Issue #6: There has been a misuse of commonly understood terminology. This becomes an issue during presentations when the audience hears a term such as “pilot” and thinks the board has implemented a process that is conventionally thought to have baselines, quantifiable measures, desired outcomes, checks, balances, and so, when in fact a “pilot” program practiced by the BOE bears little resemblance to such an undertaking.
Based on the Board of Education’s own guidelines, a pilot program should have quantifiable, measurable goals. The BOE did not publicly present any type of quantifiable, measurable goals and instead used emotional, customer satisfaction, and customer demand measures based on one simple question: “Do you want full-day Kindergarten?”
-
The Administration, with the apparent support of the BOE, actually ran a phased implementation of full-day Kindergarten, which bares little resemblance to a pilot.
-
Although it is more complex than this summarizing definition, the Deming Cycle is “an iterative four-step problem-solving process typically used in business process improvement.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deming_Cycle for more information and informative graphics.
-
The Deming Cycle is also known as the “PDCA Cycle”:
-
Plan
-
Do
-
Check
-
Action
-
-
A summary of the Deming/PDCA cycle is:
PLAN stage involves analyzing the current situation, gathering data, and developing ways to make improvements.
DO stage involves testing alternatives experimentally in a laboratory establishing a pilot process, or trying it out with small number of customers.
CHECK stage requires determining whether the trial or process is working as intended, whether any revisions are needed, or whether is should be scrapped.
ACT stage focuses on implementing the process within the organization or with its customers and suppliers.
-
The BOE’s Improved Learning Outcomes for All Students logo that appears on their Strategy Map bears a striking resemblance to the Deming logo. Except there is a linguistic alteration: the Deming “Plan” is like the BOE’s “Plan;” the Deming “Do” is like the BOE’s “Instruct;” the Deming “Check” is like the BOE’s “Analyze;” and the Deming “Act” is replaced with the BOE’s “Think”.
-
Creating a logo that models such a commonly-accepted and widely-known process improvement model, such as Deming/PDCA implies to the audience that there is – and has been – a rigorous process followed for a pilot project.
-
Not only was the Deming/PDCA process not followed by the Superintendent, there are serious concerns over replacing the widely accepted “Act” (sometimes even referred to as “ReAct”) step with “Think”.
-
Simulation of the Deming/PDCA logo and/or any implication that its process is being followed might be giving a false impression to both parents and the voting public that the Superintendent has done their homework.