Education success stories such as Leadership High School in San Francisco are increasing, and foundations and education organizations are beginning to recognize the tremendous positive impact that disseminating this success can have for the public school system. School staff should not have to reinvent the wheel. Success should be used to breed more success.
Progressive school districts, charter management organizations and educational non-profits are leading the way in creating the processes and structure to disseminate best practices across public schools, both formally and informally. For example, I spoke recently with Jen Holleran from New Leaders for New Schools about how the graduates of their programs naturally become part of an informal network, as well as participate in a formal network of NLNS programs to bring alumni experiences and lessons learned back into the classroom.
Few of these organizations, however, have clearly codified their organizational knowledge to scale efficiently. KM presents a promising, yet treacherous opportunity in education to share success system-wide. Strong coordination among the different disseminators of knowledge will be critical. It is realistic to expect that sharing will not substantially increase among public schools unless a universal standard emerges. If organizations each build their own knowledge kingdom with its own set of rules, KM will have failed public education. It is in coordinated aggregation that maximal benefit will be achieved for all schools and their students.