Dell and performance management
The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is out with a worthwhile report on performance management, one of the foundation’s major investment areas.
The Dell folks think using data conscientiously is a, if not the, key, to bringing about significant improvements in school systems. Personally, I’ve been skeptical of this view for some time. The proliferation of state assessments (and the stacks of resulting data) never generated the wholesale improvements in performance that many of us hoped, so I’m generally leery of new multi-million (billion?) dollar data initiatives that make big promises.
But Dell and other like-minded groups would probably reply that we never saw the results we wanted precisely because we didn’t use the information correctly. If that’s the case and data, via proper performance management, is a/the key, then Dell’s approach deserves greater attention–they are certainly a leader in this field.
The report discusses ways to give teachers real-time information in user-friendly ways. Visually pleasing “student snapshots” provide student-level data and analysis, helping classroom instructors identify emerging problems, evaluate the the efficacy of interventions, and so on.
The report also makes recommendations on how to build the right infrastructure in schools and districts to support performance management, such as developing a culture committed to collecting and using data and assembling the right technology so teachers, principals, and central administrators have the types of information they need. It also provides examples of urban districts headed in this direction.
If you’re interested in data and performance management (concepts embedded throughout the ARRA, including the RTT) or the priorities of this major education philanthropy, give the report a look.
(In the above applies, you might also want to check out this job posting…)
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November 20th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
If kids were raw metal and not living, breathing human beings with all sorts of complex emotions, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and motivations, this would work well. It works brilliantly in manufacturing. The problem is that learning and development are NOT manufacturing, and learning and development (like small-business entrepreneurialism) work best with large doses of freedom, not through tight bureaucratic control. Tight control tends to deeply erode or destroy the second most important natural resource on earth–children’s natural drive to learn and master their environment.
Just as we don’t want Washington giving small business owners “real time” information on what they should do next (Heaven forbid!), learning will be undermined by this kind of controlling Big Brother approach. Learning just doesn’t work like manufacturing.
Note: A new book out indicates that grades are better predictors of college success than either SAT or ACT, because grades incorporate more of the real-world competencies (motivation, organization etc.) that actually matter. Good teachers, even average teachers, can assess better than the tests, and they are already being paid to do it.
We can save the taxpayers billions of dollars by putting standardized testing back where it belongs–as one type of assessment that we use, but which counts for less than 30% of the overall assessment of students.
One of the developers of the original SAT imagined it as a mere complement to other assessments, meaning other teacher-generated assessments. That gets it right.
Now, God Bless Dell for making great and inexpensive computers, but as one former Silicon Valley exec said after switching to education “Education is harder (than business).” One of the core defining weaknesses of American education for the last century is that we built it based on a manufacturing metaphor and so-called “scientific management.” To borrow from the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof, the correct blessing for those who want to bring more “scientific management” to schools is “May the Lord Bless and Keep Them … far from our schools.”
And for those at Dell who don’t understand teaching, we’re using data every second we teach, we have tons of good data already.
As a taxpayer, every time someone says “data-based decision making,” what I hear is “companies profiting from unnecessary and expensive assessments that waste classroom time.” Why waste taxpayer money on this?
November 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Karl,
Can you explain to me how compiling various pieces of information in a single location to make it easier for teachers and principals to access and analyze is a bad thing? Instead of having access to only your own course quizzes you now have data on how the student is doing holsiticly (attendance, grades, tests, prior year performance, etc) and that is a bad thing? Seems to me like this would be helpful.
Sarge
November 21st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Hi Sarge,
What I’ve learned from 27 years in the field and five years studying the accountability movement is that many of the most counterproductive ideas in education hide behind some of the most irresistible sounding language. Who could be against something called “higher standards,” or getting kids “ready to learn” or “scientifically-based teaching methods”? It turns out that each term is Trojan Horse language whose main function is to sneak in what actually is a second-rate approach to education. (I don’t think people are doing something second-rate on purpose, they just have the wrong paradigm of education, just as soldiers marching shoulder-to-shoulder in line across a field toward the enemy turned out to be a second-rate approach for warfare).
As for your central premise, yes, schools need a well-organized system for keeping track of key information on each child. However, just as people don’t need to buy the “Miracle Abdomenizer” to get in shape, they just need to exercise, schools only need pretty basic computers systems and someone who has their eye on the ball. If schools are using a democratic learning community approach—which works better in the long run for the range of outcomes parents and employers value most—then teachers won’t see 120 kids in a day, they will know individual kids well and will rarely need information from the central database. If teachers seem really dependent on outside information to tell how kids are doing and what to do next, that’s a sign that teacher needs more mentoring. If there are a few tips on working with this kid or that, those usually get passed from one teacher to the next, but could be put in database, but again, you don’t need anything fancy for that. Kids already have permanent records. Once the year is underway, it’s whether they are doing well or badly NOW that matters, and where they are NOW in their learning that matters.
The problem with “data-based decision making” as it is usually used these days, is it really means test-based decision making, with whatever the kid can’t do on the test becoming the lesson for the test-driven curriculum tomorrow or next week. This is going on in charter schools and public schools in Cleveland and around the country right now. This kind of bit-by-bit curriculum based on low-level, easily-tested knowledge and skills is a central reason kids get turned off to learning as they go through the grades. It’s boring, kids can’t see the relevance, and they know it’s just “read, regurgitate, forget.” It makes kids cynical about schools, and it disconnects learning from real-life, which is why kids from traditional factory schooling don’t do as well in terms of real-world problem-solving. This is one reason why teacher educator Dorothy Strickland commented that “skills-based education, the kind to which most children of color are subjected, promotes low-level uniformity and subverts intellectual potential.”
What companies are trying to do is cross-market tests and corresponding curricula to districts, and much of the marketing is based on trumped-up fears, not reality. So, you find out that on the Jones vocabulary test that these children don’t know these words that are part of the Jones curriculum for this week (and without which, the curriculum will create failure for these children), and we all get alarmed at the “dreadful gaps” in their knowledge, and then we’re grateful we have the Jones curriculum to fill in these dangerous gaps. So we use their one-use vocabulary workbooks and vocabulary lessons for which we buy all sorts of supplementary teaching materials, and then miraculously, the kids learn (many of) the words that are listed in the “scientifically-based” Jones curriculum, and we think, gee, how effective this Jones series, and aren’t we glad we identified and remediated these awful gaps before it was too late.
The truth is that the test and the assumptions of the Jones curriculum (that we must learn vocabulary in the order the Jones folks made up out of thin air) are what created the perceived crisis and perceived need to know or learn THESE words this week. Like most marketing, we’ve created a perceived need where there is no real need. Extend this example to all the other subjects, and this is what data-based decision-making looks like in the trenches today. Schools even buy materials to teach the 200 most common words. For Heavens sake, why buy anything if those words are so common? Have kids read anything they’re interested in and they’re sure to bump into those words, and if they’re allowed to talk (outlawed in many factory-style schools), then they can ask a friend, ask the teacher, or look up what the word means.
In reality, kids whose love of learning has been kept alive, and who are engaged in meaningful investigations of real-world issues and phenomena, will learn all the vocabulary they’ll ever need, and all their teacher needs is a library card, or a decent school library, or an internet connection. Most teachers have at least two of those three, so all the Jones curriculum materials the district bought are a waste of taxpayer money—and you made kids like learning LESS in the process—which won’t amuse the next teacher who has to teach these kids!
So, the kind of data-based decision-making I’m critiquing is mostly is embraced by people working father from the day-to-day realities of real-children (politicians, CEOs, school administrators). The closer you get to real children (teachers, parents, kids themselves), the more upset people are about NCLB/test-driven education and all the counterproductive things it sets in motion.
There’s a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between the lofty rhetoric of test-driven schooling and the lousy realities it creates in real people’s lives.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Performance management works and is actively used in successful organizatons including schools. My company currently provides these systems for schools. I have designed and used these systems in school districts, with unions, boards, administrators and staff groups.
What did we accomplish? We resoled safety problems, eliminated transportation bottle necks invoving special ed students, improved services to citical technlogy,saved over $10 mm/year, reduced injuries and grievance buy 85%, stopped fraud, eliminated waste, raised productivity and engaged staff in team based imrprovements. I could go on.
Why did they succeed? Positive leadership, open minded employees, training, use of the scientfic methods to solve problems, a vision of continuous improvement and the ability and willingness to assess and measure team and individual progress and accept responsibility for results. These systems make everyone better as long as they are focussed on learning and improvement not punishment and finger pointing.