Quality In Education

In the irony of ironies, I do not know of one district that does not have some sentiment for developing lifelong learners as part of their mission statement – if they even have a mission statement.  Likewise, I do not know of but a very few districts that measure whether lifelong learning is occurring, or whether district practices have added value to its achievement.  Without measurement it becomes a trite and shallow statement of purpose, although it certainly sounds good.  And it certainly can be measured.

What the Gurus Say about Quality

The consensus among the “experts” about quality suggests that:

• You must commit to quality throughout the entire organization.
• Problems relate to the system, not the worker, and management is responsible for the system.   So attack the system rather than the employees.
• The focus must be on prevention by eliminating problems, bottlenecks, and roadblocks – and not on end-of-line inspection.
• You must identify and then satisfy both your internal and your external customers.
• You must eliminate waste.
• You must instill pride both in individual work and in teamwork.
• You must instill an atmosphere of innovation that moves you constantly toward continuous improvement.  In education we call that action research.  This is often referred to as “a blinding flash of the obvious,” but it is seldom pursued.       (Note: Many schools are improving but not nearly fast enough.  Some arguably have not improved and/or are no longer improving.  But where they are improving, the speed of improvement, not the absence of improvement, is the real issue.  The need to change and improve is occurring faster than our traditional improvement mechanisms can move us.  In many instances, we are good and getting better.  That’s not enough. 
• Success will require a clarity and constancy of purpose.  There must be a clear definition of quality that all understand and accept.
• There must be a process focus that results in identifying best practices.
• When the work of one employee passes to another, the recipient is the customer.  (The 2^nd grade teacher is the customer of the 1^st grade teacher – like it or not.  And the high school is the customer of the middle school, etc., etc.)

Total Quality Management

We really are not going to experience any great improvement in anything in which we are engaged without significantly changing our beliefs and our thinking.  This means that serious efforts at improvement will require challenging our current operational theories about what works, does not work, and why. Robert M. Grant, Rami Shani, and R. Krishnan wrote an article in the Winter/1994 issue of Sloan Management Review, titled "TQM's Challenge to Management Theory and Practice." TQM (Total Quality Management) was a popular, customer-based, quality and process improvement movement that has had lasting impact on many businesses and which is consistent with the Baldrige criteria. Some of the TQM themes are inconsistent with the way current education systems are run – TQM challenges the way things are done. Below I have transposed the general themes addressed in this article to the world of education.

Conflicts between a traditional view of management theory and the emerging one suggested by the quality principles (as represented inTQM) leads to the need for a theoretical paradigm shift.  Traditional management practice suggests that the manager's basic role is "to prevent and detect shirking by employees" and “to establish compliance with goals and implementation strategies decided upon largely outside the purview of those same employees.”

This is the same wrong-headed belief that has led to efforts at getting rid of incompetent teachers as the end-all cure for failing schools.  There certainly are weak teachers, but at no higher percentage than the individual incompetence found in other professions.  And if we did get rid of them all, as welcome as that would be, it most likely would have little impact on the more important systemic issues confronting schools today.  Quality processes require better staff selection up front.  That is where the energy focus must be.

Taken from industry, this philosophy of faulting teacher competency assumes that employees (teachers), absent strict controls, will pursue "self-interested goals."  Consequently, the fundamental role of management is "to induce agents to pursue the firm's [school’s] interests," according to Grant, Shani, and Krishnan.  They add, "The implication is that the central management problem is to devise incentives and sanctions that align employee behavior with the organization's goals."  This assumes that organizational interests and individual employee interests are predictably at odds with each other.  An understanding of quality principles suggests that the self-interests of employees and the interests of the organization are naturally aligned and need