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...often does rapid transformation work? In 2008, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department's research arm, published a guide to turning around low-performing schools that noted that "the research base on effective strategies ... is sparse." In other words, taxpayers are betting billions of dollars on what essentially remains a crapshoot...
Duncan is undaunted. He often speaks of transforming the Education Department from the current lumbering bureaucracy that it is into an "engine of innovation" with the ability to try new things if there's a chance they will work. The system can't get any worse, he reckons, so why not reinvent? And as any scientist knows, it often takes many failed experiments to figure out what's going wrong, let alone find a solution...
That doesn't fit the model of wholesale change preferred by turnaround evangelists. But that's another lesson of school reform: half measures are often the best you can do. "There is an opportunity here to fix schools that haven't worked for a long, long time," says Ben Rayer, the chief charter-school liaison for the School District of Philadelphia and former COO of Mastery. "The money and the desire to do so are there now." It's easy to be paralyzed by the enormousness of the task, he adds. "But man, you just gotta start...
...franchisees are a particularly important constituency, since they pay for the equipment to produce any new menu item. They often have ideas for Coudreaut's team to appraise - the Angus burgers were co-developed with a group of California franchisees - and they often push back against odd-sounding creations like one of Coudreaut's failures, a breakfast Snack Wrap made with a crepe that held vanilla cream cheese and fruit. ("Why it didn't work is because we served it cold," Coudreaut says. "We serve hot food. Even our salads, we serve warm chicken on top.") The testing process...
...failures among senior officers is particularly profound in cases of extreme malfeasance and war crimes. Whether it is the behavior of prison guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or less publicized - but sadly numerous - cases of murder and brutality committed by soldiers and Marines, the military has punished, often severely, those who committed crimes. But it has spent little energy examining the leadership and command failures that created a climate in which such crimes could occur in the first place. (See pictures of the Fort Hood shootings...