Altering the Structure and Culture Of American Public Schools Companies that have grown beyond the failed mass-production model have developed continuously improving work systems. Mr. Wilms points out that the same principles are found in lesson study, an innovation that he believes holds great promise for improving the public schools, which were also formed in the mold of mass production. by Wellford W. Wilms

EVERY URBAN school district in America, it seems, is struggling to improve student achievement, and every politician, it seems, has a solution. Improving teacher training, reducing class size, lengthening school days, testing students, and tying teachers' salaries to test scores are just a few proposals. While some of these politically driven reforms may help, most will fail to have any impact in the classroom. Why? Because they are little more than symbolic political gestures designed to win the confidence of voters. Most have little to do with the problem of how to improve the quality of teaching and children's learning. To make matters worse, most reforms are mandated by distant legislatures and school boards without consulting teachers and administrators, those closest to the scene of the action. Not surprisingly, teachers and administrators either ignore the mandates or comply minimally, safe in the knowledge that, in time, the reforms will "blow over."

The result? Teachers continue to work in isolation from one another, and administrators remain disconnected from what goes on in the classroom. In addition, adversarial relationships between teacher unions and administrators continue to thwart most serious attempts to improve what goes on in schools. What is to be done?

A promising strategy that may truly alter how teachers teach and children learn is called "lesson study," an idea that has recently migrated to the U.S. from Japan.1 Teachers work collaboratively as they develop lessons. Then they teach the lessons while observing one another to see how well their lessons work. This feedback enables teachers to make a series of refinements. Lesson study is a continuous cycle of classroom problem solving -- a Plan, Do, Check, Act process -- that is carried out by teachers themselves. The approach is routinely used in Japan to make improvements in teaching, and it is growing in popularity in the United States. For instance, the San Mateo/Foster City District in Northern California is experimenting with the concept, as are schools in Connecticut and New Jersey. In Los Angeles, school superintendent Roy Romer, frustrated with the ineffectiveness of past reforms, recently announced plans to implement lesson study in all 125 secondary schools in the district.

The implications of using such a process to improve American public schools are profound. As is the case with other reforms, however, the success or failure of lesson study hinges on the details of the way it is implemented.

In this article I show how lesson study holds the promise of fundamentally redesigning the process of teaching. But adopting such a change is a Herculean task because it requires replacing an antiquated mass-production system that education inherited from industry a century ago and that today paralyzes the public schools. Some leading companies and their unions have successfully redesigned their production systems to create greater cooperation between employees and management. For instance, Toyota's lean production system, which helped to resuscitate America's automobile industry in the 1980s, is built on the same principles of continuous improvement as is lesson study. Might lesson study in the same way revive public education at the opening of the 21st century? Perhaps. But it will require a fundamental redesign of the public schools. Let me explain why.

Background

The past quarter century of failed reforms leaves little doubt that public schools are extraordinarily resistant to change. The adversarial relations between labor and management that beleaguer large urban school districts are among the most formidable obstacles. Conflicts between teacher unions on the one hand and school boards and administrators on the other over issues of pay and working conditions have made it all but impossible to build consensus about how to redesign the schools' outdated systems of instruction.

It is not surprising that even the most reform-minded superinten-dents soon grow frustrated. They are easily seduced into the belief that they can bypass the union and force reforms down through layers of bureaucracy onto the schools. Adding to the pressure for fast change is the fact that big-city superintendents keep their jobs for an average of less than three years. The result has been to develop a generation of administrators who seize on "quick fixes" -- short-term initiatives that may win board members' approval. But most of these reforms rarely alter how teachers teach and children learn.

The problem is disquietingly reminiscent of those faced by the American automobile industry. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, once models of American know-how, had by the late 1980s become bureaucratic, complacent, and out of touch with their customers. They also became mired in conflict with their unions, further hampering their ability to remain competitive.2

Mass production (and the industrial culture it produced) was a brilliant innovation for its time. But by the late 20th century, it had become a liability for companies that had to survive in competitive world markets. The answer for the automobile industry's malaise came from Toyota's system of "lean production," which restored product quality and the industry's worldwide competitiveness.3 Toyota's contribution was a disciplined production system that engaged employees in continuously improving the quality of the product. Companies also found that to embrace Toyota's system and to build commitment among their employees, they had to forge an alliance with their labor unions and replace the conflict-ridden labor/ management relations with cooperative ones. The parallel with American public education is evident.

The Long Shadow of Mass Production

Working inside some of America's leading companies has convinced me that, before any deeper cultural changes can be made, the core work processes must first be redesigned. Why? Because work processes determine how employees spend their time and influence how employees think about the company and one another. Daily work routines, prescribed by work systems, have a powerful shaping influence on an organization's underlying culture.

American companies were originally formed in the mold of mass production, in which labor was specialized and employees were controlled by a rigid authority structure. This structure produced a dysfunctional industrial culture -- a pervasive belief that quality was someone else's problem and that workers couldn't trust management. By the 1980s, Japanese competitors had penetrated the American automobile and electronics markets, and it had became painfully clear that mass production and the underlying culture that supported it had become grave liabilities. While many American companies were destroyed by the competition, others learned how to design flexible work systems that depended on their employees' knowledge.

The similarity to education is compelling. The schools were originally shaped in the image of American industry. Turn-of-the-century education reformer Ellwood Cubberley said it starkly: "Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life."4 Not surprisingly, between 1900 and 1930 school administrators began to regard themselves as managers rather than educators. They learned the principles of scientific management so that their schools could accommodate the huge numbers of immigrant children at low cost.5 The idea reached its peak (or its nadir, depending on one's point of view) in 1908 in Gary, Indiana, where "platoon" schools became the rage. These schools were organized much like factories. They ran on tight schedules, and students moved from room to room in orderly fashion after each bell. The idea of running schools like factories spread, but not everyone was pleased. Some, like one mother who withdrew her child from the Detroit schools, wrote that the long lines of children "looked to me like nothing so much as the lines of uncompleted Ford cars in the factory, moving always on, with a screw put in or a burr tightened as they pass -- standardized, mechanical, pitiful."6

Not surprisingly, as mass production and scientific management shaped the public schools, they began to exhibit many of the same characteristics that would later cripple American industry. The schools became bureaucratic, departmentalized, and impersonal, and they became increasingly isolated from the larger environment. Authority followed a rigid hierarchical form, flowing from top to bottom. Education codes and procedures spelled out exactly how teachers were to be trained and certified. In time, the schools became inflexible, absorbed with internal processes, and removed from the very parents and students they were supposed to serve.7 This highly rationalized and specialized system of work created an underlying adversarial "us-against-them" culture -- just as it had done in the industrial sector -- a culture that pitted teachers and their unions and administrators against one another.

Most schools still operate along the same lines as the old mass-production facilities. Bells ring, students move through a fragmented curriculum, and the hours fly by. The quality of student learning is measured by narrow tests, and, increasingly, teachers' salaries and school resources are being tied to test scores. Teachers have little time or incentive to work together as professionals in the service of children's learning. Most teachers cope by simply walling themselves off inside their own classrooms and teaching the best that they know how. How can the schools be restructured to produce a high-quality education?

Implications for Education

Companies that have progressed beyond mass production have learned the necessity of first changing their work systems before any deeper cultural change is possible. They have also shown that, while top executives must lead the changes, they must also build employee commitment from the bottom up. No lasting change is possible without the active cooperation of employees.

I have selected two examples from my research that illustrate these points.8 Be assured that I am not suggesting that education copy industry, and I am certainly not suggesting an "industrial model" of education. But, despite the differences between companies and schools, there is much to be learned from the successes and failures of both parties because they share a common organizational design.

Failure of Douglas Aircraft. Consider the case of Douglas Aircraft. The story of this once thriving company that is now extinct could be the story of American public education. In 1989 McDonnell Douglas executives discovered that the company's huge subsidiary in Long Beach, California, was losing money on every airplane it sold. They decided to try to save it with a massive infusion of training in Total Quality Management (TQM) principles that would infuse employees with a new philosophy of cooperation, teamwork, mutual respect, and trust. John McDonnell, chairman of McDonnell Douglas, was certain that by training employees in TQM, management and the union would produce a "new culture" in which mistrust and conflict would no longer rule. But, as events would show, McDonnell's effort to transform Douglas Aircraft by merely retraining the work force failed.

While most employees said they valued the training, it was of little use to them back on the job because the complex design and production system remained unchanged. Employees felt that they had little control over the system, and so they took little responsibility for product quality. Aircraft continued to be designed and built the same way they had been in 1958. The old culture persisted. Despite hours of training in building trust and mutual respect -- topics that employees endorsed -- the adversarial culture formed by Douglas' mass-production system retained its paralyzing grip because the daily routines of work remained untouched. Today, Douglas Aircraft has vanished, acquired by Boeing Aircraft in 1999. The once huge 53,000-employee work force has been reduced to a few thousand, and it is now fighting for its survival.

Breakthrough at NUMMI. The turnaround of General Motors' conflict-ridden Fremont, California, plant offers a more hopeful model, from which much can be learned. In 1982 GM executives decided that the plant -- once a showcase of automation -- was unmanageable, and they closed it. Two years later, as a joint venture with Toyota, it reemerged as NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.), and it quickly became the model for the U.S. auto industry. NUMMI's managers were a mix of Japanese and Americans, but its production workers were drawn from the same pool of angry GM-Fremont workers who had lost their jobs when the plant closed. Skeptics claimed that NUMMI would never produce a single car. But in just a few years it was producing cars that equaled the quality of those produced in Toyota's own plants in Japan.9 And its employees -- the same men and women who were laid off from the old GM plant -- were unusually satisfied with the quality of their work lives. How was such a transformation possible?

The answer is that NUMMI learned from Toyota how to redesign its production system to produce high-quality cars. Because Toyota's "lean production" system required that employees work interdependently and cooperatively and treat one another with respect, it is not surprising that, little by little, a new culture that valued interdependence, cooperation, and mutual respect began to emerge.

The system can be best described as a "Plan, Do, Check, Act" improvement process. Employees are taught how to plan work together, to try out new ideas, to check them, and then to make improvements. Every employee assumes responsibility for doing his or her job correctly the first time and not passing defects along to the next worker. Employees are also expected to stop the assembly line if they spot a problem, so that it can be corrected at its source and thus won't happen again. The effect is to engage employees in a process of continuous improvement. Employee responsibility is essential to the system's success. Workers are considered important assets, and they are expected to contribute ideas about how their jobs can best be done.

With these two examples in mind, let us now consider how lessons from Douglas Aircraft and NUMMI might translate into ways to improve the quality of public education.

The Promise of Lesson Study

Toyota's production system was a blend of ideas borrowed initially from American industrialist Henry Ford and expanded after World War II to include new processes to control quality. These ideas came principally from American quality experts W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran, who developed the conceptual framework for what would later become TQM. The result was a production system whose power lay in the frugal way it harmonized work and human effort. The system enabled Japan to become a world leader in producing high-quality products. In the 1980s, the Toyota production system began to revolutionize American industry and point the way beyond mass production.

In much the same way, educational ideas have been borrowed and adapted between the two countries. The notion of "whole-class instruction" that makes lesson study possible is often said to characterize Japanese education. But an American, M. M. Scott, introduced the idea to the Japanese in 1872. Scott went to Japan and demonstrated new teaching techniques, including what would become Japanese lesson study, at the first teacher training school in Tokyo. Scott advised the Ministry of Education how to put together teacher guidebooks and how to teach to the books, assess results, and refine methods.10 After the U.S. occupation, Japan adopted many American-style educational practices: extracurricular activities, school events, and small-group methods of teaching. Japanese educators began to directly link the small-group model of the corporate structure with schools, focusing on efficiency and cooperation.

Lesson study is used today in Japan as a strategy for planned educational change.11 The Third International Mathematics and Science Study showed that Japan's students scored near the top of all countries that were studied, while American students scored the equivalent of an entire grade level lower. Japan's use of a sparse curriculum that gives teachers enough guidance but also provides room for improvement is thought to be key to Japan's educational success. Researchers Catherine Lewis and Ineko Tsuchida observe:

Japanese teachers' professional development, which focuses on shared observation and discussion of actual classroom lessons . . . enables them to compare approaches for teaching the shared curriculum. . . . Given a frugal, shared curriculum, teachers can devote time to honing effective approaches and examples, not wading through massive textbooks to figure out what's really important to teach.12

Adapted for American schools, lesson study may prove to be a potent reform because it alters the system of teaching at the schoolhouse level, while building support and commitment among teachers. It could also bring about badly needed improvements in labor/management relations because it requires teachers and administrators to work together cooperatively.

Local variants of lesson study hold promise for truly penetrating the schools and reforming their core processes of teaching and learning just as "lean production" revolutionized American industry. And because lesson study depends on the active engagement of teachers working collaboratively, supported by the administration, it also holds promise for improving the often adversarial and alienating culture within the schools.

Some Recent Experience with Lesson Study in the U.S.

Two significant projects, both of which were tested in Los Angeles, demonstrate lesson study's enormous potential. A close examination reveals how the approach enables teachers to collaborate to produce high-quality lessons. It also explains how lesson study naturally breaks down the remnants of mass production that isolate teachers.

The first example is a training program for teachers that was run by the Los Angeles teacher union. This program shows why teachers value the lesson study process and illustrates the obstacles that must be removed if it is to be expanded. When the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)13 offered training in lesson study, teachers from all levels of experience and from a wide variety of Los Angeles public schools volunteered to learn how to collaborate to develop standards-based language arts curricula and how to assess student mastery. The work was supported by a federal grant to the UTLA. The lesson study and design methods developed by the union can be easily adapted to any discipline, from mathematics to science and social studies. Lessons that met a certain standard of quality were published to acknowledge teachers' work, but also to provide a library of high-quality lessons on which other teachers could draw. Teachers who had already been trained by the union trained 2,000 new teachers in the district's internship program for novice teachers.

In 2001 a colleague and I conducted an evaluation of the last 30 teachers who were trained by the union. Our purpose was to identify what the teachers thought about the process and what impact they thought lesson study had on student learning. We observed classes, interviewed teachers, and conducted a survey of the participants.14 I summarize some of our findings below.

Value of collaboration. We found that, above all, teachers valued collaborating with one another. One teacher quipped, "Usually, it's close your door, shut your blinds." Many teachers pointed out that one of the great values was the structure of the program itself. Because the lesson study program was based on standards, it enabled teachers to start with an objective and work backward, creating a natural and necessary link between teaching and assessment. One teacher explained:

We start with the big picture, we start with the final assessment, we know what we want to accomplish at the end, and then we figure out how we can make the kids successful in achieving that. So we start with the final assessment, then we create a unit and a curriculum based on that, and then we give assessments along the way to see what we still have to cover, and the result is, in my opinion, the best work I've ever seen from my kids.

Improving teaching quality. All teachers agreed that being trained in the process improved their understanding of the content standards. Ninety-six percent agreed that the model enabled them to improve the curriculum while they taught, and 92% reported that it enabled them to use their creativity and to feel confident. One teacher commented:

It made my teaching better. First of all, it gave me a sense of empowerment. You know, I was really in control. Somebody said to me, "Well, you're good, you know what you're doing, go ahead and create it." And also the fact that it was mine: I knew what I wanted, I knew what my goals were, I knew how I wanted to get there. And everything was just easier and clearer and made more sense than just opening a manual and reading what somebody else told me to do.

Eighty-eight percent of the teachers reported that the process made them better teachers and eight in 10 said that they felt more like professionals. One teacher elaborated:

I'm not this authoritarian figure standing up there teaching at them as much. I have to do the planning and the organizing, and I have to know what my goals and expectations are. So much of it is the kids doing it. I give the directions, step back, and become the facilitator. The kids are the ones who are actually doing the thinking, the activity, the interacting, and then I'm just bringing them back at the end to do some of the self-evaluation and self-perception.

Teachers were clear in their belief that lesson study helped all their students learn. Many teachers said that they were convinced lesson study could be a powerful tool in reaching the lowest-performing students. One teacher confirmed this effect.

I saw the largest growth in my really lower kids. My good writers remained good writers. My advanced students moved up incrementally. But the kids who couldn't put a sentence together at the beginning made the most progress. I was blown away by it. That's where it had the value in my grade.

Leadership from the union and the district. Teachers were unanimous in their support for expanding lesson study. But most of them recognized that if lesson study were to be diffused and sustained, more time would have to be devoted to planning outside the classroom. In addition, financial incentives would have to be made available to teachers.

Because of the substantial obstacles facing lesson study, most teachers recognized the need for cooperation between the district and the union. One teacher commented:

I think that the union can do a lot to help the district in determining which tests are the most useful to give. If the district will look at the union in a more collaborative way, it's the best step that could be taken. If you get these two parties to work together, it would just make so much sense and simplify everything.

Many credited the union with the high quality of the program. A second-grade teacher recalled, "When I found out this was out of the union, I thought to myself, 'Oh, no wonder it's so good. No wonder it makes sense. No wonder it's different from everything else that's crammed down our throats.'"

But the teachers warned that, if the program were perceived as being sponsored solely by the union, without district support, its credibility would suffer. One teacher said:

I feel like people will look at it differently because it is from the union and not from the district. Somehow there needs to be more coming from the district to legitimize it, help people realize how valuable it is. Otherwise, people ask, "If it's so great, why isn't the district supporting it?"

Next, we turn to the second example of a lesson study project, this one initiated by a group of science teachers in a low-performing Los Angeles middle school. This project provides an unusual window into what happens when a grassroots reform runs into the demands of a system that devalues teacher participation but rewards compliance with outdated requirements. Ultimately, the teachers' efforts to work together to develop lessons ran directly into the antiquated mass-production system whose methods isolate teachers from one another and thwart such a "bottom-up" reform.

With support from a federal grant, teachers initiated a lesson study project in 2000. Thirteen science teachers worked in smaller grade-based teams to plan and teach new science units. The teachers observed one another and noted student reactions. Based on these observations, they continued to meet to discuss necessary changes. I followed the development of the science department's experiment closely, observing and documenting the planning and teaching in the classroom as the new lessons were taught and later evaluated and revised.

General benefits. Just as teachers voiced support for lesson study in the union-led project, all of the teachers who took part in the project at this middle school had nothing but praise for the process. One teacher explained that it made her feel so much more like a professional:

The process is such a learning experience. I'd recommend it to anybody. It's such an amazing thing to be able to educate yourself with a small group. And now we're redoing it. We're ripping the whole thing apart. It extends beyond the class. This whole experience makes you look at yourself as a teacher.

Another teacher noted that lesson study focuses attention on the lesson and does not criticize the teacher. He said:

We've only observed one lesson so far, but I think focusing on the lesson is a positive thing. It serves two purposes. It not only improves the lesson and the teaching, but it will improve us as teachers because in the dialogue afterwards it gives us time to reflect on our own methods.

Because of the teacher shortage in Los Angeles, more than one-fourth of all teachers are hired with emergency credentials, and they are typically assigned to low-performing schools such as the one in this study. But teachers in the school felt that lesson study had a special value for these new and underprepared teachers. One veteran teacher observed:

The biggest problem that we have, unlike our Japanese counterparts, is that we have a tremendous number of inexperienced teachers that just need the basics before they can do what we're doing. We could use our time better by having the experienced teachers work with the inexperienced teachers to make sure that they get up to speed as soon as possible. Once they have a firm grasp, then we can start going into units and then break them down to lesson plans and move them right along.

Use of time. As teachers tried to implement lesson study, they quickly discovered that it often conflicted with the school's existing systems that were originally designed to support a factory model of education. For instance, most teachers became aware that much of their time that could have been used to work together was largely wasted. They realized that time set aside for department meetings was used for administrative announcements that could have been simply posted for teachers to read. At each meeting, the chair would perfunctorily read announcements about the schedule and new district policies, while uninterested teachers talked to one another. As teachers cobbled together existing bits of time to work with one another, they became especially annoyed with activities that they felt wasted their time. One teacher pointed out:

The common planning time the school is using right now isn't being used very wisely. We all end up socializing, talking about school things, you know? Whereas that time could be very wisely used if we were to sit down and plan lessons like we did the other time and agree, "Okay, next time we meet to discuss and talk about this."

Student discipline. Another surprising obstacle emerged in the form of a lack of student discipline. This school, according to the teachers, has an unusually large number of students who misbehave. Indeed, it has a reputation, they said, for a sixth grade that is out of control. One teacher told me, "Kids know when they come to school here to expect it." One way teachers counteract the lack of order (and reduce the chances that students may rebel against academic rigor) is by simplifying their lessons. In a meeting of the science department, the teachers acknowledged that they "dumb down" their lessons by scripting them to give students easy answers. A veteran teacher explained, "When we give a tough lesson, the students want answers. Students just want to know, 'So what's the answer?' It's not going to be easy getting away from the scripted way of teaching."

Another way teachers deal with the lack of discipline is by trying to be "cool." Not being cool is to invite verbal (and sometimes physical) encounters with unruly students. A teacher remarked, "We tend to be 'cool' to get respect. Otherwise missiles fly!"

Most teachers recognized that lesson study could be an important antidote to the lack of classroom order by allowing teachers to do their best and to stop scripting lessons and worrying about being cool. One teacher said, "Lesson plans should be at the core. That's what enhances learning and adds to classroom control." Another teacher explained how 30 to 35 children in the school are removed from class each day because of unruly behavior. A note is given to each child to take home, informing parents that the child must attend a detention period. But, according to the teachers, only five or six children actually show up for their punishment. One teacher said:

I've seen many of the notes in kids' backpacks or wadded up on the ground. You know they never made it home to the parents. Worse, there are no consequences for the kids that don't go to detention. It's simply disregarded. In time, it's become an expectation that, if you're sent to detention, you don't necessarily go, and the kids who do show up are the ones that don't need it.

One teacher summarized the hopeless feeling that pervaded the school, saying, "Well, let's all agree that management of the school sucks. Let's just do what we can." As the teachers discussed the reasons for the lack of discipline and its impact on academic quality, the consensus was that, while an assistant principal is formally responsible for the disciplinary system, the principal avoids enforcing discipline so as not to anger parents.

Administrative support. I conducted this research some months before Superintendent Roy Romer announced his intention to implement lesson study in the secondary schools of Los Angeles. Teachers acknowledged that, if the administration were to take a more active role in the development of lesson study, many of the obstacles could be cleared. And they were certain that, without administrative support at the top, any such effort would probably founder.

But teachers also knew that leadership for lesson study had to attract broad support from the ranks of teachers if the practice were to take root and survive. One teacher who helped develop the project observed, "I think getting volunteers for starters the way we did it, starting it small, was definitely the right way to go, because you don't want to force it on teachers." Another noted, "It has to start small. For it to fly on the campus, it needs to come from us and not from administration." She elaborated:

If the administration walked in and said, "You guys are going to do it," I think people would automatically, just because it came from the principal, feel like, "I'm not doing that. Screw them!" I know it's not fair, but the teachers would throw out the baby with the bath water!

Teachers said they were skeptical of reforms led by administrators because they usually fail. One teacher commented:

It's like a swinging pendulum, the fad-of-the-month syndrome. One month it's "phonics," and the next it's "learning walks." But nothing changes. You just can't mandate changes, especially about teaching. Teachers interpret this as "You tell me to give up my way of teaching. That invalidates me, and I'll sabotage you."

One of the root problems, teachers say, is that administrators are generally uninvolved in what goes on in the classroom. One teacher noted that, although she technically reports to an administrator, none of them really know what's happening in the classroom. She elaborated:

The trouble is that we need the administration's support for something like lesson study, but most administrators, at least at this school, don't know what's going on in the classrooms. They think they know it all, but they don't -- and they don't ask us.

This case adds important insights about what happens when the teachers themselves develop lesson study in a grassroots movement. Despite their unanimous support for the process, we can see how the leftover artifacts of the mass-production model, from which public schools were formed, interfere with implementing a new system of work that is controlled by the employees. Codified procedures found at many schools -- such as the use of time for planning, the methods of handling student discipline, and the maintaining of a sharp boundary between teachers and administrators -- contribute to the difficulty of reforming schools at this essential level.

Conclusions

The results of my research have led me to offer four main conclusions.

1. Lesson study holds intrinsic value for teachers. All of the evidence shows how teachers are drawn to lesson study when they play a leading role in implementing it. Teachers value the collaboration that breaks down the isolation that so many of them experience in their classrooms. Lesson study helps teachers connect standards with assessments and curriculum. In the end, they find it satisfying because it makes them feel more like professionals. And most teachers are confident that lesson study helps children learn, including students who are academically marginal. But there is little doubt that, as with the diffusion of most innovations, lesson study has to be reinvented by the teachers themselves in school after school if their wisdom is to be tapped and if they are to become committed to the idea.

2. Lesson study holds the potential to radically alter the structure and culture of public schools. Most educators think of lesson study as a "soft" intervention, a form of professional development. Most believe that, if teachers are trained in lesson study, the process will diffuse on its own. What this viewpoint fails to grasp is that lesson study is a threat to the entrenched interests and habitual patterns of behavior found in most schools. It requires that teachers cease working in isolation and instead find time to work together -- to plan, to teach, to observe, and to improve collaboratively. Lesson study also requires that classrooms be orderly so that student learning can be the top priority. If this approach is to succeed, the roles of administrators must change from enforcing rules and regulations to being facilitators, clearing the way for innovation in the classrooms. Such cooperative relationships must also be reflected at the top of the district as well, among board members, administrators, and union leaders. But historically, schools have proved to be remarkably unyielding to changes of this magnitude.

Our analysis of NUMMI and Douglas Aircraft makes clear that, by itself, training cannot overcome the power of an institution to resist change. The daily routines of work life must also be altered because they produce the beliefs and assumptions that ultimately become part of an organization's culture. For instance, NUMMI was able to succeed because Toyota's lean production system required that employees trust and respect one another and that labor and management cooperate for the larger good. This imperative enabled the system to work and ultimately to begin to develop a new culture of beliefs and assumptions that would support it. On the other hand, John McDonnell believed that, simply by training his employees, a new and cooperative culture would somehow emerge. But it failed to do so, because no one could figure out how to alter Douglas Aircraft's complex work system that continued to pit employees against one another and labor against management.

Years of hands-on research in companies, unions, and schools have convinced me that to think of lesson study as professional development is a mistake that will lead educators into the same trap that doomed efforts at Douglas Aircraft. What we need is a means to break down the work systems and cultural beliefs left over from a time when schools were considered factories. Altering the structure and culture of American public education is a massive undertaking that requires more than simply retraining teachers. It must be approached on many fronts simultaneously and sustained over many years if it is to endure.

3. Leading change from the top, middle, and bottom. If lesson study is to be implemented successfully, it must be led from the top levels of school districts (school boards and superintendents), but it also must be supported at the middle level by principals, who can support their teachers directly. Most important, it must also be developed from the bottom up -- by teachers who are closest to the processes of teaching and learning. Without teacher support, lesson study will surely become just one more administrative directive -- directives that teachers have become so adept at deflecting.

Lesson study is a process that must be aligned and supported from the top of the organization to the bottom. There is a danger that school administrators who are under increasing pressure to produce results will succumb to the temptation to treat lesson study as a program that can be measured solely by the output of completed lessons. Toyota's system taught American auto executives that the process is everything. I recall NUMMI's Japanese president, Kan Higashi, stopping the assembly line and telling employees, "I don't care if you build five cars a day, you must first learn to build them correctly. You must have a process that works. Only then can we increase output."

4. Altering adversarial labor relations. If lesson study becomes firmly rooted in American school districts, it will surely require changes in the traditional adversarial labor relations because such a process cannot be supported without cooperation from both sides of the bargaining table. Top-level leadership is critical, but so is the active commitment of teachers.

Here is where labor/management cooperation becomes essential. School board members, superintendents, and union leaders must come to realize that they have a great deal in common. This seemingly trite conclusion stems from a close observation of organizations that have succeeded. NUMMI's management and the United Auto Workers had to discover that, unless they cooperated, the joint venture would fail. This realization drove both sides to slowly begin to change their ideas about each other -- because they had to. There is little question in my mind that, if lesson study is going to be successfully implemented, it will induce a similar change in labor relations so that one side will not sabotage the reform efforts of the other.

We have had 25 years of reform with little to show for it. Yet improving public education continues to be at the top of Americans' list of priorities. Lesson study offers a way to finally penetrate the schools -- a strategy to alter the antiquated methods of teaching and to improve labor relations. Will public school and union leaders rise to the challenge? Will they work together for the good of all? Or will lesson study become just one more failed reform?

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