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Making an Impact

September 11, 2012

Here’s a provocative statement by David Gergen, professor of public policy and director of the Center for Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a frequent political analyst for CNN:  “The nonprofits making the greatest impacts these days are entrepreneurial, adaptive, outward-looking, and sometimes a little messy.”

I like that, and I think using these four features or criteria to evaluate the MHSAA now and in the mid-range future would be good for those we serve.

  • Are we entrepreneurial?  How could we be more so?

  • Are we adaptive?  Are we flexible in how we do things?

  • Are we outward-looking?  Are we impacting school sports broadly and deeply?  Does the impact have staying power?  Are schools better because of what we do?  Are communities stronger for our doing it?

  • Are we sometimes a little messy?

I suspect that if we are the first three – entrepreneurial, adaptive and outward-looking – then messiness is a natural byproduct.  There will be starts and stops, failures before successes, changes.  There will be disagreements and compromises.

I suspect that we will have to tolerate a little more messiness if we are to move forward, even faster than we have, and if we are to have impact, even greater than we have.

Hit Again

April 1, 2013

Education reform needs a Mulligan.  A do-over.  The opportunity to go back to “Go” and start over.  For example . . .

  • Back to a time before the attack on neighborhood schools closed those schools and contributed to neighborhood collapse and community disconnect.

  • Before suburban schools were allowed to prey on and profit from an urban school’s misfortunes.

  • Before large buses lumbered down narrow residential lanes to transport our littlest learners from the shadow of their local school to another across town, where all the other littlest students were gathered for more “cost-effective” education.

  • Before schools shuffled off low-achieving students to alternative schools in order to elevate their ranking on standardized test scores.

  • Before teachers based their lessons more on test preparation than learning.

  • Before education re-segregated through specialized charter schools with non-inclusive curricula.

  • Before public schools were barred from beginning their instructional days before Labor Day, or whenever their community thought it best for the education of its students.

  • Back to a time when pedagogy more than politics planned and delivered education.

 Let’s tee it up and hit again.