Gordon Dryden wrote about Deming in Schools

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As a teacher, I'm impressed with the Deming Method and how the method has been largely ignored in many schools.   Here is a review of what can happen if a school adopts the Deming method.

This is taken from chapter 12 of the 1993 and 1994 first editions of “The Learning Revolution” book, by Gordon Dryden and Jeannette Vos.  Much smaller versions have been included in later editions.*

PLEASE NOT:  The Learning Revolution book, in an updated color version is now available: UNLIMITED: The new learning revolution and the seven keys to unlock it.  You can read the first 32 pages free and download them at www.thelearningweb.net

Re: America's only Kaizen  (TQM) school : The Deming model for Education

1. Using Japan's business methods to improve school

  

If you had to nominate any American state as a revolutionary high school leader, Alaska would not top many lists. 

    In area it's the biggest of the 50 United States - twice the size of Texas. But it has the second lowest population: about half a million people, and only one metropolitan area, Anchorage, with a population of around 200,000. Its native population is diverse: Caucasian, Eskimo, Eleuts and several Native American Indian tribes, many of them centered around small community towns of only 150 to 200 people, living on extremely low incomes, in a climate where the temperature in winter can reach -17 degrees Fahrenheit or -20 degrees Centigrade. Hardly a recipe for soaring educational success.

   Yet one school in Alaska in recent years has earned an accolade as a world leader. It has also shown how great ideas can stem from other fields - in this case from Japan's quality revolution inspired originally by the American W. Edwards Deming.

   TQM (Total Quality Management) and CIP (the Continuous Improvement Process or Kaizen) have been among the main processes used to transform Japan from a devastated, shattered and beaten society into a world economic leader within 40 years.

   Now Mt. Edgecumbe High School, in Sitka, Alaska, has pioneered similar methods for education. Mt. Edgecumbe is a public boarding school with 210 students and 13 teachers. Eighty-five percent of its students come from small villages. Most are Native Americans, descendants of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimpshean tribes as well as Eskimo tribes and Aleuts. Forty percent of its students had struggled at other schools; now the school boasts one of America's highest levels of graduates moving on to higher education.

   In many ways it was transformed by the vision of two people: former Superintendent Larrae Rocheleau and former teacher David Langford. Mt. Edgecumbe was originally opened in 1947 as a school for Native Americans. But in 1984 it was converted into an "alternative" experimental school, with Rocheleau in charge. Visitors to the school have described him as a practical idealist. One of his first objectives was "to turn these students into entrepreneurs who would go back to their villages and make a difference".  These dreams succeeded in part, but they really e off about four years later when teacher Langford, on a visit to Phoenix, Arizona, attended a business TQM meeting. He became convinced that the same processes that had transformed Japan could transform a school. He persuaded Rocheleau to attend a further seminar, and Mt. Edgecumbe has never been the same. 

   How do you summarize a school that has turned nearly every other educational system upside down and inside out? Let's try:

       Teachers and students are all regarded as co-managers. They set their own targets and goals, individually and collectively. And they evaluate themselves regularly against agreed standards of excellence. There are no "incompletes" and "F" grades at Edgecumbe. Each task is not complete until it is regarded as meeting standards of excellence way above those ever achieved in any school examination.

       The first computer course begins by teaching speed typing. All students do their homework on a computer, using word processors, spreadsheets and graphic programs to produce 100 percent perfect results - just as their future businesses will demand excellence in typing, spelling, accounting, financial and sales reports.

       Collectively the school has identified its "internal" customers (students, teachers, administrators and other staff) and its "external" customers (universities and colleges, military, industrial and service work force, homes and society in general).

       All activities at the school have been planned in conjunction with those "customers".

       Students and staff have drawn up their own "mission statement". Among many other points, it stresses that: "The school places high expectations upon students, administrators and staff. Program and curriculum are based upon a conviction that students have a great and often unrealized potential. The school prepares students to make the transition to adulthood, helping them to determine what they want to do and develop the skills and the self-confidence to accomplish their goals. Students are required to pursue rigorous academic programs that encourage them to work at their highest levels."

       The first week of school each year is used for building self-esteem and quality training. Says a joint student-teacher report: "By spending the first week focusing on why students attend school, they are ready to learn and seem hungry to begin. We focus on reaching out to find out what you are truly capable of accomplishing, not just getting it done." 

    As part of this initiation all students and all staff take part in a Ropes course - very similar to some Outward Bound courses and some Super-Camp activities. They describe it as a great confidence builder. Says TQM specialist Myron Tribus: "It does for all students what competitive athletic contests are supposed to do for a few. But it does it better. As I see it, the school is trying to develop autonomous team players."

      Students decided it was inefficient to have seven short study periods a day, so the school switched to four 90-minute classes.  This schedule allows time for lab work, hands-on projects, field trips, thorough discussions, varied teaching styles and in-depth study. The reorganized schedule also allows for an extra three hours of staff development and preparation time each week.

       Because students are viewed as customers, the school tries to provide what they want. Students have repeatedly requested more technology, so the school has added dozens of computers, and opened the computer lab, library and science facilities at night for all pupils. As one report puts it: "Quality implementation is heavy on resources because students do the work and learning, not the teachers. The average number of hours of homework has risen to 15 per week. Studying, working together, and achievement have become a habit."

       CIP has prompted teachers to rethink their teaching styles. One science teacher says he has changed from being an 80 percent lecturer to a 95 percent facilitator.

       Discipline problems? "Improving the entire education system, with student/customer needs first, has virtually eliminated classroom discipline problems . . . students acquire a sense of belonging and see the value in each class. Students help control and prevent discipline problems through positive peer pressure."

       All students set improvement goals, such as receiving all A's, avoiding conduct reports and reducing tardiness.

       All students receive 90 minutes per week of quality-improvement training and school-wide problem-solving.

       All staff members have been trained in flowcharting. Flow charts of long-range projects are posted so that everyone can see how their part fits into the whole of each project.

       Because one of the school's goals is to develop "Pacific rim entrepreneurs" the students have set up four pilot "companies": Sitka Sound Seafoods, Alaska Premier Bait Company, Alaska's Smokehouse and Fish Co. and the Alaska Pulp Corporation - all under the umbrella of Edgecumbe Enterprises. The "parent company" started its first salmon-processing plant in 1985, run by students themselves. The goal was to give students the skills and experience needed for running an import-export business aimed at Asian markets. By the 1988-89 year, the company was already making four annual shipments of smoked salmon to Japan. Each subsidiary company now links hands-on experience with the academic curricula. So math students calculate the dollar-yen exchange rate. Pacific Rim geography is studied in social studies. Art students design promotional brochures and package labels for products. And business and computer students learn how to develop spreadsheets to analyze costs and project prices.

       Myron Tribus provides a word picture of how the business projects link with other studies: "In the class on entrepreneurship, taught by Marty Johnson, I watched the students prepare and package smoked salmon for sale in Japan. The students had used a taste panel of local Japanese to determine the flavor and texture Japanese people liked the most. They then developed a standard procedure to produce the same taste and texture every time. To achieve the desired taste required using a certain kind of salmon, exposing it for a certain time and temperature, using a special brining solution, which they had determined experimentally yielded the proper taste, and a certain amount of time in the smoke from the right mixture of wood shavings, using slices of fish cut to a certain thickness and size. By studying the packages of smoked fish sold in Japan, they developed an attractive package which would fit in small Japanese refrigerators. They developed their own distinctive label, in Japanese of course. And they test-marketed the product in Japan." That marketing includes study trips to Japan and other Pacific rim countries.

       All students learn either Chinese or Japanese, and their curriculum is strong in the history, culture and languages of the Pacific rim, English, social studies, mathematics, science, marine science, computers, business, and physical education.

       The school's mission statement stresses that "opportunities for leadership, public service and entrepreneurship are integrated into the program, both during and after regular school hours".

       Each student is assisted, guided and challenged to make choices about future academic or technical schooling and alternative methods of making a living. Enter a business class and you'll watch students preparing to reflect what it will cost them to live in their chosen lifestyle after graduation, taking into account mortgage payments, taxes, cost of living changes and projections for such variables as the cost of transportation and schooling.

       Frequently whole classes work without supervision - as they will be required to do in the outside world - so the teachers are free to put extra time into study and further course preparation.

       Each curriculum is constantly being revised. As a result of student surveys and requests, Russian, physics, calculus and advanced quality training have been added.

       In the CIP media class, students teach other students. There is no administrator or teacher in the room. Twenty-five student trainers have assumed responsibility for training other students in the quality sciences.

       Staff training receives top priority. Teachers are constantly encouraged to internally challenge and justify each and every learning process. The school has developed two research and development classes, science and technology and media CIP. These continually experiment with new technologies in equipment and human relations.

       Each teacher has his or her own computer, with training in many applications. The school has also pioneered multiple uses for multimedia technology such as laser discs, hypercard applications and presentation software.

       Every student receives a "Stats for Success" handbook. It is used to record homework, weekly plans, organize their time and graph progress. The entire emphasis is on self-discipline and self-motivation. 

    And the success ratio? Mt. Edgecumbe's simple goal is stated boldly: to produce QUALITY individuals. Almost 50 percent of all graduates have entered college and are still there or have graduated - much higher than the national average. There have been hardly any dropouts. And the school is confident that all its students will continue to grow and learn.Says Competitive Times magazine: "Mt. Edgecumbe's innovative teaching methods challenge students and draw raves from business leaders." Adds Tribus: "I wish I could find the same thirst for learning in the rest of the country." 

   Mt. Edgecumbe is, of course, a boarding school, but its TQM and CIP-Kaizen principles have lessons for educational systems at every level - and especially for turning previous "failures" into successes. 

NOTE:  *  Unfortunately the inspirational principal has now died and his Kaizen co-creator has left the school.  It is not pursuing the same program in full.

2. Integrated studies use the world as a classroom

  

 If Mt. Edgecumbe, Alaska, is an unlikely place to start a revolution, the lush, green, heavily-afforested national parks and soaring mountains of New Zealand seem even further removed from the traditional schoolroom. But link them with the latest computer technology, a dedicated team of university innovators and some flexible teachers from Freyberg High School in the small city of Palmerston North, and again the result is surprising. 

   Every innovation has its visionary driving-force. Freyberg's was Dr. Pat Nolan, senior lecturer in education at Massey University on the outskirts of Palmerston North. Massey was originally an "agricultural college" and it is closely linked with several nearby farm research institutes. So its hands-on tradition is a long one. Pat Nolan marries his love of education with a passion for exploring the New Zealand outdoors: its towering volcanic snowfields, clean sparkling rivers and forests rich with native trees and birds. He's also a computer buff, who now heads Massey's Educational Research and Development Center, a pioneer in providing data-based services to other educational institutions. 

   Nolan has put all his passions together in the Freyberg "integrated studies program". But it's no mere dream. Nolan sees it as the kind of alternative educational program that "might go the next step in providing for all high school students the kind of results previously enjoyed by only the top 30 to 40 percent".

  He says "the old method" of high school studies is separated from the real world. "We've all been through the school system. What we've experienced is a compartmentalized or segmented curriculum, where subjects are locked up in their little boxes, with tight little boundaries around them. So we learn mathematics, physics and English separately. Seldom do we see the connection between subjects. Yet it's by linking subjects together and seeing the interconnections that we come to understand the real world better. And that is basically what integration is all about: developing ways of teaching - and experiencing - knowledge in a way that establishes the interconnections in the minds of the students, and has them actually using that knowledge to create new solutions." 

   Similar arguments, of course, have been expressed for many years. In New Zealand alone five separate educational inquiries, from 1943 to 1987, have stressed the benefits of integrated studies.  But many high school principals and teachers have not always been convinced. The best primary school teachers in New Zealand have been "child-centered" facilitators for many years, but many traditional high school and university teachers have been "one-subject lecturers". Integrating several subjects together means change, and change often brings fear and stress.

   But it may well be the computer that forces the "integration" changes that so many reports have urged. Most computer programs of course are very specialized. But every sensible business now integrates many of those programs to solve interconnected problems. A finance director uses computer spreadsheets to compile a company's annual report; a designer uses the same raw database to produce graphics for the same report, and uses other computer programs to produce allied artwork and camera-ready pages. Entire business plans, and quick product changes, now emerge from the bar-codes flashing through thousands of different supermarkets - charting market research trends on suppliers' data bases on the other side of a continent. Customer order-forms are instantly translated into production schedules and raw-material purchase orders.

   Business revolves around integrated specialists, both self-acting and working in groups. The information revolution now integrates that specialist work. And Nolan says that the real world demands changes in traditional subject-by-subject schooling. He believes changes are demanded even more by the shortage of jobs that previously required no skills.

   "In the past," he says, "people who have been relatively unsuccessful at school - relatively unskilled, relatively unknowledgeable - have been able to walk out in days of plenty and pick up a job and do well enough. Those days are now gone - but, not only that, the days of narrow vocational training have also gone."

   So Nolan's integrated studies program has linked Massey University educational research with field-trip study projects, IBM-sponsored computer studies and the New Zealand national high school curriculum. His pilot program started in 1986 with sixth form students at Freyberg. The first integrated studies course combined biology, computer studies, English and geography. The elements were drawn together around a central theme: preservation and management issues confronting New Zealand National Parks. That theme was the common thread that bound the subjects together in a coherent program. Out-of-class field research trips were a major part of the project. In Nolan's words: "These national park field trips confronted students not only with physical adventure and challenge, but generated the experiences, data and information needed to sustain a program of integrated studies for a whole year. Computers also played a central role in supporting the theme; allowing the analysis of large and relatively complex data-sets not normally considered or done at this level. They also allowed extended studies in specific subjects and helped motivate students."

   During that pilot program, students' examination results were checked against a similar group taking the standard high school courses. "We had hoped to demonstrate that integrated study students would do better than those experiencing normal secondary school teaching. And that's precisely what we've been able to accomplish." Because the pilot was with senior students - normally high achievers anyway - Nolan would have been happy to say that the pilot group had done no worse. "But what we were able to show was that their academic performance was significantly better. In English and geography, students scored 20 to 30 marks higher* and in mathematics and science they on average scored ten to 15 marks better."

  For the next three years, a full program was continued with students starting at form 3. Earlier research had shown that four different types of integrated-curriculum approaches could be used. The Freyberg team used all four: to develop student-centered inquiry, practical thinking skills, thematic studies and correlation between subjects.

   The New Zealand high school curriculum also encourages students to develop positive attitudes, knowledge and skills in each subject area. So Freyberg used these as the core of their approach. And they linked that core to the four integrational themes - by out-of-class activities and computer studies.

   "Over the next three years," reports Nolan, "we had out-of-class field trips, as short as one to two hours up to two to three days in junior school and seven to eight days in senior school." One class spent a week on the Wanganui River. But before it went, it split into study-groups. One researched the interconnection between the river and agriculture; another gathered information for an environmental impact report; another prepared to test the river's chemical composition and water-flow; another researched the Maori history of the area. "The whole project was curriculum-driven," says Nolan, "but most activities included challenge, but generated the experiences, data and information needed to sustain a program of integrated studies for a whole year. Computers also played a central role in supporting the theme; allowing the analysis of large and relatively complex data-sets not normally considered or done at this level. They also allowed extended studies in specific subjects and helped motivate students."

   During that pilot program, students' examination results were checked against a similar group taking the standard high school courses. "We had hoped to demonstrate that integrated study students would do better than those experiencing normal secondary school teaching. And that's precisely what we've been able to accomplish." Because the pilot was with senior students - normally high achievers anyway - Nolan would have been happy to say that the pilot group had done no worse. "But what we were able to show was that their academic performance was significantly better. In English and geography, students scored 20 to 30 marks higher* and in mathematics and science they on average scored ten to 15 marks better." 

   For the next three years, a full program was continued with students starting at form 3. Earlier research had shown that four different types of integrated-curriculum approaches could be used. The Freyberg team used all four: to develop student-centered inquiry, practical thinking skills, thematic studies and correlation between subjects.

   The New Zealand high school curriculum also encourages students to develop positive attitudes, knowledge and skills in each subject area. So Freyberg used these as the core of their approach. And they linked that core to the four integrational themes - by out-of-class activities and computer studies.

   "Over the next three years," reports Nolan, "we had out-of-class field trips, as short as one to two hours up to two to three days in junior school and seven to eight days in senior school." One class spent a week on the Wanganui River. But before it went, it split into study-groups. One researched the interconnection between the river and agriculture; another gathered information for an environmental impact report; another prepared to test the river's chemical composition and water-flow; another researched the Maori history of the area. "The whole project was curriculum-driven," says Nolan, "but most activities included adventure science, math and related subjects have been included. "We have no separate computer studies department," says new principal Russell Trethewey, "and computer work and field trips play key parts in all studies. Students revert to the subject curriculum in the third year, to sit national exams, and the results there are also well ahead of the national average."

   Freyberg also has shown the fastest growth in roll numbers of any school in New Zealand's North Island: almost double in four years. 

-- By Gordon Dryden

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