The Budget Was Approved For KCS Recently. So The asking Effort For More Money Also Started, Even Before The School Year Started.
I think it is time again to put some things into perspective, and decide what is the most important thing to focus on. AND FOCUS ON IT without being distracted. Ladies and gentlemen, as you already know, our inability to develop job and college ready students has created a big dilemma for us here in Knox County and in the State of Tennessee. When one considers the state published drop out rate, high school finishing rate, the number of those who get a high school diploma, then figuring in the ACT published job/college readiness, my math says that only 15.5% of those who enter as freshmen in high school, will be job/college ready after graduation. I don’t know if everyone is realizing the fact that this means that 84.5% will be mostly unemployed for life, and we pay the same per student taxes ($10K) for the 84.5% as we do for those who end up job-ready. This is a very bad situation, and I hope that at least some Board members think about it, when their primary published objective is to “Improve our children’s education”. I don’t know what that really means, and how they know at the end of each year that they met this objective.
It is all too common and human to blame “uncontrollable” factors when any organization produces poor results. It is also very common for such organizations to focus on the need for more money, as the only solution that will somehow restore the path to good results. I have never seen an exception to this general rule in management.
I would like to recommend an idea for consideration, that may be a sound approach to satisfy future money requests.
We would probably all agree that we should support the education system every chance we get. The dilemma is how to do that when:
1. Historical results for more than a decade produced very poor ACT consolidated averages for the district. The ACT is THE valid measure of what our children actually learned from grade 1 to 12. That means that having a specific ACT score objective, not a formula of which the ACT is part, is the clearest measure of what has been achieved, not subject to argument.
2. TN law currently gives the BOE absolute right to spend their budget in any manner they see it fit, without committing to a specific academic achievement, or anything for that matter, unless they wish to do so.
3. I have not seen the law itself, but there appears to be also a state requirement to provide to a school district at least the maximum amount provided in any one year previously. For this reason, it is only natural for an education district to use any strategy to increase the last highest budget level in small increments.
To make this never ending approach more rational and effective, in view of the poor results of the past, it would not be helpful in my opinion to continue as before. Laws we cannot change, the governor and legislature will have to do that.
We could take a position that we want to help, but we really cannot reconcile the repeating requests for more money, when for more than a decade we have not seen any specific ACT commitment with a sound operating plan, and consequently any significant improvement in ACT achievement. It would be helpful to tie all such requests for additional funds by making it very clear that we would like to see a specific increase in the district consolidated average ACT score as a stated goal, such as half a point, with a professionally prepared operating plan by school with specific corresponding academic achievement that ensures the district ACT goal being met. Furthermore, such an operating plan must have monthly academic performance milestones (worst case, we do have testing results, so be creative) to make absolutely sure that we will know if we are not on track to meet the annual ACT goal, in order to be able to take appropriate corrective action.
This is a very fundamental, modern management practice, that came into being a few years after WWII, and became a mantra under the leadership of Dr. Peter Drucker, for a very simple reason: there is no achievement of good results without such clear goal, and well prepared operating plan to reach it, and THAT in turn defines the budget or money needed. Not the other way around. Peter Drucker is acknowledged to have been the best management authority in the world to date, and his books are very common, especially in post MBA advanced management programs.
- It is not possible to achieve anything without a clear, well understood measurable goal that the entire organization from top to bottom understands very clearly. This goal must be the most important key indicator of operational results, like the ACT scores.
- It is impossible to write a good operating plan without having such a clear goal defined first.
- It is also an impossibility to prepare a valid expense budget without having an operating plan. How can anyone specify the money needed if one does not know specifically what goal has to be reached and what we must do to reach it.
This is the main reason for poor, unpredictable results in ANY endeavor, in any operation, and education simply cannot be an exception. Management is about creating certainty in outcome, regardless of how often Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame jumps out from around any corner. And THAT he does.
It is a cop out to believe that it is impossible to do anything about solving even the biggest problems. THAT happens, when people no longer stand up to do the right thing, but complain instead about not having the authority to take action. Or perhaps they worry a bit too much about losing votes, and do not appreciate the power of the people when he/she informs them about what the truth is.
Excuses making something to look “impossible” always outnumber proposed solutions and actions by several orders of magnitude. In fact, excuses are an important part of disinformation campaigns, to confuse people’s thinking about what IS the most important goal. It is simply the attainment of a specified ACT score achieved. That IS what defines the development of job ready kids (NOT the delivery of education), that we do very poorly. Of course no one does disinformation campaigns, but it is a useful idea to know what they are and recognize them, regardless of what they are called. Defending the size of central management also belongs in this area, because a group called “central management” MAY look within acceptable operating ratios, but without recognizing that there are five other large groups that have a different name, who do not take any direction from a school principal, but take direction from “central management” only – even if the budget shows them to be part of a school budget.
I apologize people, but I know first hand what one of several large Japanese high technology corporations are planning in robotics to be in our market starting in 2015. I can tell you that it will have a scary multiplier effect on not having a high enough percentage of job/college ready kids by 2015. To achieve that, we have to accomplish a number of things THIS YEAR on the state level, that are not actioned currently. Not achieving them will make a turnaround effort in 2015 and thereafter prohibitively expensive – we will not have the money. If anyone is interested in a detailed explanation, I will be happy to present specifics. I can assure you, that in 2016-2018, you will see what I was talking about.
Although I gave opinions to the contrary in the past, I did not know some important things back then. I really cannot blame a BOE or the superintendent or people in central management any more. They have not created these issues. It is state laws going back to 1925 that defined the entire system. It was a joint effort of many countries then. They all abandoned it by WWII. The USA was the only one who stuck to it to this day. It is the state laws that are behind allowing an old system to fall behind the international competition. Everyone is trying to survive, especially those with families to feed in central administrations or elsewhere. We all would prefer the system with which we are familiar. It is a basic human characteristic. The problem is that learning the much better methods that raised a good number of international competitors, and using what they developed over a 15-20-year period in order to deliver much better job readiness with the majority of kids who enter as freshmen, is really the most important thing. That means getting the 15.5% job/college readiness to 50%+, which means that the ACT consolidated average has to be at close to 23. That IS what a BOE objective should be, with specific numbers as goals, so that the BOE members and parents can tell that the education system is working.
Change WILL come, hopefully soon enough – or we parish.
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