Olentangy Local Schools

The Hedgehog: Core of Greatness

The “Good to Great” book by Jim Collins is a staple resource when organizations seek to improve their brand or model. Ohio’s Olentangy Local School District serves over 18,000 students and is a national top 1% GREAT school district, as measured by The Washington Post and U.S. News & World. In 2015, all three of Olentangy Local School District high schools were ranked in Ohio’s top ten. The natural question, “what is it that they are doing?”

In 2015 Olentangy Local School District saw all three of their high schools ranked in Ohio’s top ten best schools list.

Jim Collins lists the 4 stages organizations typically master in their quest for greatness:

1. Disciplined People
2. Disciplined Thought
3. Disciplined Action
4. Build Greatness To Last

What makes Olentangy Local Schools a great organization is their remarkable ability to master stage two, disciplined thought. Typically, people would misunderstand this concept as “like minded drone” syndrome with no deviance for originality. Their level of disciplined thought is actually the opposite. The Olentangy Local School District’s leadership team and teachers appear to strongly practice a discipline of innovative behavior, coupled with the “Hedgehog concept.” Olentangy’s Executive Director of Academics, Mark Raiff, states “our schools have a simple strategic concept that they pursue with relentless effort,” by constantly asking the following:

1. What can we be the best in the world at?
2. What are we deeply passionate about?
3. What best drives our resource engine?

“Teachers have the autonomy to create an individualized professional growth experience.”-Mark Raiff, Executive Director of Academics/Chief Academic Officer, Olentangy Local School District

With this culture of greatness, the school district is providing each teacher with the opportunity to capture, curate and share their unique perspective of “The Hedgehog Concept” in action. Teachers have the opportunity to digitally capture what they are good at, passionate about, and how they apply resource to meet their goals. The school district invested in their teachers by offering “Tell Your Story” as an OPDA course, listed as PERSONALIZED PD. With this personalized professional development experience, individual teachers will be able to digitally capture and portfolio the specific classroom practices that they are the best at. In a Hedgehog culture, Personalized PD is not another thing to do or a checklist “fad of the month” program. Educators will have the opportunity to efficiently consolidate various state and district initiatives into a streamlined one-step approach, in order to build upon what they are best at. Teachers will be able to use their portfolio evidence for National Board Certification, Ohio Teacher Evaluation Plan, Resident Educator Program, Continuous Improvement Process, Community Engagement and more. Additionally, upon completing the TWO-DAYS of self-directed professional learning, teachers will earn graduate credit toward licensure renewal and salary advancement.

“Tell Your Story” is helping the Olentangy Local School District gain clarity about what practices they are good at and how to continue to build upon innovation. If your district or school seeks to know what they are good at, simply ask the passionate practitioners “what are we doing well?” Most importantly, offer the opportunity for educators to digitally capture those great moments.

“Building a K-12 systemic improvement culture requires empowering teachers. Our district recognizes that teachers want and need the autonomy to lead their growth.” -Jack Fette, OLSD Director of Curriculum and Instruction.