A Deming expert explains that his 14 principles are no recipe but must be combined with the theory of profound knowledge, which poses essential questions and recognizes the importance of human variation, intrinsic motivation, and external rewards. She also debunks grading, formal teacher evaluation, tracking, and decentralized management. (MLH)

After training in the Total Quality Management concept, a suburban Ohio school district created a Deming Users' Group to link agencies, individuals, and ideas. The group has facilitated ongoing school/business collaboration, networking among individuals from diverse school systems, mentoring and cooperative learning activities, and resource…

Total Quality Management Plus (TQM) goes beyond customer satisfaction to consider quality of life, environmental conditions, crime rates, and health and well-being. Steps to integrate such concerns into the TQM process include being ready for challenges, creating a quality system to collect performance data, defining the ideal school and world…

Applying Deming's principles to education represents change in metaphor, not paradigm shift. Exchanging factory metaphor for enlightened corporation metaphor updates business/economics image but perpetuates view of students as raw materials to be processed efficiently. No business metaphor truly aims at improving society as a whole. If production…

Seeds of public education's current failures are found in its past successes (transmitting culture and providing custodial care). Education is experiencing paradigm paralysis because of piecemeal reform approaches, failure to integrate solution ideas, and reductionist, boundary-limiting orientation. The old system is no longer adequate. Total…

In "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization" (1990), Peter Senge shows how educators can achieve meaningful change and transform schools into self-renewing learning organizations. Organizations must develop five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.…

Creating higher, uniformly applied standards for students and teachers without creating clearly understood standards for schools or communities will simply result in another round of blaming the victim. The creation of standard-bearer schools, in partnership with the Center for Leadership in School Reform, attempts to assess the school…

Organization stability can be deeply affected when leadership changes. Frequent leadership turnover is to be expected, though it interferes with project timetables and can drastically disrupt progress. This article offers practical advice for managing leadership transitions effectively. (three references) (MLH)

A reaction to bureaucracy and its inherently authoritarian management and fragmented work styles, work-team organizations broaden and integrate responsibilities while focusing on outcomes. In April 1991, Lake Washington (Washington) School District successfully reorganized its central office staff, building administrators, and support personnel…

Professional study groups have been a dominant feature of the Richmond County (Georgia) Schools' educational improvement efforts since 1987. Study groups offer a structure that turns all individuals into learners eager to assume responsibility for their own learning and that of colleagues and students. The principal's active participation is a key…

Education support structure in the Netherlands is designed to ensure responsiveness to schools' needs and to avoid emergence of self-serving bureaucracy. National Institute for Curriculum Development was founded in 1975 to work with teachers and colleges of education to develop new curricula and instructional materials. Regional agencies located…

In many countries, education legislation embodies contradictory pressures for centralization and decentralization. In the United Kingdom, there is growing government control over policy and direction of schools; schools are also being given more responsibility for resource management. "Moving" schools within Improving the Quality of Education for…

Nonpublic school educational choice proposals are largely derived from monetarist economic and social theory and exemplify right-wing privatization goals. The U.S. health care system has plenty of competition among insurers, hospitals, and doctors; but it is the most expensive, least equitable system in the industrial world. The mystical belief…

The concept of public education is on national trial and is being exploited by interests intending to train our children to be good customers, rather than good citizens. Market terminology cannot express ideals of a free, universal education. The real choice is whether all children will receive an excellent education irrespective of their place of…

Voucher plans are undemocratic and will perpetuate class distinctions and the fragmentation of society. The choice agenda will particularize loyalties rather than encourage a sense of common loyalties among people. The individual parent will be forced to claw and scramble for the benefit of his/her kid only. We should not dismantle democratic…