The Bottom Line Public Schools Are Set Up to Fail
The recent National Assessment of Educational Progress exam results showing dismal reading scores for America’s 4th and 8th grade students should not be surprising. Organizational design expert Arthur W. Jones noted that “all organizations are perfectly structured to obtain the results they get.” Applied to our public schools, rather than being surprised by the mediocre results we’re seeing throughout the country, it’s what we should expect. If we want to improve the performance of our schools, which is crucial to our nation’s economic health and security, we need to change the structure of the educational system.
All successful systems have several key elements:
Leadership
Successful organizations are led by effective leaders. If we want better schools, we need better leadership, namely “change agent” leadership. Our education system is the only system in our society where promotion is done by self-selection (teachers self-select for principal jobs and principals self-select for superintendencies). As a consequence, we obtain leadership by accident, not by design. We’ll never improve schools if we don’t change the way we select and train educational leaders.
Employees
Successful organizations have very stringent criteria for personnel selection and training. They hire the best people they can find and rid themselves of poor performers. Our schools do neither. First, they limit hires to only “certified” staff who have graduated from an education college, many of whom have minimal entry requirements and no performance criteria for graduation. This restriction drastically reduces the pool of qualified candidates that can be considered. And teacher unions prevent poor performers from being dismissed to the detriment of students. If we want to improve student academic outcomes, we need to change the way we select and train teachers, and we must be able to remove poor performers.
Our public schools are one of, if not the most, important institutions in our society. Today, they are failing our children and our country.
Donald P. Nielsen
Money
Successful organizations manage their funds carefully. Being results-oriented, they work to maximize revenue and minimize costs. Quality performance is expected, and efficiency is stressed. That is not the case with our schools. There is no accountability for either performance or the effective use of funds. Though evaluations are regularly done, failing schools continue to operate, and poor teachers and principals continue to be employed. Consequently, performance fails to improve, and costs continue to rise. We see this scenario in virtually every urban system in the country. If we want better schools, we need accountability for how funds are spent.
Innovation
Successful organizations constantly innovate. They work to improve efficiency, quality, and performance. Our schools don’t do that. The 50-minute period, the six-period day, the 180-day year, graduation requirements, and evaluation systems are all legacies of a system created over a century ago. In short, we have a time-based, rather than an achievement-based, system. This “one size fits all” structure guarantees mediocrity. If we want our students to achieve, we need a system that meets students where they are in their learning rather than their age. State laws and rules will have to be changed to allow innovation to occur.
Customer Focus
Successful organizations are laser-focused on the customer. They make sure they understand customer needs and desires, and then they aggressively set out to meet them. Our schools don’t do that. In fact, one wonders if they even understand who the customer is. Private schools figured out decades ago that parents are the customers of schools, but public schools still don’t recognize this. Again, teacher unions have not helped. Despite their claims, teacher unions, who control a great deal of our education system, focus on adults (teachers) rather than children. As long as our schools remain adult-focused rather than student-focused, we should not be surprised that children don’t learn and customer (parents) expectations are not met.
Measure Performance
Successful companies constantly measure their performance based on customer evaluations. Complaints are quickly answered and remedied. Our schools don’t do that. Granted, they conduct evaluations — but there are no consequences for poor ratings. No schools are closed, no personnel are released, and no funds are withdrawn. When ratings and evaluations have no consequence for the personnel involved, they have no meaning. If we want better schools, we must demand better performance from the personnel involved and the removal of personnel if needed. Meaningful measures of performance with consequences and a demand for constant improvement will yield improved student learning.
Our public schools are one of, if not the most, important institutions in our society. Today, they are failing our children and our country. If we want to effectively educate our children, we must restructure our public education system.