Principle 4: Maximize High-Quality Learning

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. In this post I’ll describe the fourth principle, Maximize High-Quality Learning. It is worth noting that the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation 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.

Principle 4: Maximize high-quality learning and minimize total cost of education by improving the relationship with educational institutions from which students come and to which they matriculate. A single source of students coming into a system, such as elementary school students moving into a middle school, is an opportunity to build long-term relationships of loyalty and trust.

United Schools Network began as a single middle school serving eastside neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio where I served as the founding school director (principal). We elected to open a middle school because this was the point in a student’s educational career where they could fall so far behind that they ended up dropping out a few years later. This meant that before we were a network of schools, we were one school serving grades 6-8. There were 15 or so elementary schools from the city school system that formed de facto feeder patterns into our middle school. Many of these elementary schools were performing in the bottom 5% of schools in the state, which means that the average student that enrolled with us did so 2-3 years below grade level. There was no way for me to run the USN middle school and all that entails and form relationships with the 15 principals leading the elementary schools from which our students came. As a result, when we had the opportunity to grow from one school into a network of four schools, we elected to grow down to include elementary schools. The point in doing so was to move towards the single supplier relationship that Dr. Deming outlined with his Point 4. The school directors of our middle and elementary schools can work together on a whole host of quality characteristics such as vertically planning curriculum across the K-8 pipeline. While the students that enroll in USN middle schools still come from a number of elementary schools, we are increasingly moving toward the single supplier model. In addition to maximizing high-quality learning, this also works to minimize the total cost of education. One of the paradoxes of continual improvement is that as quality goes up, price goes down. In the case of USN, this will occur as we have to do less remediation with students as they increasingly come from USN elementary schools and will not be as far behind when they arrive at the middle schools. 

Because Deming mainly worked in industry, his Point 4 read, “End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.”[1]  I translated Deming’s framing to one that applies directly to students as they move through the K-12 pipeline. However, there is also a second component to this principle that is more directly analogous to his point and definitely applicable to the business of running school systems. That is the idea of ceasing dependence on price alone when selecting curriculum, technology, supplies, etc. and any number of goods and services school systems regularly buy. The main idea here is to understand the difference between the lowest bidder and the lowest qualified bidder. Price has no meaning without a measure of the quality being purchased, including after-sale service.[2]  

Developing partnerships with suppliers within both the K-12 pipeline and in making purchases for the school system helps to engage those suppliers in the effort to continually improve processes throughout the system. Both approaches in turn help to maximize high-quality learning while minimizing the total cost of education.

Blog Series: 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation

The four components of the System of Profound Knowledge work in concert to provide us with profound insights about how our organizations operate so that leaders can in turn work to optimize the whole of our systems. However, there is a step beyond simply avoiding the management myths. The next step is to be able to think and make decisions using the lens provided by the System of Profound Knowledge. This is where the core set of 14 Principles come into play. In this series, I’m describing the principles that will enable you to move from theory to practice with the Deming philosophy.

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John A. Dues is the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. He is also the author of the newly released book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org. 

Notes

1. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986), 23.

2. Walter A. Shewhart, Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product (Van Nostrand, 1931; reprinted edition, American Society for Quality Control, 1980; reprinted by Ceepress, The George Washington University, 1986).