Singapore students are consistently ranked as top performers in international comparative assessments in mathematics and science. Yet the Singapore government has been quick to realize that innovation, and not high assessment scores, is what is needed to sustain their country's strong economy. As a result, Singapore's Ministry of Education is working furiously to transform their educational system by embracing principles of the knowledge management cycle to drive superior performance. Ken Stott, who directs the principal training programs at Singapore's National Institute of Education, has written a paper explaining how enabling extraordinary leaders to generate new knowledge has become the crux of principal training. Principals must become knowledge leaders, to help their schools innovate beyond best practices.
Singapore's approximately 400 schools and 25,000 teachers equate to less than 1% of the over 90,000 public schools and 3 million teachers in the U.S. Over time, organizations such as the Broad Foundation, KIPP, New Leaders for New Schools, and the NYC Leadership Academy are gradually adding outstanding principals to the leadership ranks of U.S. public schools. If these organizations were to train 5,000 principals a year (which is probably 10 times their current volume), it would take 18 years to reach all U.S. principals. To make the transformation of our monolithic public education system possible, KM is going to be critical for dissemination and application of successful innovation. School leaders in the U.S. will truly have to become knowledge leaders in all its facets, from creation to application to dissemination.
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