Even though we already know the best way to improve instruction, we persist in pursuing strategies that have repeatedly failed. Mr. Schmoker urges us to break free of our addiction to strategic planning and largescale reform.
In his response to William Cook and Bruce Joyce, Mr. Schmoker acknowledges common ground but sticks to his position that the best way to improve instruction is to develop true learning communities in which teachers together examine and adjust their practices. BY MIKE SCHMOKER I N HIS generous response to my February 2004 Kappan article, William Cook agrees that "strategic planning," as the concept has actually been implemented, has undeniably hurt schools and that, in fact, "the situation may be even worse" than I described. While we agree on this point, I'm not as sure, as Cook avers, that the harm has resulted solely from poor implementation or bastardization of the concept; Henry Mintzberg, Tom Peters, and others convince me that the notion itself is the problem. Cook argues that what I am criticizing is not real "strategic planning" but then admits that authentic strategic planning is emphatically future-oriented; this is the very element that makes At Odds Strategic Planning
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.