beach School System

ILLINOIS

Springfield, Illinois School District

INDIANA

Centre for Teaching and Learning, Indiana State University

IOWA

Mid-Prairie School, Kalona

West Des Moines Community School District

KANSAS

Greater Kansas City "#1 Question" Campaign

LOUISIANA

St. Martin Parish School Dstrict

MAINE

Western Maine Partnership for Educational Renewal

Maranacook Middle School

Center for Teaching and Learning, Edgecomb

School District #58, Kingfield

Falmouth School District

Skowhegan High School

MASSACHUSETTS

Concord High School, Concord (systems thinking in the classroom)

Creative Learning Exchange

MIT System Dynamics in Education Project

Carlisle Public Schools

Harvard Public Schools

Project Zero (Harvard University)

Acton-Boxborough Regional High School

MIT Sloan School of Management

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Leadership Education Project

Springfield School District

Murdoch Middle School Public Charter School, Chelmsford

Minuteman Regional High School, Lexington

MISSOURI

Regional Professional Development Center, St. Louis

Clayton School District (outside St. Louis)

Danforth Foundation Superintendent’s Forum

University City School System

MONTANA

Bozeman School District

NEW JERSEY

Ho-Ho-Kus School District

Ridgewood, New Jersey School District

NEW YORK

Pelham School District, Westchester County

District 2, Manhattan

North Salem School District, Westchester County

New York University Dept. of Psychology

OHIO

Dayton School District

Talawanda School System, Oxford

Miami University Schools of Architecture and Educational Leadership

Miami University Institute for Educational Renewal

Madeira High School (near Cincinnati)

Jefferson High School, Dayton

Peaslee Neighborhood Center, Cincinnati

OREGON

Portland Public Schools

LaSalle High School, Milwaukee, OR

The Change Institute

Corvallis School District

Creswell Middle School

PENNSYLVANIA

University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center

TENNESSEE

Memphis City School District

TEXAS

The "Austin Project"

Austin Child Care Council Community Action Network

VERMONT

Trinity College

Champlain Valley School District

VIRGINIA

Bowling Park Elementary, Norfolk

OUTSIDE U.S.

Friesgasse School, Vienna

Specialised Equestrian Training College, Bray, Ireland

Singapore Ministry of Education (and all schools in Singapore)

Children’s Television Workshop in Israel and Palestine

UNICEF in Nepal

Colombia Children’s Movement for Peace