Disruptive innovation in education: building organizational culture to create an effective network of leadership high schools

Abstract

Educating our disaffected youth is one of the longstanding challenges faced by the United States education system. New Mexico is one region where high school completion and transition into college and careers is an especially difficult path; 68.7% of young people graduated from high school in 2013 and 59% of 20-24 year-olds were employed in 2012. The New Mexico Center for School Leadership coordinates a network of Leadership High Schools that prioritizes equity and opportunity for marginalized students. These innovative charter high schools focus on building intimate relationships between students and teachers set in real-life contexts. The schools use a Project-Based Learning curriculum and are linked to local industries and communities. This Capstone utilizes disruptive innovation, network, and leadership theories to inform my strategic project, which intended to build a dynamic network of schools. Over the course of a 10-month residency, I regularly convened two schools, and designed tools and activities to contribute to their ability to learn from one another. The goal of the strategic project was to build organizational systems that promote innovation as well as high quality and relevant teaching and learning. While a relational foundation was important to the success of the strategic project, building a new culture proved to be an essential component in developing a responsive and effective network organization. Findings suggest that an organizational culture of partnership between the schools driven by shared purpose and leadership is necessary in order to sustain a level of interdependence. It is interdependence that optimizes the network’s ability to serve students with high quality education in unpredictably diverse contexts. The present Capstone provides insights into the way the New Mexico Center for School Leadership invests in developing leadership and building structures. The Center’s acuity for fostering an organizational culture that respects developmental states of learning, and unifies individuals for growth across a network of schools is noteworthy. It also suggests that organizational ambidexterity and faith in new mental models are needed in the education sector to attend to the existing quality of education while embracing the diversity of innumerable disruptive innovations in school design.