Education
Education Needs Baldrige
Based on results, the most effective way to ensure that no child is left behind would be to mandate integrating the Baldrige model at every public school system. Increase school funding to support the initiative, say one full-time person for every 10,000 students in a district, and you would get exponentially better achievement, satisfaction, and cost control. As an example, for my city’s school district, spending $50,000 on a Baldrige leader, out of a total budget of more than $30 million, would offer a huge return on investment.
Two Baldrige Award-winning districts prove my point. Jenks Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received the Baldrige Award in 2005. It has continued to use the Baldrige model to pursue excellence. According to the Jenks Gazette, “the 2011 graduates of Jenks High School had an average composite (ACT) score of 23.9, which is far above both state and national averages of 20.7 and 21.2, respectively. The composite ACT score for graduating students at JHS has increased every year for the past five years,” or since it won the Baldrige Award. Dr. Kirby Lehman, superintendent of Jenks Public Schools, noted that “these scores are even more impressive when considering over 80% of all graduates at Jenks took the exam, compared to the national average of 49%.”
Eight of out ten Jenks students are taking the ACT, compared to the national average of just five out of ten, yet JHS is performing significantly better than average. That’s tangible evidence of the difference integrating Baldrige can make.
Here’s more…
22Sep2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and the Assault on Our Schools
The effort to weaken teachers’ unions in Wisconsin, which was supposedly about balancing a budget until the bill that passed limited collective bargaining without doing a thing to cut costs, raises a bigger question for all American schools that is not going to go away: Why should we spend more money on education when the money we’ve been spending is not producing results?
According to the Broad Foundation, a national entrepreneurial philanthropy dedicated to transforming urban public education, 68% of American 8th graders can’t read at grade level (and most will never catch up) and 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year. American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science compared to students in 30 industrialized countries. The national high school graduation rate is 70%.
Some argue that the problem is that we have not been spending enough on education. World-class school systems in other countries spend more on teacher salaries and provide more time for staff development than most systems in the U.S., and they produce better results (i.e., Korea, Finland, Singapore, China, New Zealand, Netherlands, and others). I just read that teachers in Singapore are paid more than doctors and lawyers.
That’s not going to happen in this country. Most people think we’re already spending too much on education, especially for the results we’re getting. For American schools to succeed, they will have to do more with less. They will have to provide social and economic support for students who do not get it at home. They will have…
14Mar2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat Are the Qualities of an Educated Person?
One of the Baldrige Criteria’s core values is a focus on results. If you look at the results of colleges and K-12 school districts that have won the Baldrige Award, you will find impressive results in graduation rates and improvements in core subject areas such as reading and math, but you will find scant evidence that our schools and colleges are producing educated students.
What are the qualities of an educated person? Certainly, proficiency in math and science and the ability to comprehend what you are reading are important qualities, but these are the basics. If you have these qualities and nothing else—and there is ample evidence that too many Americans lack even this minimum knowledge—you could not pass as an educated person.
I agree with Seth Godin, who said “we need to teach students how to think critically, solve problems, work together, and be creative.” To me, those are the qualities of an educated person, especially in the 21st century. You only have to look at the percentage of people in this country who deny global warming and evolution and support Sarah Palin to witness our national deficiency of critical thinking.
I know from experience that teaching critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and creativity are almost nonexistent at most high schools. I hoped the situation improved in college. It turns out that it doesn’t.
New York University sociologist Richard Arum followed 2,322 students at 24 U.S. colleges from 2005 to 2009. He found that 45% of students made no significant improvement in their…
19Jan2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Makes a School Successful?
This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the 2009 results for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The Executive Summary, available here, begins with a table that compares the performance of countries and economies in the study. Eight countries and three economies were statistically significantly above the OECD average in reading, math, and science: Shanghai-China, Korea, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, and Belgium. The United States scored average in reading and science and below average in math.
The Executive Summary is one of several documents available at the OECD site that interpret the data. As the husband of a high-school librarian and a participant in regular dinner-table discussions about education and how to improve it, I was struck by a few points in the OECD’s analysis:
- “In all countries, students who enjoy reading the most perform significantly better than students who enjoy reading the least. Practicing reading by reading for enjoyment is most closely associated with better outcomes when it is accompanied by high levels of critical thinking and strategic learning.” My wife has long preached reading for enjoyment, but that’s just one part of this equation. I would argue that very few American schools help their students achieve high levels of critical thinking, as evidenced by how easily millions of people are manipulated by the lies and distortions of media and political windbags.
- “Students who say that they begin the learning process by figuring out what they need to learn, then ensure that…
A Role Model for Public Education
If you work for a K-12 school or are involved as a parent, employer, or other stakeholder, you will want to see what Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is doing. MCPS, a 2010 Baldrige Award recipient, is easily the largest public school system to earn the Award with 22,000 employees and 144,000 students. It proves that big school systems are capable of producing world-class educational results:
- Reading performance used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress increased for all subgroups from 2007 to 2010.
- “Seven Keys to College Readiness,” which are seven measurable academic goals from kindergarten through high school, constitute a college-readiness trajectory in which each key builds on the previous one.
- In 2009, 64% of MCPS graduates took at least one Advanced Placement (AP) exam, compared to 27% nationally and 40% in Maryland. Of these, 49% scored “3” or higher compared to 16% nationally and 25% in Maryland.
- MCPS has lowered its class size to 13.4 students per teacher compared to 14.1 for the state and 15.4 for the nation.
- Parent satisfaction from 2005 to 2010 ranged from 79.7% to 86.7%, compared to a comparative national average of 54%.
MCPS provides a wealth of online resources on its Baldrige home page (click here). You can read its Award-winning Baldrige application (PDF). You can watch a video that describes how the school system uses data, involves stakeholders, and constantly learns to improve performance (click here). You can read its arguments for why we should use Baldrige in our schools, the first of which is that “it is…
6Dec2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMeasuring Teacher Performance
A recent report that the Los Angeles public schools will start publishing test scores by individual teachers has touched of a storm of protest. The so-called value-added gauges are intended to provide data on how well teachers improve the test scores of their students over the course of a school year.
An academic report by the Economic Policy Institute argues that “the nonrandom assignment of students to classrooms and schools—and the wide variation in students’ experiences at home and at school—mean that teachers cannot be accurately judged against one another by their students’ test scores, even when efforts are made to control for student characteristics in statistical models.”
Although that makes a lot of sense, I understand where the push for value-added gauges comes from. As a parent, I’ve never felt that the effectiveness of my children’s teachers has been evaluated in any meaningful way. Average and incompetent teachers return, year after year, to inflict their ineptness on their students. Lacking any reportable measures of competence, they are unaccountable for their performance except as part of an aggregate school’s overall performance. Teachers need to be accountable for the quality of their work, but measuring that quality has been elusive.
The EPI report offers alternatives that rely less on test scores such as “systematic observation protocols with well-developed, research-based criteria to examine teaching,” but, as the report observes, “American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers.” And this is only getting worse as shrinking budgets cut funds needed for…
1Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBest-Practice Teaching
Doug Lemov has written a book about a surefire way to improve education: Develop better teachers. Lemov is a former principal and teacher who is now a consultant to school districts. He looked at Stanford research that showed that in one year, the top 5% of teachers can raise students one-and-a-half grade levels, while the bottom 5% put their kids a half-grade behind. And then he asked: “What if we could make all teachers a little bit better?” (“Made to Stick: Watch the Game Film,” Dan Heath and Chip Heath, FastCompany, June 1, 2010)
You could start by firing the incompetent 5% across the U.S. but then you would need 185,000 new teachers to replace them. So Lemov asked another question: “What if we could make all teachers a little better?”
Sounds great, but what makes some teachers better? He decided he had better find out. He started with a great teacher in New Jersey, observing and videotaping him in action. He found another teacher and repeated the process, and then another, and another. Five years later he had recorded and analyzed hundreds of hours of videotape. He put his findings in a book: Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.
His techniques are concrete, specific, and actionable. Here’s an example:
8Jun2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued“When you want them to follow your directions, stand still. If you’re walking around passing out papers, it looks like the directions are no more important than all of the other things you’re doing. Show that your…
