Can quality work for public ed?

[Bob Clements <clementz@kos.net>]

[Moderator's post:  I would refer the referred list discussants to both
the DEN archives, where this topic has come up a number of times, as well
as Myron Tribus' essays at: 
http://deming.ces.clemson.edu/pub/den/deming_tribus.htm for many of the answers...


Our dear eColleague, Dr. John E. Purchase, Ed.D., has picked up the
Deming torch I lit in an education forum some 5 years ago. In the post
copied below, Andrew Coulson, a scholarly correspondent, has expressed
concern for the  applicability of Deming's management lessons,
especially in public education.

Mr. Coulson has recently published a book arguing for a market approach
to education. While I recommended TNE to him about a year ago, his main
diet of Deming and his "followers" comes from snippets of DEN
conversations contextualized for him by Dr. Purchase.

Mr. Coulson should be forgiven any "misread" he might have made. He's
written me, "I'm very interested to know whether TQM proponents have
considered this issue before. Maybe I'll find there's a treatise on it
somewhere that explains the whole thing, or maybe I just misunderstood
the arguments."


I confess, I remain uncomfortable with Deming's "remarks on monopolies"
(TNE:75), but find succor in his introductory Politz quote, "Be thankful
for a good competitor."

Drucker advises "instead of searching for the right organization,
management needs to learn to look for, to develop, to test -- The
organization that fits the task."

"Peter Drucker was clear on this point" too, Deming might well have
written.


I will see that Andrew receives copy of any posts his interests might
generate in the DEN. Anyone might contact him directly.

Some more, some less, regards,

Bob Clements.
--
C. Robert Clements
226 Dundas Street West
Belleville, Ontario
CANADA  K8P 1A8
Tel: 613-966-8157
Fax: 520-223-3027

**********

   From: A_Coulson <A_Coulson@EMAIL.MSN.COM>
     To: EDUCAN@ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
Subject: Re: Gedanke-TQM in Schools
   Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 20:24:36 -0800

I recently suggested that implanting excellent practices into a public
school system is likely to be only a temporary solution, given the many
historical examples of good public school practices being displaced over
time by worse ones.

John Purchase replied, in essence, that this would not happen if public
schooling were to adopt Total Quality Management.

A similar thread was sewn on this forum more than a year ago, and having
been unfamiliar with Deming's work at the time, I decided to give it
look. I read a little of Deming's own later work, and some pieces by his
followers. It seemed to me that they had many good ideas when it came to
the management of individual firms. I could see how these ideas might
bring about healthy change within an organization.

But then they lost me. Without even seeming to realize the great leap
they were making, they generalized their TQM principles to apply not
just to an individual organization operating within a competitive,
consumer-driven marketplace, but to entire industries. Absolutely no
cognizance was taken, in the works I read, of the stunning difference
between an individual enterprise competing for market share and an
entire industry of competing enterprises. In fact, the implication
seemed to be that competitive markets were an outdated concept, and that
centrally planned TQM adopted on an industry-wide basis would raise
productivity and quality to new heights. (I would cite the books in
question, but it's been more than a year and they are currently in boxes
in a storage facility).

Perhaps I misread these works. I would like to think so. John: Do any
TQM proponents really think that their model is as applicable to legally
protected government monopolies such as public schooling as it is to
individual enterprises fighting for survival in competitive markets? If
so, on what evidence do they base this generalization? If not, I don't
see any value in TQM until such time as there is a competitive market in
education. At that time, I suspect schools adopting TQM would perform
very well.

In response to my suggestion that our whole approach to education is in
need of redesign, John commented:

> The idea of redesigning,  I suspect Schenkat would say,
> is Customary thinking, not Transformational.
> Redesign is simply a new boss coming in...

My [error]. I had incorrectly assumed that what I meant by "redesign"
would be clear from my previous postings to EDUCAN. More precisely, my
conclusion is that the public's interests (both societal and
individual)  will best be served by phasing in a competitive, largely
for-profit education industry driven by the demands of families and
supplemented with financial assistance for those with limited incomes.
So far, none of my critics have described this as "customary thinking."
More typically they think I'm on drugs (see the review of "Market
Education" in the "History of Education Quarterly" at
http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/lugg1.htm ).

Best,
Andrew

Andrew J. Coulson
Editor, www.SchoolChoices.org
p.s. (I am not on drugs, unless you count beer, eh.)
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