Plan to Plan

Once I was involved in a strategic planning process where we were instructed to spend time preparing to create our plan. Our facilitator told us to "plan to plan." The idea was to get all of our ducks in a row before we tried to create a solid plan - make sure we had all of the right people on board, knew our strengths and weaknesses, carefully evaluated pertinent data, etc. In the end, it was the process of planning itself that our team would benefit from and hopefully the plan would be pretty good too.

I recently read something written by the Cato Institute titled "Why Government Planning Always Fails." Here's a significant excerpt: "Everybody plans. We plan our workdays, we plan our careers, we plan for retirement. But private plans are flexible and we happily change them when new information arises. In contrast, as soon as a government plan is written, people who benefit from the plan form special interest groups to ensure that the plan does not change, no matter how costly it proves to be to society as a whole."

Doesn't that sound like education? Take a look at our K-12 education system - it has one plan for educating all children. Now that the plan has been put into place the teachers' unions, administrators, and school boards are all vying to make sure the system isn't changed no matter what the consequence is to the kids. Some public schools are doing the right things for the right reasons - the KIDS not the plan. But others, are so consumed by the plan that they have forgotten their purpose.

Changing the plan and thoroughly rocking the educational boat could bring about the big reforms that our educational system desperately needs. We need to create plans that are living and breathing - plans that are flexible and adaptive. Educators should be our number one innovators. They should be encouraged to think critically and creatively. Most of all once the plan is changed it should never become more important than the children.