Principle 12: Remove Barriers to Joy in Work & Learning

Principle 12: Remove barriers that rob educators and students of their right to joy in work and learning. This means, inter alia, working to abolish the system of grading student performance, the annual or merit rating of staff, and the Management by Objective of schools and school systems. The responsibility of all educational leaders must change from sheer numbers to quality.

Principle 11: Eliminate Arbitrary Numerical Targets

Principle 11: Eliminate arbitrary numerical targets in the form of work standards that prescribe quotas for teachers and numerical goals for people in management. Substitute leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity.

Principle 3: Cease Dependence on Inspection to Achieve Quality

In January and February, I outlined six common management myths. The point of those two posts was to help education systems leaders see what not to do. I’m now turning to a set of principles that can be used by these same leaders to guide their transformation work. Last month, I introduced the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation. In this post I’ll describe the third principle, Cease Dependence on Inspection to Achieve Quality. It is worth noting that the 14 Principles are mutually supporting, so it is important to understand all of them rather than studying them in isolation. An in-depth discussion of the Principles for Transformation can be found in Chapter 3 of my recently released book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools.

Goal Setting is Often an Act of Desperation, Part II

January is a popular month to set new goals, so I decided to kick-off this year with a four-part series on this very topic. In Part I of the series, I proposed four conditions that organizations should understand prior to setting a goal.

Organizations should understand the capability of the system or process under study.
Organizations should understand variation within the system or process under study.
Organizations should understand if the system or process under study is stable.
Organizations should have a logical answer to the question, “By what method?”

Absent an understanding of these conditions, goals are too often “arbitrary and capricious.”

Goal Setting is Often an Act of Desperation, Part I

At a recent district leadership team meeting, I put the following quote up on a slide: “Goal setting is often an act of desperation.”1 We are in the midst of updating our strategic plan at United Schools Network, so the purpose of the quote was to start a discussion on healthy goal-setting and to provide a framework for any goal-setting the team would do as a part of this process. I think the typical reaction to the quote is something like the following: “But I thought goal-setting was something highly effective people and organizations do?” I would argue however, that this is rarely the case, be it in organizations or accountability systems, and only can be true if a number of conditions are met during the process.

Data Has No Meaning Apart from Their Context

In the K-12 education sector, one of the primary uses of data is in state accountability systems. Many states now issue district and school report cards typically based on various performance metrics such as proficiency rates on standardized tests, absenteeism rates, and college and career readiness indicators. Unfortunately though, as James Leonard stated so eloquently in The New Philosophy for K-12 Education:

Absent an understanding of the type of variation present, any discussion of accountability is a burlesque!