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.

Writing Fiction

Last month, I discussed a powerful tool, the process behavior chart, that can be used to filter the noise out of our data. The whole point of this series has been to think through how to properly interpret and react to data, which includes the filtering process. Unfortunately, much of what happens on the data analysis front in the education sector is akin to writing fiction. Writing fiction will be the main topic of this post.

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!

Should we be rating and ranking schools?

School and district report cards were released in mid-September to little fanfare because they lacked state test scores. These scores form the heart of the report cards, but were missing from this year’s reports because the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools and prevented spring testing. Maybe this year provides an opportunity to stop and think about a couple of questions related to the report cards. Questions such as, what do the report cards tell us about schools? And, should we be rating and ranking schools?