The Year Two Diagnostic
The Year Two Diagnostic
Six patterns of quiet reversion in school design, and what to do about each one.
Beau Johnson. A field tool for people who support schools after the launch.
Why this exists
Launching a new school model attracts attention and funding. Year two attracts none of those things, and year two is where the design either becomes the way the building actually works or quietly reverts to what it replaced.
I built this from two sources. Between 2005 and 2026 I launched new middle and high school divisions at nine institutions across six states, then stayed long enough to watch some designs hold while others came apart. Separately, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I served as senior researcher on a qualitative study of five schools that were two to four years into a personalized learning model, where I interviewed staff and observed classrooms, then coded more than 1,000 pages of field data.
One finding runs through both. Reversion is almost never a failure of belief. Staff can usually articulate the model accurately while practicing something else entirely, and they are not being dishonest when they report that things are going well. The design gets displaced by structures that nobody revisited, such as a calendar or a grading policy. Ultimately these are solvable problems, but only if you name the structure rather than re-explaining the vision.
PATTERN 01
The Founder Gap
The people running the model are no longer the people who designed it, and the reasoning left with the authors.
WHAT YOU SEE
- Staff describe the model in slogans and cannot say why a given practice exists.
- New hires follow the letter of a practice while missing what it was for.
- Questions about the design route back to one or two long-tenured people.
- Someone says "that is just how we do it here" and no one can go further.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
The design team encoded its reasoning in conversation rather than in artifacts. Turnover is normal and expected, so a model that lives in people rather than in documents has a short half-life by construction.
ASK THE TEAM
Who here was in the room when this practice was chosen, and who has joined since?
Pick one non-negotiable in your model. Can three different people explain what problem it solves?
Moves that work
- Write the rationale, not only the practice. Every non-negotiable gets a short "why this exists" note.
- Put design reasoning into onboarding rather than into the annual retreat.
- Ask newer staff to teach the model back, then fix what they get wrong.
Moves that backfire
- Re-running the original visioning session with people who were not there.
- Treating fidelity as the problem when transmission is the problem.
PATTERN 02
Calendar Reversion
The schedule still shows the model. The time inside it now does something else.
WHAT YOU SEE
- Protected blocks exist on the master schedule and get borrowed for testing, assemblies, or coverage.
- The long block survives on paper but gets used as two short periods in practice.
- Staff report the model is working while describing a week that could not contain it.
- A staffing shortage from last spring is still shaping this year's schedule.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
The master schedule is the most contested document in any school, and it gets rebuilt annually by people solving urgent constraints rather than by people protecting a design. Furthermore, schedule decisions rarely get framed as design decisions, so nobody notices the model losing.
ASK THE TEAM
Walk me through one student's actual Tuesday. Not the schedule, the Tuesday.
Who built this year's master schedule, and what were they optimizing for?
Moves that work
- Put a design person in the room where the schedule gets built, before it gets built.
- Name the two or three time structures the model cannot survive without, then defend only those.
- Audit actual use of protected time twice a year rather than assuming it.
Moves that backfire
- Declaring blocks sacred without solving the coverage problem that keeps eating them.
- Adding a new structure when the existing one is not being honored.
PATTERN 03
Assessment Drift
Instruction changed. The report card did not, so the old model keeps winning.
WHAT YOU SEE
- Teachers run the new instruction, then grade it with the categories the old model used.
- Students ask whether the new work counts, and the honest answer is not really.
- Families evaluate the school through a transcript the model never redesigned.
- The most innovative work in the building carries the lowest stakes.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
Assessment systems are entangled with transcripts, athletic eligibility, college admissions, and state reporting, so they are the slowest thing in a school to change. Students and staff correctly read what gets graded as what the institution actually values, whatever the vision statement says.
ASK THE TEAM
Show me a report card from before the redesign and one from now. What changed?
If a student did everything the model asks and nothing else, what grade would they earn?
Moves that work
- Redesign one course's grading fully rather than every course's grading partially.
- Solve the transcript and eligibility constraints early, and do it with families in the room.
- Make the model's central work carry real weight in at least one high-stakes place.
Moves that backfire
- Adding a narrative comment on top of an unchanged grade and calling it done.
- Changing grading across the school in one year without addressing what it feeds.
PATTERN 04
The Exemplar Trap
One classroom does the model beautifully and becomes the proof. Everyone else gets quietly excused.
WHAT YOU SEE
- The same classroom hosts every visitor and every board presentation.
- Staff refer to the model as something a particular teacher does.
- That teacher carries an unsustainable load and is beginning to sound tired.
- Nobody has scheduled time to watch that classroom and steal from it.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
An exemplar lets the school demonstrate success without distributing practice, which relieves the pressure that would otherwise drive adoption. Specifically, the exemplar becomes evidence that the model works and simultaneously evidence that it requires an exceptional person, which gives everyone else permission to opt out.
ASK THE TEAM
Which classrooms do visitors see, and which ones do they not?
What does this teacher do that the model requires, and what do they do that is just them?
Moves that work
- Separate the transferable practice from the personal talent, in writing, with the exemplar's help.
- Show visitors a middle-of-the-pack classroom on purpose.
- Give the exemplar release time to coach rather than more students to teach.
Moves that backfire
- Promoting the exemplar out of the classroom and losing the practice entirely.
- Asking everyone to observe the exemplar without naming what to look for.
PATTERN 05
Improvement Theater
The improvement cycle runs on schedule. Nothing downstream of it ever changes.
WHAT YOU SEE
- The same problem appears in three consecutive cycle notes with no decision attached.
- Data meetings produce discussion, and the discussion produces another meeting.
- Staff attend the cycle faithfully and describe it as something done to them.
- No one can name a practice that changed because of last year's data.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
The cycle was adopted as a ritual rather than as a decision-making structure, usually because nobody in the room holds authority to change anything the data implicates. In contrast to a real improvement process, theater is comfortable, because it produces the appearance of rigor without the cost of a decision.
ASK THE TEAM
Name one thing this school does differently because of the improvement cycle.
When the data says stop doing something, who is allowed to say stop?
Moves that work
- Put a decision-maker in the room, or move the decision to the room.
- End every cycle with one change that has a named owner and a date.
- Shrink the scope until the team can actually act on it.
Moves that backfire
- Adding more data to a process that is not acting on the data it has.
- Retraining the team on the protocol when the protocol is not the problem.
PATTERN 06
Successor Risk
The model runs on one leader's judgment, and no one has written down what that judgment knows.
WHAT YOU SEE
- Hard calls route to one person, and staff wait rather than decide.
- No one else can list the model's non-negotiables without hedging.
- The leader's calendar is the only place the design gets protected.
- A leadership transition is discussed as a scheduling matter rather than a design risk.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
Founding leaders make hundreds of small design decisions that never get recorded, because at the time each one felt like an operational call rather than a design call. That being said, the accumulated judgment is the model, and a transition removes it in a single day.
ASK THE TEAM
If the leader left in June, what would be different in September?
Which decisions currently require this person, and which ones only feel like they do?
Moves that work
- Write the non-negotiables down and test them by having someone else apply them to a live decision.
- Distribute one category of design decision per term, on purpose, before a transition forces it.
- Document the calls that got made and the reasoning behind them, as they happen.
Moves that backfire
- Naming a successor without transferring any decision authority first.
- Producing a binder that records the practices while omitting the reasoning.