The Excellent Education System

Using Six Sigma to Transform Schools

Daniel Bloom

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351356244
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operations
• Index: Business

The Excellent Education System: Using Six Sigma to Transform Schools helps you discover and understand the technique of evidence-based learning and operations through which the modern school satisfies the need to increase the flow of successful students through the educational system from Kindergarten through Grade 12.

This book explains, in clear terms, what educational excellence means and the principles of process improvement. In addition, it gives your an introduction to the Six Sigma methodology. Included in the discussion are case studies of educational professionals who have found a new world centered in the evidence-based educational processes. These processes lead to many examples of dramatic turnarounds in some failing schools.

The author presents strategies and actions that you can use to improve schools such as those presented in the case studies. The Appendices provide a wide variety of tactical resources for implementation.

Chapter 1

What Do We Mean by Educational Excellence?

This third installment in the Achieving Excellence through Six Sigma series is still concerned with the language of business. Like the previous titles,¹ it is crucial that we begin by establishing as much as possible a definitive idea of what we believe the definition of excellence is. Further, we need to establish what we mean then by the term educational excellence. You are a corporate executive being transferred to a new location, and one of the first questions you propose is “where are the excellent schools?” The problem is, what do you mean by the concept excellent schools?

Have you ever watched a jaywalking segment on The Tonight Show? I am not referring to the act of crossing the street in the middle of the block. I am referring to Jay Leno going out on the streets of Hollywood and asking everyday people a specific question on any number of topics. Suffice to say that some of the answers are in the range from correct to bizarre. Try a jaywalking type exercise, but ask the people you approach to define the concept of excellence. I guarantee that you will receive a wide variety of answers as excellence is in the eyes of the beholder. Responses will be guided by the biases and cultural upbringing that have shaped your growth as a human being. But it does point out a fact of human nature. In almost everything we do, our ultimate goal is to reach as close to a state of perfection as is possible. If in doubt, consider the examples in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1States of perfection.

You have lived in this global environment, and as such your environment has generated certain feelings toward what is excellent and what is not. Your environment pressures you to answer the question in a particular way or fashion. These biases influence everything you do and say. From a personal perspective, each person is going to have a concept in mind that defines excellence.

Our schools are no different. In education, every school or school system is trying to reach the optimum performance level for their stakeholders. The difficulty is that they are serving dual constituents. Each will have their own definition of excellence. The student population is seeking a curriculum that meets their needs for the future. Does the curriculum empower them to be able to obtain the employment they want for the post-graduation era? The taxpayers are seeking a school system which is not overspending their tax dollars. They both are seeking the ability to say that we excel at what we do. The difficulty, however, is that the definition of excellence is allusive in nature.

In supporting what I am suggesting, open your Web browser and Google the “definition of excellence,” and the results will tell you the difficulty we have in arriving at a concrete definition. A Google search for the “definition of excellence” returns 54,300,000 results. If I change the search parameters to “defining excellence,” the number drops to 49,800,000. If I take it one step further and Google “defining educational excellence,” it returns 3,580,000 results. The dilemma is that being confronted with this wide assortment of definitions, as individuals, we have a hard time determining a single definition for excellence that everyone can settle upon. One way to make that determination is to recognize that there are certain conditions that must be present for us to even begin to talk of excellence.

I discussed previously about the wide variety of definitions found on Google. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary,² one of the oldest and most well-known dictionaries, defines excellence as being a noun, which shows an excellent or valuable quality. It also means setting a high standard. So, if we follow the logic from Merriam-Webster, we begin to see that excellence means that we need to demonstrate that we are operating at a level perceived to be the best of class compared to our peers in terms of what our responsibility levels are supposed to be.

Another discussion of the definition of excellence takes us to the Moral Learning blog.³ The owner of the blog indicates he found a great biblical verse that in his perspective defines excellence. He turned to the book of Genesis 26:13, which states

“The man became great. He continued becoming greater until he was exceedingly great.”

The first characteristic of the term excellence is that there is no finishing or end point. It is not finite in time. Like what we will be discussing later in the book, we need to continuously strive to be the best at what we do. We need to strive to reach that point where we can tell the world that we excel at what we do. This means that as conditions change, so do the conditions required to reach a point of excellence. It calls for us to reach to new levels as the conditions change.

Jeffrey Spear, president of Studio Spear, in an article for the American Marketing Association entitled “Defining Excellence,”⁴ suggested that trying to reach this point of consensus is totally subjective, adding to our difficulties in our endeavors. He also suggests that in a real sense excellence is something we have created to attach value to the things we create and validate our choices.

Reportedly, if you visit the US Military Academy at West Point, you will find engraved on the wall of the one of the buildings the definition shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2Anonymous quote.

The quote suggests that to reach a point of excellence we have to invest more of ourselves so as to reach the best indicated by our ultimate goal. The West Point definition suggests that excellence is a set of behaviors or actions that manifest themselves in the way we are perceived, by those who influence us. It suggests that to achieve a state of excellence we are required to change from the path of least resistance (the left fork I discussed in the introduction to this book) to more involvement in the outcomes (the right fork in the same discussion). The changes are required both as an individual and as an educational institution. It further suggests that to achieve a state of excellence you have to be an active participant in the change process.

Obviously, I could go on forever talking about a wide variety of definitions for the term excellence and try to create a generic definition in the long run; however, it would not resolve the central question of this text, which is how do we reach the near perfection level of best in class? Understand that every process within your school has its hiccups, and it is the hidden ones that come back to bite. Excellence can be achieved when our organizational resources are directed toward a series of actions that include the following.

The Acquisition and Integration of Passionate and Culturally Aligned Human Capital Assets That Are Engaged and Aligned with the School’s Goals

Excellence needs to be imbedded in the total organization. From an educational perspective, you need the involvement of the teachers in the classroom as well as the support staff. To achieve our goal of educational excellence, your organization needs to actively seek out individuals who are passionate and aligned with these educational goals. In addition, these acquired human capital assets must actively participate in a cross-functional team approach in resolving the issues regarding less-than-stellar operations of the school. The efforts of the school personnel must be aligned with the mission of the school as they deliver the products and services to the stakeholders.

Using Tools and Processes to Advance the Educational Mission

Whether they are on a formal basis or created ad hoc, every function within the organization has its share of tools and the processes that are utilized to reportedly make the silo function run more efficiently. The difficulty has been that these tools and processes are not based on a complete understanding of the overall educational organization.

To reach a state of educational excellence, the tools and processes that are utilized in the school need to be completely aligned with the total school. The instructional staff and the administration need to understand what the ultimate goals of the educational system are and how their tools and processes assist the school in reaching the organization’s mission, strategy, and goals.

The Focus on Elements That Are Strategic, Transactional, and Compliance Issues

Instructional and administrative sides of the coin have a role within the educational organization, whether we are talking about the new view or the old one, but the question is, what is the focus of that effort? If it is centered on educational excellence, we need to ...