I am always amazed at educators. We are always looking for the silver bullet. What I know to be reality is that there are no silver bullets. If you want to improve education, you must improve the teaching and learning process that creates the results for student achievement. I watch as many school systems are always launching a new initiative. I see some new curriculum. A new on-line assessment system. A one-to-one lap project. A new software program. Incentive pay programs. The list is mindless and very expensive. But most of all, in the end, how does anyone really know whether something worked or it did not work.

In presentations, I always stress the importance of having a clearly defined process. In Baldrige, the words are Approach, Deployment, Learning and Integration. Approach means that the process is clearly defined with repeatable steps. Deployment means that the process is deployed and in our school system the key word is FIDELITY. We have process checklists or classroom walkthroughs that check for fidelity of deployment of key learning processes. This is where many school systems, teachers, and principals stop. You must continue forward to review the results from the process and go through improvement steps to make the process high performing. Once you have the process high performing, you may then look at integrating what you have learned across other processes within or outside your school or classroom.

I am excited to let readers know that there is much going on with process management and improvement in education. American Society for Quality offers many training opportunities. There is also an initiative just getting started with the American Productivity Quality Council. This initiative is entitled PMI (Process Management and Improvement). This initiative features the use of quality tools to identify key school/district processes and then learn how to manage and improve key processes. In these days of tight budgets, process management and improvement are more important than ever.

In our school system, a focus on process management and improvement has led the way to outstanding student academic results and outstanding results from support processes. The bottom line for our customers is that we are a Top Ten performing school system in North Carolina, however, our expenditures per pupil are among the lowest ten in North Carolina.

I will follow up with future blogs about process management and improvement and a keynote I am delivering at the ASQ Summer Leadership Institute in Florida will feature the latest on this work. However, if you want to know more .... e-mail me at tholliday@iss.k12.nc.us. In the meantime, select a process that needs improving and get to work. You will be amazed at what can be done with little to no cost when you have ADLI!!!!!