Evaluating the effectiveness of using the Baldrige Criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of schools. Schools like businesses need to determine how effective they are in meeting their stated mission.
Using the Baldrige Criteria to Evaluate Schools
So often these days people want to see business practices brought over to the educational system and implemented. While there are many fine examples of well-run businesses quickly changing just in time to capitalize on the next new thing and becoming very successful. There are also examples of businesses resisting change that would have been detrimental. What we don't see are the dozens or hundreds of businesses that fail. They failed because they tried to capitalize on the next new thing, but it wasn't or they resisted change when they shouldn't have. (notable exceptions might be GM and Chrysler). As Tim Holt says,
The US Dep’t of Commerce says that in 2008, 627,200 businesses opened in the US. In that same year 595,600 closed. Statistically speaking, that is almost very close to every business that opens, one closes. That is the “business model” at work. I wonder what would happen if 1 out of every two schools in the US had to close because we couldn’t “attract customers?”
There should be a worry about using a system created for a business in the education world. It may be a perfectly great system when used for it's intended purpose, but a complete failure when used in education. With that thought we can examine the Baldrige model and see if it might have some use in education. The Baldrige criteria recommend examining seven categories: leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and results. Leadership: Examining leadership should always be a given when evaluating an organization. Baldrige focuses a lot of their total points on leadership. They emphasize communication, values, focus, workforce learning, and sustainability. While these are fine attributes to measure there is no mention of what is the most important aspect of educational leadership; building a shared vision. As Thomas Sergiovanni said in Leadership as stewardship, “the effectiveness of a leader lies in his ability to make activity meaningful for these in his role set-not to change behavior but to give others a sense of understanding what they are doing,” (p. 91)
Strategic planning: In businesses strategic planning revolves around leveraging advantages to increase marketshare. It's all about building a competitive advantage. In education strategic planning revolves around consistently meeting high expectations. Identifying strengths and weaknesses are good first steps when the goal is collaboration and not competition the focus is on repairing weaknesses and not minimizing them. Customer focus:There are no customers in education. One of the points made by Peter Vail in his essay, students not customers, makes the point.
The student's active, continual participation in the educational process is required for it to have the value the student wants it to have. Many businesses, on the other hand, actually minimize the amount of work the customer is going to have to do to realize the product or service's benefits.
Schools do fill a need, but in many cases the need is something many students don't realize they have. It can be difficult to engage students, build relationships, and serve their needs when the primary stakeholders don't agree on the need. According to Baldrige “Customer engagement” includes retention and loyalty, … willingness to make an effort to choose and remain with your education organization.. and actively advocate for. (p. 13) In the readings so far for “effective leadership” focus has meant keeping the shared vision forefront in the minds of the stakeholders. Customer has never been mentioned. Measurement, analysis, and Knowledge management: Data in business and education is very important. Finding effective data is paramount, but just as important is using that data effectively. Examining the process for how a school or business finds data, reviews the data, and uses the data to guide improvement is very similar for both business and schools. Baldrige also emphasizes management of data, an often overlooked aspect of data collection. Having data and knowing what it means is useless unless it helps guide the people who need it most. Workforce focus: Baldrige asks a businesses to determine the factors of engagement and allow for the workforce developmental opportunities. Education should also ask how well engages the educational staff is, but in education this is the main focus of the leadership. In business leadership may be more focused on managing the people education tends to be more focused on creating a common goal. Keeping the workforce focused in business is a separate from leadership, in education it is leadership. Process Management:How do you design your work systems?How do you design, manage, and improve your key organizational work processes? These are great questions to ask. When designing a business process management will focus on creating a system that will automatically fill every reasonable need of the customer with as little input from the workforce as necessary. When needs are filled automatically they can be quantified and refined. This will bring down costs and increase quality. Some education reform models do focus on the process, creating rigid formulas for education to follow. Other education reforms go in the opposite direction and create open processes based on quality parameters. Allowing for the workforce to modify the product to fit individual needs. This focus on customization is often found in businesses that focus on luxury items. Results:The Baldrige Criteria puts the majority of point value on results. 100 points on learning and improvement in learning results compared to competitors, 70 points on student satisfaction, compared to competitors, another 70 points on budget and marketshare, 70 points towards workforce development and engagement, 70 points on improving the organizations effectiveness, and 70 points on leadership results, accomplishment of plans, safety, legal compliance, fulfillment of responsibility, and support of communities. In business it is acceptable to compare your results to competitors. As long as your business is doing better than your competitors you are improving. This is unacceptable in education. Schools should meet a high level of expectations, or at least be working towards meeting those expectations, to be considered a success. With a focus on collaboration and not competition the importance of each aspect of Results changes somewhat, but much is still the same. The Baldrige Criteria is a good starting point for evaluation of a quality school, but it isn't an evaluation of a school. It is an evaluation of a business. The important criteria for businesses and schools are similar (as can be seen in the chart on the next page), but what constitutes quality in those areas is different. Would this be an effective tool to evaluate a school or school reform. Probably not. It has the makings of a good evaluation tool, but it needs to be modified to be specifically geared toward the education world.
References Baldrige National Quality Program. (2009). Education Criteria for Performance Excellence. Gaithersburg, MD: The National Institute of Standards and Technology. Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) Standards for advanced programs in educational leadership for principals, superintendents, curriculum directors, and supervisors. (2002, January). Retrieved August 14, 2010, from www.npbea.org/ELCC/ELCCStandards%20_5-02.pdf Holt, T. (2010, June 26). Adopting the business model: opinion [Web log]. Retrieved August 14, 010 from http://web.me.com/timholt/Intended_Consequenses/Intended_Consequences_v._2.0/Entries/2010/6/26_Adopting_The_Business_Model__Opinion.html#comment_BA866729_0128_1000_ECF8_CCB517166B1E Inc, Jossey-Bass, & Fullan, Michael. (2007). The Jossey-bass reader on educational leadership. San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub. National educational technology standards for administrators. (2009). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education. Vail, P (2000). Students not customers. Retrieved August 14, 2010 from http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rsleeth/NotCustomers.html
Using the Baldrige Criteria to Evaluate Schools
Brendan Murphy
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Evaluating the effectiveness of using the Baldrige Criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of schools. Schools like businesses need to determine how effective they are in meeting their stated mission.Using the Baldrige Criteria to Evaluate Schools
So often these days people want to see business practices brought over to the educational system and implemented. While there are many fine examples of well-run businesses quickly changing just in time to capitalize on the next new thing and becoming very successful. There are also examples of businesses resisting change that would have been detrimental. What we don't see are the dozens or hundreds of businesses that fail. They failed because they tried to capitalize on the next new thing, but it wasn't or they resisted change when they shouldn't have. (notable exceptions might be GM and Chrysler).As Tim Holt says,
- The US Dep’t of Commerce says that in 2008, 627,200 businesses opened in the US. In that same year 595,600 closed. Statistically speaking, that is almost very close to every business that opens, one closes. That is the “business model” at work. I wonder what would happen if 1 out of every two schools in the US had to close because we couldn’t “attract customers?”
There should be a worry about using a system created for a business in the education world. It may be a perfectly great system when used for it's intended purpose, but a complete failure when used in education.With that thought we can examine the Baldrige model and see if it might have some use in education. The Baldrige criteria recommend examining seven categories: leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and results.
Leadership: Examining leadership should always be a given when evaluating an organization. Baldrige focuses a lot of their total points on leadership. They emphasize communication, values, focus, workforce learning, and sustainability. While these are fine attributes to measure there is no mention of what is the most important aspect of educational leadership; building a shared vision. As Thomas Sergiovanni said in Leadership as stewardship, “the effectiveness of a leader lies in his ability to make activity meaningful for these in his role set-not to change behavior but to give others a sense of understanding what they are doing,” (p. 91)
Strategic planning: In businesses strategic planning revolves around leveraging advantages to increase marketshare. It's all about building a competitive advantage. In education strategic planning revolves around consistently meeting high expectations. Identifying strengths and weaknesses are good first steps when the goal is collaboration and not competition the focus is on repairing weaknesses and not minimizing them.
Customer focus:There are no customers in education. One of the points made by Peter Vail in his essay, students not customers, makes the point.
- The student's active, continual participation in the educational process is required for it to have the value the student wants it to have. Many businesses, on the other hand, actually minimize the amount of work the customer is going to have to do to realize the product or service's benefits.
Schools do fill a need, but in many cases the need is something many students don't realize they have. It can be difficult to engage students, build relationships, and serve their needs when the primary stakeholders don't agree on the need. According to Baldrige “Customer engagement” includes retention and loyalty, … willingness to make an effort to choose and remain with your education organization.. and actively advocate for. (p. 13) In the readings so far for “effective leadership” focus has meant keeping the shared vision forefront in the minds of the stakeholders. Customer has never been mentioned.Measurement, analysis, and Knowledge management: Data in business and education is very important. Finding effective data is paramount, but just as important is using that data effectively. Examining the process for how a school or business finds data, reviews the data, and uses the data to guide improvement is very similar for both business and schools. Baldrige also emphasizes management of data, an often overlooked aspect of data collection. Having data and knowing what it means is useless unless it helps guide the people who need it most.
Workforce focus: Baldrige asks a businesses to determine the factors of engagement and allow for the workforce developmental opportunities. Education should also ask how well engages the educational staff is, but in education this is the main focus of the leadership. In business leadership may be more focused on managing the people education tends to be more focused on creating a common goal. Keeping the workforce focused in business is a separate from leadership, in education it is leadership.
Process Management: How do you design your work systems? How do you design, manage, and improve your key organizational work processes? These are great questions to ask. When designing a business process management will focus on creating a system that will automatically fill every reasonable need of the customer with as little input from the workforce as necessary. When needs are filled automatically they can be quantified and refined. This will bring down costs and increase quality. Some education reform models do focus on the process, creating rigid formulas for education to follow. Other education reforms go in the opposite direction and create open processes based on quality parameters. Allowing for the workforce to modify the product to fit individual needs. This focus on customization is often found in businesses that focus on luxury items.
Results: The Baldrige Criteria puts the majority of point value on results. 100 points on learning and improvement in learning results compared to competitors, 70 points on student satisfaction, compared to competitors, another 70 points on budget and marketshare, 70 points towards workforce development and engagement, 70 points on improving the organizations effectiveness, and 70 points on leadership results, accomplishment of plans, safety, legal compliance, fulfillment of responsibility, and support of communities.
In business it is acceptable to compare your results to competitors. As long as your business is doing better than your competitors you are improving. This is unacceptable in education. Schools should meet a high level of expectations, or at least be working towards meeting those expectations, to be considered a success. With a focus on collaboration and not competition the importance of each aspect of Results changes somewhat, but much is still the same.
The Baldrige Criteria is a good starting point for evaluation of a quality school, but it isn't an evaluation of a school. It is an evaluation of a business. The important criteria for businesses and schools are similar (as can be seen in the chart on the next page), but what constitutes quality in those areas is different.
Would this be an effective tool to evaluate a school or school reform. Probably not. It has the makings of a good evaluation tool, but it needs to be modified to be specifically geared toward the education world.
References
Baldrige National Quality Program. (2009). Education Criteria for Performance Excellence.
Gaithersburg, MD: The National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) Standards for advanced programs in
educational leadership for principals, superintendents, curriculum directors, and
supervisors. (2002, January). Retrieved August 14, 2010, from
www.npbea.org/ELCC/ELCCStandards%20_5-02.pdf
Holt, T. (2010, June 26). Adopting the business model: opinion [Web log]. Retrieved August 14, 010 from http://web.me.com/timholt/Intended_Consequenses/Intended_Consequences_v._2.0/Entries/2010/6/26_Adopting_The_Business_Model__Opinion.html#comment_BA866729_0128_1000_ECF8_CCB517166B1E
Inc, Jossey-Bass, & Fullan, Michael. (2007). The Jossey-bass reader on educational
leadership. San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub.
National educational technology standards for administrators. (2009). Eugene, OR:
International Society for Technology in Education.
Vail, P (2000). Students not customers. Retrieved August 14, 2010 from http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rsleeth/NotCustomers.html