Process Engineer Looks at the School System

 

The purpose of this lengthy post is to provide an opportunity for local school boards and parents to become aware of a method for improvement used by most industries.  The methodology is simple, but the school system is complex, especially if one includes the hierarchy of the state and federal government's involvement in education.  Nevertheless, using the process improvement approach should reward local leaders with measurable improvement.

 

Important Concepts of Systems and Processes

Whenever a process engineer encounters a product quality problem, the reaction is to study the system that produced that product. Not just to study the system, but to then use the results of the study to identify projects for improvement.  Inspection to cull unacceptable products from the production line has been proven to be not only costly but ineffective. Ineffective because inspection always misses some defective product and therefore does not prevent poor quality products from reaching the customer.  Only a capable process can deliver quality products reliably.  Furthermore, capable, well-managed processes make work easier and promote a dedicated workforce.

Systems, such as the school system, are made up of a multitude of processes, each with inputs and outputs.  Systems are often complex due to the many processes involved and how these processes interact with each other.

Despite systems complexity, improvement must be directed at the process level.  This improvement effort is directed not only on the process but also on the influence of associated processes.  Systems are often more complex than realized at first.  The first step in developing improvement plans is to learn how processes of the system work together—or work against each other. Process engineers usually create a diagram showing how all the processes involved create the system. The purpose of this diagram is to communicate the makeup of the system so that everyone involved can see the whole picture and understand the complexity.

From an organizational viewpoint, processes have suppliers and customers, and processes also have owners.  Suppliers and customers are the most obvious simply because there must be raw materials provided by a supplier and a product output destined for the customer.  However, ownership of the process is often overlooked which is unfortunate because it is critical to identify owners as they play an important performance and control role. Owners are those individuals or leaders of organizations who have the responsibility to assure the performance of the process as intended, but they are also the sole authority to make any changes to the process.  Improvement of a process often requires a change to an associated process whose owner is not obvious.  That’s where complexity enters in.

Process outcome is improved by identifying and executing projects for improvement.  Slogans and urging of those who work in the process to work harder and/or work smarter are not improvement projects.  This kind of program only leads to the discontent of those who work in the process.

Customers and suppliers must be engaged to have an active improvement program.   An apathetic interest makes the identification of improvement projects nearly impossible.  Accordingly, customers and suppliers need special attention if they have become tolerant and apathetic to quality.  That special attention may mean special communications to get them involved.

Oftentimes, when those who take on the task of process and system improvement, find confusion about their role in the process being studied.  Clarification of this is a must before launching any study and identification of improvement projects.  This can only be done by the leader in charge of the process under study.  Without this leadership, it may be a waste of time to proceed.  It may also be difficult to find the leader in charge, but this must be the first step.

 

Applying the Concepts to the School System

In a macro system view, parents operate a process to provide the raw material (children) to the system. Then, the processes of the school (teaching) provide educational content.  There are other processes, including television, the internet, interactions with peers, and homelife all of which produces a product (an educated young adult) ready for the customer. These other processes have been found to have both a positive and negative effect on the education of children.

It would seem apparent that the education of young people should be viewed as a whole system beginning at the home, long before school age is reached, and extending beyond the hours spent in the classroom.  To attempt any improvement in the processes of the classroom and ignore all the other processes in the system would be shortsighted.

Reducing these thoughts to practice, parents should be seen as the supplier to the classroom teaching process as well as all the other processes involved in the education of their children. To be sure, parents do supply their children as input to the processes outside the classroom whether they think they do or not. The parents may not be thinking along these lines when they provide the access to social media or the internet.  Basically, the parents are saying to these processes, here is my child for you to use as an input.  More processes are in play to provide information to young people with information or to indoctrinate them on certain ideologies than just those in the classroom.  All of these associated processes compete with the processes of the teacher in the classroom.

Now to the output of the system, it is important to agree on the identity of the customer.  So, who is the customer of this system of processes, is it every parent, or is it society? Society did not provide input, nor is it accountable, but parents did provide the child as input to the system of education and have paid for the education process, so, logically, they are the customers.  But here is a test question:  can a customer be an effective customer if no demand for quality is apparent?  The answer is that without a demanding customer, the vigor for improvement is nil.

On the concept of supplier and customer, one sometimes encounters the argument that customers cannot be suppliers.  Metaphors are an interesting way to create understanding, so let’s find a co-op in the business world.  Cotton gins are often co-ops—that is, the suppliers are also the customers with the gin operating as a contract processor.  Sounds a lot like a school system.  The gin must accept all member’s field harvests of cotton bolls for processing, returning the processed cotton to the farmer in the form of a bale.   The costs are shared according to the volume processed.  The farmer accepts the processed baled cotton and sells it to the cordage maker who expects superb quality. 

Sometimes it works that way, sometimes not.  In this metaphor, the first sign of a problem is when the farmer receives a rejection of the baled product for being of unacceptable quality for making high-value cotton cordage. The complaint of poor quality works its way back in the process until the cause is determined as either a special cause or a system cause—a special cause would be due to an event that may have affected just one farmer’s bales.  A system cause problem may have been due to a malfunction in the gin and the quality of many farmers’ cotton would be affected.  Either way, a plan is devised to correct or improve the process.  In this metaphor, it is important to define the start and finish of the process of producing quality cotton.  Does it start in the field at planting time, or does it start at the conveyor feeding the harvested cotton to the gin?  This important question can’t be ignored as it will enter the topic of education later. Where are we to define the beginning of the education of children?  At birth with activities in the home or at the entrance door to the classroom?

Before we attempt to use the process approach to improvement, there is one detail that should be understood about the nature of processes.   Here it is:  As one defines a process in greater detail, it becomes obvious that most processes are made up of processes of smaller scope.  The metaphor example may be tiresome but think about the US Postal Service in their work to deliver a letter to your location from a few thousand miles away.  This overall process is made up of many processes where the letter is handed off from one part of the process to the next.  These so-called handoffs are the points where one process ends in a “product” and the new process takes over with that as an input.  Thus, a long process can have many supplier-to-customer interfaces within its end-to-end boundary.  This is the key point; processes are made up of smaller processes.

Let’s apply that idea to the school system.  Just in one day, the parent provides a child as an input to the teaching process in the classroom.  This teaching process ends at the close of the school day and a handoff occurs whereby the parent gets the child back from the teaching process.  Teaching continues after school, in the home, as it should, so the process of education is continuing. This handoff must meet the quality requirements of the parent, some of which are tested by the parents asking the child what they learned at school today.  That handoff must go smoothly, or the overall process is jeopardized.   Every day, day after day, these quality requirements must be met and if they are not, the teaching process stumbles and becomes discordant.   Just as with the US Postal Office, if every handoff does not go flawlessly, the result is delay or failure to deliver the mail.

Looking for Opportunities to Make Improvements

Assuming the readers are good students, we should take a test drive using the local school system, but before the start, one particular rule should be reviewed.  That rule is one of process ownership.  We can only expect to make improvements if we have the green light from the process owner.  That, in the school system usually implies that we work on local processes.  Got that?  Good, let’s proceed.

The first step in the evaluation of any process is to engage the customer, to determine if the parent is satisfied with the education that their child is receiving.  This should be done individually, not en masse, as you want a frank opinion.  Collect, discuss, and store the results.

The second step is to move backward in the process and ask the people working in the process for their views.  Ask questions that would delve into freedom to do their job, ease of delivery of their teaching, etc.---in so many words, are they able to do their job without hindrance or obstacles?  Again, collect, discuss, and store the results.

The third step is to determine the degree of freedom the process owner has to make improvements to advance the local system of education.  Without the ability to make any changes, the whole process of improvement is stymied.  But press forward as this is critical to get out in the open.

The fourth step is to determine the objectives for improvement efforts.  Oftentimes, we see printed statements made by organizations regarding goals and commitments to improvement.  Commitments are not measurable and serve mainly to buoy the spirit of the customers.  This is not negative, it’s also not productive.  Do as you might here but don’t expect much to come of these public relations types of statements.  Specific targets are needed. Setting targets is important as these targets define the energy needed to make improvements.  For example, if my industrial process is making 50 % of production that is unsaleable, and I set a target of increasing that to 55%, this will not energize an improvement program to any extent.  A target needs to be set that requires a vigorous effort of improvement.  In the school system, if a vigorous target is not realizable, then there exists another problem that will be discussed later.

By now, it is trusted that a question has arisen about who is to do this data gathering.  In general, the solicitation of data from the participants in the process is the process owner or an impartial designated person.  But be diligent with questions on process performance.  Here is an example of a designee asking about process performance:  At the local grocery store checkout, the checker often asks if “did you find everything you needed today?”  You provide the answer, but how often did the checker respond with the next step should you say that not everything went well with your shopping experience?  The question is asked without eye contact and while not hesitating to pass the items past the barcode scanner. The probability that your feedback would reach the process owner is unlikely.  Be real in your data gathering and be diligent with the use of the data.

 

Some nationwide observations of process problems with the big system of education

To illustrate how feedback, providing it is noticed by the process owner is helpful to guide improvement efforts, here are a few examples from the past.

In the 1970s teachers were beginning to show signs of losing control of children in the elementary grades.  This was the first of a series of signals that the input to the system of education was showing signs of a quality problem.  In a private enterprise commercial process, the supplier would have been rejected, and a new supplier meeting the needs of the process would have been selected.  But in the government school system, there is no way to reject a student who rebels against the education process.  As a result of having no alternative, the system modifies the process to accommodate the stress of bad behavior or a reluctance to learn by adding staff to fix the problem. The school system gets bigger and more bureaucratic.

Another observation: The U. S. Armed Forces finds that only 23 % of new applicants to the military are suitable, and businesses are reporting that their second most significant problem is the lack of education of the young person.  What do we mean by lack of education?  It’s usually an easy question to answer.  Many can’t form a complete sentence, they do not know government, and have trouble communicating face to face and, spend too much of their time on social media.  All solvable problems were created by faulty processes, some of which may be way outside of the classroom teaching process.

A Kickoff Question to the Process Owner

Keep in mind that the objective of any effort is to identify projects that can be implemented to improve the level of education of the children leaving the government school system.  Earlier it was discussed how to uncover some facts on how the process of education is working by asking the question of the customer, the supplier, and those who work in the process.

Also, discussed earlier was understanding the viewpoint of the process owner.  A proven way to do that is to ask the process owner to list the barriers (obstacles) to reaching breakthrough performance rather than incremental improvement.  Ask the owner why we cannot have a fully capable education process within two years.  Fully capable, of course, means meeting the state standards of competency.  The list should be obvious to the owner, or one should wonder if the owner is capable of understanding the barriers to process improvement.

Some Native Notes on Learning

Hesitant to make this declaration, but newborn children are probably not very different from newborn wild animals.  Both are born with survival instincts and not much more.  Food, water, contact with the mother, need to breathe, etc. are developed in the first hour after birth. Improper handling of this stage of development may show effects that last a lifetime.  

Keep in mind that instincts are not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and neither is morality.  These come with education.  And then, there is also training, which is different from education.

A few years ago, I read a book titled Little Soldiers.  It was a story of an American mother who enrolled her children in an American School in China, where the enrollment was for children of Chinese parents and American parents.  The book described a routine in the school that was a stark contrast to that of a typical US school stateside. Most of the first year was devoted to training the children to conduct themselves in a manner that was conducive to learning.  That is, being obedient, having the self-control to sit in their seat for extended periods, and not being disruptive to the others in the class; all those attributes which if under control make the job of the teacher much easier and more effective.  The book describes the punishment for disobeying the rules, perhaps more suited to the Chinese culture rather than the American culture so I do not support some of the examples of severe treatment of young people.  Nonetheless, the book points out that training children to obey the rules from the start is critical to paying attention, which is critical to the learning process.  In finality, the teaching of obedience lies with the parents so that the teaching process is not burdened with the task.

Continuing with our preparation for the development of an improvement plan, let’s review some basic premises. This checklist applies when the Board is ready to develop an improvement plan.

(*   The Board of Directors must be sure that they have communicated their policy-making role of the ISD to the parents and the staff of the school.

(b)   The Superintendent and the School Board must come to a mutual understanding of the separate and distinct roles of the two organizations, one being policy making, and the other being operational.  Although some corporations do, the operational authority should not be the chair of policy making.

(c)   Even the best, most obvious improvement plans are not implemented without first testing them.  Testing has the purpose of assuring the plan is effective and prevents unintended consequences due to the implementation of misdirected improvement projects.

(d)  Diversity has its place in improvement work, but randomly selected diversity at this stage of plan development can produce stagnation of effort (the committee effect). Employ a diversity of expertise in plan evaluation when the team leaders report back to the main group.

(e)   Always keep in mind that there are education processes that are within the bounds of the school, but also an array of educational processes not within the four walls of the school. They often compete and interfere with the classroom process.

(f)    The school processes must assume a starting point regarding the knowledge of the incoming student.  It is extremely important to understand that starting point for every grade.  Not being ready to start school is a drag on those who are ready to proceed.  This may be the most important and difficult condition to meet.

Next, let’s imagine the kinds of responses to expect from the Superintendent to the question: what obstacles lie in the path to achieving 100 % compliance with the state standards?  In so many words, what stands in the way of meeting the target of 100% of students meeting state standards?  We are just imagining here as a warm-up exercise—it’s more productive than doodling while we wait for the real response.

Possible obstacles to breakthrough improvement inside the school system:

a)      The teachers lack the time to teach because of the administrative workload.

b)     Variability in teacher capabilities; some teachers are skilled at teaching but do not know the subject matter, some the reverse.

c)      Subject matter is handed down to the local school system and interferes with the basics of education.

d)     The classroom activity is cluttered with extraneous graphical and captivating screen material.

e)      Children are too active and mentally not ready to learn.  Processes do not exist to get them calmed down and ready to learn.

f)       There is a wide range of readiness to learn which requires individual tutoring, with group instruction almost worthless to both the advanced and the unadvanced child.  The classroom teaching methodology does not lend itself to individual or small group teaching.  Assignments and recitations do provide opportunities to teach subgroups.

g)     Some children are advanced and ready to move on to higher levels while others are not, all because of their lack of preparation by the parents to enter the government school system.  Social stigma often prevents this discussion with the community.

What’s next?

Initiate a private work session to practice the concepts without risking anything. After developing confidence in the approach to improvement planning and execution, then go back and make sure that the constituents of the process are involved and informed.

Remember, training wheels on a two-wheel bicycle do not help a child learn how to ride a bike. So, in this private work session, expect to get a bruised ego, and find some differences in viewpoint with cohorts.  It’s all part of learning how to make improvements to a system.

After practicing the art of improvement using a process viewpoint, consider experimenting.  Recall one of the principles:  Test your ideas on improvements by testing the change before implementing the change across the system.   This avoids unintended consequences.

 

 

Epilogue

Essays do not normally need or have epilogues, but this one requires one.

I think I have a good knowledge of process improvement methodology not only in theory but in industrial use, and in writing this essay, I chose to avoid any personal views on the performance of the government school system.

But in spending hours writing the essay and rewriting it to improve its utility, I began to form an opinion of the cause of educational problems.  Knowing but a smidgeon of what goes on in the educational system, I found myself posing the question to myself what would industrial leaders do if they encountered this environment?

Perhaps it was Yogi Berra who said this but if not, it sure fits his repertoire of sayings.  It goes something like this:  You can’t get there from here.  By using that thought, I sense that the local school board has a task that cannot be achieved without going outside their present system of teaching.  And that may be difficult.  It may even be impossible.

For I have become nearly convinced that the problem with the performance of the school system lies with the parents and not with the teachers and administrators. Consequentially, this lack of performance of the parents over decades in rearing their children has facilitated unintended changes in the government school system that will probably be an obstacle to making improvements.

Here’s my argument:

·         Too many parents take little interest in the education of their children.  Those that do, place their children in private schools or home-school them.  Home school parents are still a small percentage and not likely to grow to a greater number because it takes money and personal time. But that could change.

·         Those parents who do not put any effort into the education of their children are apparently not generally interested in children- as evidenced by one-parent families, abortion rates, use of daycare, embracement of pre-K schooling---the whole bit.  Parents today see children as a burden and not an asset.  The end game is Orwellian for sure.  Create children and turn them over to the government at birth to bring them to adulthood.  Raising a child probably costs more than $300,000 and many hours a day to bring each child to adulthood.

·         Parents themselves do not know what is important for their children to know or be able to do before entering the classroom.  The cause of this is that young parents of the current era have been brought up by the same system described above. The result is to defer to the government to fill the role of rearing their children.

And then, consequentially, on the school system:

·         Because of the lack of interest of the parents, the school system has rushed to fill the void with programs that edge out basic teaching of needed skills.  And, because of the wide variation in skills of 4 and 5-year-olds, it reduced whatever standards it once had in place to accommodate the variation.  It was the only response viable for the school system, so basically the standard is set by the lowest level achiever.   It’s like the cotton gin, it had to be redesigned to accommodate the farmers whose cotton was the most contaminated with field litter.

·         The school system has built a massive bureaucracy in response to filling the void created by the parents with classroom teachers, once the main employee of the school, now much less so.

·         The teaching methods that have been implemented preclude up-close instruction which allows teachers to assess comprehension of the subject matter.  Up-close instruction is especially important when the class has a wide range of capabilities.  Both homeschooling and the old one-room school system used the concept of study time in response to an assignment followed by up-close recitation.  For just a moment, sit back and think about the power of this approach to teaching.  Assignments followed by recitation are character building and it allows the teacher to assess the comprehension of every child directly.

·         The teacher’s unions are in control of not only the careers of teachers but also influential on the subject matter, allowing ideological indoctrination to enter the school system from organizations far removed from parents and even teachers.

·         Apparently, the administrative system makes it difficult to appraise teachers and terminate those who fall below standards.  The private industry would suffer badly if this were the case.

 

But like the song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, I will never stop the rain by complaining.  So, what to do?

The only way that the government school system can survive is to become competitive with the growing freedom of parents to remove their children from the system.  That shift may not be possible given the bureaucracy of the entire state and federal system of education.  But, let’s explore that anyway.

A simple answer comes to mind on how to do that.  Bring the homeschooling concepts into the government school system in a pilot program.

Key concepts of the pilot program within the school system:

·         Small group of children of a similar level of accomplishment and behavior.  No other screening for the selection of the student group.  It does not matter if the pilot group is ranked high or low.  The objective here is that the group is uniformly ready to learn.

·         Misfits in the pilot group are sent back to the general population of students and are replaced by the next candidate.

·         Teach classical topics in depth that the children can comprehend. 

·         Since the pilot group has the participation of the particular parents, avoid teaching those subjects which are reserved for parents.  Identify those subjects in agreement with the parents.

·         Teachers determine the degree of learning by personal assessment.

Freedom to carry it off?  Yes? Okay get started

Constrained in freedom to pilot the effort?  Well, that’s a problem.