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 evidence. Montgomery County Public Schools in suburban Washington, D.C., received the Baldrige Award in 2010. It is Maryland’s largest school system, and it is at the forefront of revolutionizing education standards in America. The Washington Post recently described MCPS’s four-year process to create “Curriculum 2.0,” which “designates more time for such subjects as science, art and social studies, and it weaves together lessons across disciplines, based on research that shows students learn more when they are making connections.” The new curriculum also addresses areas that I’ve long thought were weaknesses of U.S. public schools: the critical thinking and creative skills that employers value — and our democracy needs.

MCPS provides a wealth of information on its Web site about how to integrate the Baldrige model. To dig deeper into what it means to be a Baldrige school district, read its Award-winning application here.

MCPS and Jenks are education leaders because of Baldrige. Their results, and their continued leadership, prove that Baldrige works. At a time when education in America is floundering, when schools are forced to do more with less, MCPS and Jenks and the other education Baldrige Award winners demonstrate how any district of any size in any part of the country can excel.

According to the Broad Foundation, a national entrepreneurial philanthropy dedicated to transforming urban public education, 68% of American 8^th 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 25^th in math and 21^st 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 to teach to the tests mandated by No Child Left Behind. Individual teachers will have to help 30 students or more in a classroom make progress despite significant differences in intelligence, emotional state, economic disadvantages, parent apathy, and other pressures. It is a very difficult job for average pay in the face of daily attacks, such as those by the misguided governor of Wisconsin, that only make the job harder.

It’s too bad more states and school systems haven’t discovered Baldrige. School systems that integrate Baldrige deliver the kinds of results we all want from our public schools. Case in point: Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, which won the Baldrige Award in 2010.

In an interview for the American Association of School Administrators (available here), Superintendent Jerry Weast notes that, since 1999, the number of students receiving free and reduced-priced meals in his district has increased by more than 57% while the number of students who don’t speak English as their first language has more than doubled. Yet despite these changes—changes that are common across the country—MCPS has the highest graduation rate among the nation’s large school districts. From 2007 to 2010 it improved Adequate Yearly Progress in reading for all subgroups, lowered its class sizes, increased parent satisfaction to 87%, and raised employee satisfaction above 90%.

So it can be done, and Baldrige provides a proven path. To see what Baldrige Award-winning school districts have accomplished, check out their profiles and application summaries here. To learn more about MCPS, click on these articles:

• A Role Model for Public Education
• Integrating Baldrige Big Time

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 critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills during their first two years of college while 36% showed no significant gains in these thinking skills after four years. Considering that most students likely enter college with poor critical thinking, reasoning, and writing skills, that’s a disheartening result.

It’s hard to have an intelligent debate about serious issues at the national or state levels when a large percent of the populace cannot think critically, has no idea how to solve these problems, can’t function as part of a team, and thinks a creative idea is whatever Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh tells them. If these are the qualities of an educated person, and if our high schools and colleges are failing to develop those qualities, and if very little is being done to remedy this situation, other very important questions remain: Who really cares and what can we do about it?

To read more about education and Baldrige, click on these articles:

• Higher Education at a Crossroads
• Best-Practice Teaching
• A Role Model for Public Education
• Inspiration for a New Education System
• Reinventing Education with Baldrige

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 they understand what they read, figure out which concepts they have not fully grasped, try to remember the most important points in a text and look for additional clarifying information when they do not understand something they have read, tend to perform better on the PISA reading scale than those who do not.” These students have learned how to learn, which, like critical thinking, is a critical skill for the 21^st century.

• “Across OECD countries, a student from a more socio-economically advantaged background (among the top one seventh) outperforms a student from an average background by 38 score points, or about one year’s worth of education, in reading.” That gap is even greater between advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Executive Summary lists a few of the things that, based on the PISA data, make a school successful. The full 308-page report on best resources, policies, and practices is available here.

What makes a school successful?

• Successful school systems—those that perform above average and show below-average socio-economic inequalities—provide all students, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, with similar opportunities to learn.
• Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies, but these school systems do not necessarily allow schools to compete for enrollment.
• After accounting for the socio-economic and demographic profiles of students and schools, students in OECD countries who attend private schools show performance that is similar to that of students enrolled in public schools.
• School systems considered successful tend to prioritize teachers’ pay over smaller classes.
• In more than half of all OECD countries, over 94% of 15-year-old students reported that they had attended pre-primary school for at least some time.
• Schools with better disciplinary climates, more positive behavior among teachers and better teacher-student relations tend to achieve higher scores in reading.

To read more about successful schools in the U.S., click on these articles:

• A Role Model for Public Education
• Integrating Baldrige Big Time
• Lessons from High-Performing K-12 Schools
• Reinventing Education with Baldrige
• Baldrige and K-12: Not for the Faint-Hearted

• 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 the best current research in what it takes to make organizations get better.” MCPS even includes a chart that correlates the Baldrige Criteria with research on effective schools. You can also read what Baldrige means to staff, students, parents, and leadership.

Unlike most sites that provide one summary page of information, the MCPS site offers multiple links on its pages that help you understand what MCPS is doing, how it is doing it, and how your school might be able to use it.

To read more about MCPS, click here.

To read more about Baldrige and education, click on these articles:

• Reinventing Education with Baldrige
• Integrating Baldrige Big Time
• Education: PDSA + Quality Tools = AYP
• Baldrige and K-12: Not for the Faint-Hearted

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 teacher development.

If nothing else, the value-added gauges will force schools and teachers’ unions to come up with better measures of teacher quality. Without that motivation, no measures will be found because nobody welcomes performance measures. I don’t know how many companies I’ve worked with where one department or another claims that what they do cannot be measured (and often, it’s marketing). Well, it can. It may not be easy. Your first attempts to measure performance may fail. But if you don’t persist, if you choose not to measure teacher performance, how can education at your school possibly improve?

To read more about quality education, click on these articles:

• Best-Practice Teaching
• School Districts Saving Money
• Lessons from High-Performing K-12 Schools
• Inspiration for a New Education System
• Reinventing Education with Baldrige
• Baldrige and K-12: Not for the Faint-Hearted

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:

“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 directions matter. Stand still. They’ll respond.”

The article describes two other techniques that are in the book: (1) star teachers circulate around the whole space of their classrooms while less experienced teachers rarely leave the space between the blackboard and the first row of desks; and, (2) great teachers start class before the opening bell rings with a “Do Now” assignment on the board. As Lemov notes, making the first five minutes of class productive time instead of transition time is like adding 15 extra class periods to the school year.

The Baldrige model values identifying, sharing, and implementing best practices. Lemov’s book is all about best-practice teaching.

To read more about best practices in education, click on these articles:

• Lessons from High-Performing K-12 Schools
• A New Bottom Line for Schools – and the Rest of Us
• Inspiration for a New Education System
• Reinventing Education with Baldrige
• Baldrige and K-12: Not for the Faint-Hearted