Expunging Myths from The Classrooom

[anorlunda]

Hard to argue with improvement. A big problem is establishing a metric. All the teachers I know think that "no child left behind" standardized testing is worse than nothing. I don't have an answer.

Good for you. I'm not advocating pushing anything down the throats of educators other than a culture dedicated to improvement of the whole industry, not just one one teacher at a time.

I also believe it to be common sense that the low hanging fruit along the path to improvement are the worst practices and practitioners. I expect that educators know what and who they are.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I see the mission of six-sigma to create top down pressure to improve the process. Those who say, "We like is the way it is." are expressing resistance to improvement. Six-sigma attempts to create a culture which values quality and constant improvement.

I see the lesson of ISO 9000 to be the need for external definitions of best practices and quality standards. Internally generated goals are too easily converted to softballs.

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Volkswagon AG is ISO 9000 certified and uses lean six-sigma. How'd that work out?

None of those Total Quality Management devices are able to prevent errors- they simply establish a managerial mechanism by which errors can be back-tracked and (hopefully) not repeated. It is wholly unclear how to apply TQM to education.

 

[WWGD]

Volkswagon AG is ISO 9000 certified and uses lean six-sigma. How'd that work out?

None of those Total Quality Management devices are able to prevent errors- they simply establish a managerial mechanism by which errors can be back-tracked and (hopefully) not repeated. It is wholly unclear how to apply TQM to education.

Seems unfair to expect six-sigma to do something it is not intended to do -- prevent corruption, lying, etc. And you need to start at some point thinking how to implement six-sigma in different areas, or conclude it should not be applied in it/ to it.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Seems unfair to expect six-sigma to do something it is not intended to do -- prevent corruption, lying, etc. And you need to start at some point thinking how to implement six-sigma in different areas, or conclude it should not be applied in it/ to it.

The claim was made the TQM measures could be applied to education with the goal of improving the end product. TQM is not concerned with that (clearly).

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Volkswagon AG is ISO 9000 certified and uses lean six-sigma. How'd that work out?

None of those Total Quality Management devices are able to prevent errors- they simply establish a managerial mechanism by which errors can be back-tracked and (hopefully) not repeated. It is wholly unclear how to apply TQM to education.

I think we first need a way to conduct recalls in education.

Even in the widespread, long term fraud at UNC, there was not even a mention of recalling or undoing college credit that was fraudulently awarded to student athletes. Until you are willing recall and fix the defective product, there is no real benefit to tracking the errors.

Grad schools long ago stopped believing grades and course credit as a reliable indicator of ability to succeed. It won't be long until companies that really need competence are implementing their own exams or outsourcing testing to an independent authority.