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In This
Issue...
 Elementary
TQM
Workplace Humor
Games at Work
Merger Mania
Boosting Capacity
Features...
Peter Block Column
Views for a
Change
Pageturners
Briefcases
The Quality
Tool
---- I Never Use
Diary of a
Shutdown
|
 An Elementary
Lesson In TQM
Grade School Uses Baldrige to Create High
Performing Workforce
--Visiting
Azalea Elementary School, in St. Petersburg, Fla. would
provide valuable insight to businesses searching for a
final reason to empower employees. Gone are the
traditional classrooms with desks in perfect rows and
teachers following prescribed lesson plans, rather, each
student is a worker in a high-performing workforce.
Everyone from the teachers to the cafeteria staff are
committed to the vision of making Azalea a world-class
benchmark for higher education achievement.
-- Azalea is
not an elite, suburban school; in fact it is the 21st
largest public school district in the nation. Azalea's
demographics present another challenge, with a 40 percent
mobility rate; only two out of five students spend an
entire year there. In addition, 25 percent of students
require special education because they are emotionally
challenged, have speech/communication disabilities or
suffer from autism. Azalea has overcome these challenges
and then some. Student test scores have increased by 20
percent in two years. And Pinellas County School is the
only district in Florida to ever have won the State's
Sterling Quality Award.
-- Clark has been a leader
in transforming Azalea from a teaching to a learning
institution. She will appear at AQP's 22nd Annual Spring
Conference and Resource Mart, March 27-29, in Orlando
Fla. She joins keynoters Ken Blanchard, Richard Teerlink,
former CEO of Harley-Davidson, Joel Barker, Patch Adams,
M.D. and Meg Wheatley. For additional information or to
register call 1-800-733-3310.
-- News for a Change
Editor, Bill Brewer, recently spoke with Clark about
adapting the Baldrige criteria in an effort to increase
academic performance.
NFC: The mission of
Azalea Elementary School is that every child should be
able to answer the question, why are you here today and
what are your personal goals?
Clark: Our mission
has changed. We have moved in to the next iteration. We
spent four years driving that mission with the children.
We created an environment that would support kids to
understand what their job is, why they come to school and
what they're responsible for. We've moved into our new
mission which is, "A high-performing workforce produces a
high-performing workforce." We have just killed
ourselves, training everyone from the cafeteria people
and teachers to the office people, to produce a
high-performing workforce. That is because, we are now
focusing on-what do these kids need when they leave us?
They need to understand they are the citizens of tomorrow
and they will be the high-performing workforce of
tomorrow.
NFC: How did you
formulate that first mission? Did the school board
mandate it? Or was it your own idea?
Clark: We started
looking at the Baldrige criteria and the quality
movement. The basis for the Baldrige categories in
leadership is to have a clear vision and mission. After a
few of us went to some training in 1993, we inherently
knew we had to create a clear mission. We started
experimenting with it in the classrooms. Some of the
teachers said, "What are you doing?" and, "This is
interesting." Finally, a number of staff members came to
me and said, "We all need that training." So I called the
district and said, "I want to do a retreat for my group
this summer. They're willing to pay for it on their own
time. Will you give me the trainers?" They agreed to do
that. We went away for three days and, on the third day
of training, we created our vision and our mission. Every
year, I would say, "Okay, is it time to revisit this? Do
you still think it serves us well?" Finally, in August of
last year, they said, "It really does need to be looked
at." So, we changed the vision and our mission.
NFC: One of the
Baldrige criteria is customer focus. Who are the
customers for Azalea Elementary?
Clark: Customers for
us are the district middle schools that we feed into. We
have to send kids who are prepared for middle school. Our
kids ought to be the highest-performing kids in the each
of the middle schools that we feed into. We should be
meeting the district expectations of the kids at that
grade level. My definition is that those kids absolutely
will meet those expectations by sixth grade.
Traditionally, you ask any teacher, who hasn't had any
dealings with Baldrige, "Who are your customers?" and
they immediately say, "The kids and the parents." Kids
are not the customers; kids are the workers. We don't
look at them as the customers. We look at them as coming
to work and doing a job. The parents will shift in and
out of that customer thing. Sometimes they are the
customers and sometimes they are not. Ultimately, who is
our hard-core customer? It is the next grade level.
NFC: If the middle
schools are your customers, what continuous feedback
system from the customer have you established?
Clark: We track the
academic data of our kids. We don't track them if they
leave the middle school. We are tracking those kids who
stay at the middle school for sixth, seventh and eighth
grade. We see how they do throughout that time. We're
looking at their academic performance. Were they able to
hold on to the performance level we saw at Azalea
Elementary School? When they left us, at or above their
grade level, did they hold on to that level? The first
group we started tracking is now in tenth grade. All of
those kids are doing quite well. Our kids hold the
highest grade point average of any of the six feeder
schools going into the middle school.
NFC: Being a cynic, I
could say, "But you just had brighter kids to begin with,
because there is an innate intelligence." However, based
on the data, that's not true. For example, 25 percent of
your students have emotional handicaps?
Clark: Yes, 25
percent of the students are special education, 56 percent
free lunch and 40 percent mobility. We don't have a
single Lexus that drives through to pick-up
students.
NFC: I guess this
points to how much better other schools could be
doing?
Clark: Exactly. When
people really take this stuff to heart and start trying
to do it, kids start achieving. Think about it-you've got
a teacher who looks at the data about her kids and about
her grade level. She makes really good curriculum
decisions based on hard data about what would meet the
academic needs of the kids. Then, she shares the
decisions with the kids, tells them where they are and
where they need to go. She defines the expectations, and
then says, "Okay kids, how can we best get there? What
should we do?" She gets total approval from these 28
little bodies who know where they are, know what they
need to do, and understand what the purpose of being
there is.
NFC: And you'll do
this with a classroom of first-graders?
Clark: We do it with
three and four-year olds. Those kids have goals. We post
their data and they understand the data. Kids don't have
any pre-set notion of what school is. My feeling is that
the reason we have so many discipline problems now is
that we're still trying to get kids to comply to an
assembly line. They are living in the world of
information and their education is not. There is a
complete disconnection. We whip them into what we want
them to do. This is an education that is designed for
producing kids that go work on assembly lines. Well, I'm
sorry, assembly lines aren't around any longer. Kids
don't have that mentality. By using the Baldrige
criteria, we're empowering kids to take hold of their
education and their ticket to tomorrow. The grade book
and the plan book aren't a secret. They are part of the
classroom and, in a sense, the kids take care of it. The
teacher is just a facilitator. We've empowered a group of
these kids to make something of themselves, rather than -
you sit there and for six hours while I regurgitate all
this information. Friday, I will test you on it and you
sure better know it.
NFC: I just had this
conversation in a college classroom filled with seniors
taking a capstone course in public relations. I said,
"Here is the syllabus and the course as I have designed
it or you can design the course base on what you want to
learn." The entire class without much thought chose to do
what I had already laid out. But if I had students from
Azalea, ten years from now...
Clark: They wouldn't
do it. They'd say, "Well, this is good, but can we talk
about what we want to do? We'll think about your stuff."
Kids tell me all of the time, "Miss Clark, we want you to
come down to our classroom. We're working on a homework
system. Would you come down and talk with us about it?"
Every time, the kids will say to me, "We might not listen
to you, you're a resource." They let me know upfront that
I'm not coming in there to be the principal; I'm coming
to be a resource.
NFC: But their
ultimate job, as the worker at this elementary school, is
to be prepared to meet the challenges of the
workplace/middle school?
Clark: Not only that,
we tell them they have to meet the challenges of the job.
We tell what the challenges are and what businesses are
looking for.
NFC: Even in first
grade?
Clark: Yes, you're
working in teams and you're creating synergy in your
classroom. This is the way businesses work. Engineers
across the street at Raytheon work in groups. We get a
lot of volunteers from Raytheon. We want them to talk to
kids about how they use quality tools and quality
applications in their jobs. Kids hear the volunteers and
realize we're doing that at Azalea Elementary.
NFC: No students are
retained? But yet, children leaving second grade have to
perform at or above grade level based on the state
requirements.
Clark: Our mantra is
that all kids will be at or above grade level in reading,
writing and math by the time they exit second grade. And
we targeted that because there are so many developmental
stages between K1 and 2, that retention policies will
cause you to retain kids and it could clearly be just a
developmental state that that kid hasn't gotten to yet.
So we said, "We're going to say that by the end of second
grade all of them are going to be at or above grade level
in reading, writing, and math and we are not going to
retain any of them during that period of time because
that is pointless." It could be developmental. If we get
a kid in, in March of second grade, and that kid is
behind a grade level, and we know that there is a third
grade teacher that could take that kid, and we could have
that kid go to second grade reading group, and define
that education for that kid. And we may do that, because
we've got really hard data showing that retention does
nothing. Ok, you finish one complete year of your job,
and you weren't too successful, is it going to do you any
good to go back and do that year over? No, it's not going
to do you any good to do that entire year over. You've
got to figure out, what is missing with this kid? And
where did the system fail this kid? And what can we do to
change the system to meet the kid's needs? And that is
totally different from what education is founded on.
Education is founded on the premise that if the kid
fails, it's the kid's fault. And so we found everything
we do here on, if the kid fails, then there's something
wrong with the system. It's not the teacher. It's not the
kid, something's wrong with the system that we've built,
and so we have to figure out how can we do it differently
to meet the needs of those people?
NFC: Can you talk
about involving the kitchen staff? What is their mission
or goals?
Clark: This past
year, when we did the school improvement plan, we based
it on feedback from the Sterling Award in the state of
Florida. We identified the gaps for our school and for
our organization. We brainstormed the pieces of data that
we would need to track - to know whether we were making
progress toward improving those areas. Well, we ended
with 89 pieces of data that we needed to track in order
to ensure that we were achieving these goals. We brought
everyone that is an employee at Azalea into the media
center. We said, "These are the things that we need to
track. Everyone needs to sign up for one." There were two
or three big items that would need more people. On these
pieces, we can have two people because it is more
involved. Everyone tracks one piece of data on the school
improvement plan and the strategic plan. Quarterly, they
have to prepare a report about their data. They have to
do an analysis and include that in the report. They also
have to make the report available on the local area
network, as well as report it out verbally in our
quarterly meeting. That caused tremendous approval.
NFC: That is
overwhelming - 89 pieces of data...
Clark: Well, you have
to think about a school, and what leads to a
high-performing kid. You've got to track academic data in
writing and you check it at every level. There is a data
writing person in pre-kindergarten, a data writing person
in kindergarten, a data-writing person in first grade and
then second, etc. Then you've got to go math, then you've
got to go reading. We have to track attendance because
attendance is an issue with kids that don't perform
highly.
NFC: But how does the
kitchen staff, if I'm serving lunches, how do I feel
connected? I guess I'm feeling connected because I'm
helping to track that data, or...
Clark: What are the
issues with high-performing kids? One of them was
nutrition. Of our kids on free and reduced lunch, how
many are eating breakfast? How many are eating lunch? Of
our kids that come in here and don't qualify - are they
eating breakfast at home? Are they eating breakfast here?
What kind of breakfast are we giving them?
NFC: And so the
kitchen staff is involved in collecting and analyzing
that data?
Clark: Right. Do we
get them through the line in such a manner? What is the
cycle time on the line? Do they have enough time to sit
down and actually eat this lunch that we have prepared?
There is a lot to check. Think about it, you're dealing
with bodies rather than widgets. It's easy to track
widgets, but when you are talking about building a little
human being there's all kinds of things that impact
it.
NFC: What's been your
greatest nightmare in this whole experience?
Clark: I think one of
the key issues is the idea of the vast amount of ongoing
training that needs to occur for people to have the
knowledge to do this. It is very complex. You look at it
on the surface and it looks like seven categories. This
is a piece of cake. I'll get some goals. I'll create an
information system. I'll monitor results. When you learn
a little bit, you realize this is more complex. If I have
these goals, in order to have an improvement cycle on
these goals, I have to have a manageable information
system. It just goes on and on and on. Training is a key
piece. It becomes a time issue, especially when you've
got little children around all the time. You can't just
pull the teachers out of classrooms, and say, "Okay kids,
stay here. I'm going to go train your teachers."
NFC: The day you
retire, what will be the greatest joy from your
career?
Clark: I think the
last few years of my career. This is the most exciting
stuff I've ever been involved in. I taught children, from
poverty stricken areas, for sixteen years. I had been one
of them who constantly said, "Well,what chance do we
have? Look at where they're coming from. How can I change
what their life is in six hours, when they're in that
life for eighteen?" And now, knowing at the end of my
career that that was just bunk, it was an excuse. I've
told many groups, I have a daughter who's 21. If I could
be granted just one wish, it would be that Kristy was
five again and would be entering kindergarten at Azalea
Elementary School.
Return to February 2000
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