Baldrige 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 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…

What 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…

What 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…

Improving Processes through Observation

When you come across a story that involves process improvement in both education and healthcare at the same time, you have to share it.

The education part is the Executive Master of Public Administration: Concentration for Nurse Leaders program at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. (Let’s see you fit that on a business card.) For their Capstone project, the six people in the program decided to analyze how much time nurses spend getting the equipment they need to get their jobs done.

They carefully observed nursing staff at New-York Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center. They wrote down how much time nurses spent with patients. They photographed rooms after patients were discharged. They watched what nurses did when they weren’t with patients and they discovered that nurses had to get supplies for each patient from a central storeroom. It wasn’t a quick trip and it took them away from patients, which meant nurses tended to get everything they thought they might need to avoid return trips. Once supplies are brought to a patient’s room, they must be used or thrown away. If they forgot something or needed more supplies, nurses had to return to the central storeroom. They were often interrupted on their way to and from the storeroom, which increased the risk of error.

From a process management perspective, this process is fraught with waste, from unnecessary supplies being thrown away to long trips to…