My Hero!
How Business and Government United to Save North
Carolina's Public Schools
Once upon a time there was a damsel in
distress,
stranded in an ivory tower in North Carolina. The
damsel
was public education, and no matter what her state
provided, from generous funding
to scathing criticism, the damsel’s cries remained
the same: low test scores, sinking graduation rates and a
poorly trained workforce.
Then, out of the thicket and thundering
across the plains came a shining hero on a white horse,
armed with the one thing that could silence this damsel:
a coalition of business leaders and public education
advocates armed with Baldrige criteria...
OK, cut! Stop the cameras. Even
Hollywood’s most star-struck admirers aren’t
going
to believe this tale, right? More likely heroes have come
out of a Monty Python skit.
But before you send the writers back to the drawing
board, you’d better keep one thing
in mind: Truth is often stranger than fiction.
The truth is, business leaders and educators
did get together to radically turn around public
education in North Carolina. Back in 1993, newly
appointed Governor Jim Hunt
met with North Carolina’s disgruntled business
leadership. This time they weren’t interested in
tax cuts or more liberal environmental policies. To the
contrary, the business leaders expressed a willingness to
support a major long-term initiative in education.
Thus, North Carolina’s Quality Schools
research and development project began. A major
cornerstone of the effort was a high-performance plan
relying heavily on the Baldrige framework of continuous
improvement. Baldrige criteria, promoted by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, has been a
significant tool used by thousands of organizations to
assess and improve performance on the critical
factors
that drive their business success.
Dr. Tom Houlihan, senior education advisor
for Governor Hunt, served as right-hand
man on North Carolina’s Quality Schools Project.
“Prior to this effort, North Carolina’s
schools were at best stagnant,” Houlihan says.
“During the decades of the 1970s and 80s the school
system’s level of performance vs. the
nation’s was abysmal—
consistently ranking in the bottom 10 of all states in
the nation. Lots of work and
money had been spent, but no results over the long term
were achieved.”
Houlihan should know. He’s worked his
way from teacher in 1972 to the top job
for Governor Hunt in 1993, with stops as a guidance
counselor, principal and superintendent along the way.
Houlihan now serves as president and CEO of the
North Carolina Partnership for Excellence (NCPE) in
Smithfield, N.C., an
organization founded to continue the work originally
established by the Quality
Schools Project. “We began this effort as the
largest R&D effort in public education
ever tackled,” says Houlihan. “Working with
seven pilot partnerships involving a
local school system, business partner and higher
education partner. Today we
have 50+ school system partners representing 70 percent
of the state’s student population—all
involved on a voluntary basis.”
Once Upon a Time
A “Total Quality in Education
Partnership” was formed between the business
committee and Hunt’s education advisors in 1993
after Hunt’s initial meeting with
the disgruntled business leadership in his state. The
partnership sponsored the
quality schools roll out as a four-year research and
development project in seven
schools. Using the Baldrige framework, the partnership
collected and analyzed data based on annual reviews from
key policy makers, the degree of satisfaction from
customer (in this case, student) surveys, and written and
oral responses from policy makers. The data established
best practices, which were in turn implemented to
achieve continuous improvement in basic skills (like
reading, writing and math) and
SAT scores.
In the six years since the founding of the
Quality Schools Project in 1993, SAT
scores rose close to 20 percent in some districts: 17.5
percent in the Granville
school system and 17.4 percent in New Hanover. During the
same period, reading proficiency increased in Johnston
County from 65 to 82 percent; math proficiency increased
in Lincoln County from 60 to 88 percent; and writing
proficiency increased in Bladen County from 36 to 62
percent. These statistics represent general trends
throughout all the school systems involved in the Quality
Schools Project.
By 1997, scores had risen so dramatically
that the project was given permanent
status as Houlihan’s nonprofit, public-private
partnership, the NCPE. Improvements
have continued, causing the pilot project, the NCPE and
the state of North Carolina
to rack up awards and national attention. “In 2000,
North Carolina was recognized
by the National Alliance of Business as the
“Education State of the Year” for
massive improvements in literally every achievement area
during the 1990s,” says Houlihan. “Our state
has improved performance more than any other in the
nation,
from basic skills to SAT’s.”
In a Land Very, Very Far Away
You may be thinking, “That’s
pretty impressive, Sir Knight, but in my state,
we’ve
got real problems.” Houlihan notes a fundamental
hurdle in many states he visits
when spreading the word about business-education
partnerships. “I find it fascinating
to travel around the country and observe the continuum of
attitudes and relationships among [business and
education]. In some states, the relationship is
non-existent;
there’s been no effort to bring the two together.
In far too many states the relationship
is confrontational; the level of mistrust is
striking.”
Contrary to what many naysayers in the
business community might think, Houlihan says the
teachers have been the strongest proponents of using
Baldrige criteria to
collect data and promote best practices. Houlihan recalls
one teacher who approached him about the project and its
affect in the classroom. The teacher told him that he was
ready to hang it up after 22 years in education, but that
the system of improvement inspired him to stay. “I
finally feel like a professional,” he said.
“And my students are making enormous strides. Where
has this been for the last 22 years?”
The Baldrige criteria have been around for a
long time. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is
handed out annually to recognize U.S. companies for
business excellence and quality achievement by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology at the
U.S. Department of Commerce. That’s right—the
government. The same guys who oversee our public
education system. It is a case, as it often is, of the
right hand not knowing what the left hand is
doing.
At the Round Table at Last
The Quality Schools Project took core values from
the Baldrige criteria and
applied them to public education, including the
following: a focus on results, a fast response system,
data-based management, emphasis on continuous
improvement
and customer-driven quality. Education and business
leaders also came up with a mission statement: “To
support and coach education systems to meet or
exceed
their customer requirements and to align the efforts of
all organizations that support schools.”
Based on that ambitious mission, today NCPE
offers several services to the
50-some schools voluntarily participating in the program.
These include seminars
on quality principles and strategic planning;
publications that promote best practices; networking
sessions and conferences for teachers, administrators and
business
leaders; fundraising to support the program; technology
training on how teachers can better utilize computers in
the classroom; a content-rich Web site with lesson
plans;
and classroom applications that emphasize student
responsibility in learning.
A big part of Houlihan’s work is
fundraising and he isn’t afraid to admit this takes
a
lot of time. The development and dispersal of services
through NCPE isn’t cheap;
without corporate sponsorship, it wouldn’t be
feasible. Private funding totaling over
$4 million in cash and in kind services from the private
sector has made the
leaps-and-bounds improvements in North Carolina’s
public schools possible.
Houlihan has assembled an impressive list of donors,
including Bank of America, BellSouth, DuPont, IBM,
Lowe’s, Sprint, Glaxo and many others.
The partnership between North
Carolina’s public schools and private
businesses
is unique, the only one of its kind in the United States.
But the word is catching on,
with teacher unions across the country leading the charge
for the NCPE approach. “I
am a firm believer that public schools will not achieve
acceptable levels unless
business is at our side coaching, guiding, supporting and
demanding every step of the way,” says Houlihan.
“We must stop fixing blame on an education system
that needs transformation. Instead let’s work to
improve the system...”
The Baldrige criteria can be used to promote
the best practices on a vast, statewide level to improve
one of the most pressing issues in modern America today:
the state of public education. In that sense, North
Carolina rides in as a knight in shining armor, armed
with the best practices as an example to us
all.
February 2001
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