You are asked by the superintendent to draft a plan to implement TQM into your school system

EDUL 6015 Pamela Barnett

Total Quality Management Assignment #3

You are asked by the superintendent to draft a plan to implement TQM into your school system. The superintendent asked that the plan be very comprehensive in scope, but that it must include the following items:

Specify what rewards or value TQM has for principals and teachers. (An important part of change theory is that if change is to be successful, people must know "what’s in it for me" and must like the reward outcome.)

The demand of government mandates to achieve adequate yearly progress places more pressures on our school than ever before to produce a "quality product". As pressures continue to increase, resources and raw materials for the job are often found to be deficient. Under the increased pressure, it seems our principals’ and teachers’ only option to achieve the required level of performance is by putting more effort and time in continuing to do what we are already doing—whether it has the potential to produce the desired results or not.

Since TQM provides management practices, continuous improvement efforts and human-relations skills and techniques (George, 1992), it can be the vehicle by which an organization can achieve its highest potential. TQM entails preventive and prescriptive measures in the pursuit to produce quality products. Error is reduced in the workplace as it develops into a supportive, productive and non-threatening environment through continuous cycles of improvement. TQM is a process to identify and remove obstacles to achieving and maintaining good performance.

The basic rewards and value TQM has for our principals and teachers include:

TQM requires the efforts and abilities of each individual of the organization. It reinforces the fact that what teachers think and do matters. TQM can validate the efforts of every faculty and staff member. It requires a team approach in which all members are required to participate. This decreases the possibility of teachers functioning in isolation. TQM requires open communication and gives a voice to teachers. Teachers are empowered in the process of improvement.

TQM provides our principals an organized system and plan to bring abut continuous improvement in our organization using the knowledge and talents of the entire organization. TQM identifies what is wrong in our organization and develops methods to better utilize resources such as funds and time.

TQM is a way of obtaining what we all want—Excellence in Education.

Some specific rewards and value TQM has for our principals and teachers include:

TQM will identify and eliminate the ‘donkey work’ in teachers’ daily routines. It will provide more efficient use of resources and eliminate redundant and exhausting work. For example, because our office staff has not been sufficiently trained on the SASI record system, we have to hand enter grades from our Integrade Pro grade books into SASI for report cards and progress reports to be printed. Grades should be exported into this system but because of the lack of adequate training, our staff is unable to do this. Therefore, teachers have to do it by hand. Frequently, teachers find errors on students’ report cards that have to be corrected by hand or reprinted at the last minute before a PTO meeting. Training on SASSI will allow this record keeping system to be correctly and fully utilized. This would remove a frustrating and unnecessary workload off of teachers.

TQM will provide a prioritization of expenditures that will provide a better utilization of funds to impact student performance. At various intervals, teachers are given a dollar amount that they have to spend on materials, equipment and resources for the classroom. We have a limited amount of time to decide and complete our requisition forms to spend the small amount of funds. Because of the time constraints and the lack of planning, we too often end up with inadequate and ineffective resources.

TQM will also provide a means to enhance the utilization of the resources of time and personnel. At our school, scheduling of classes and teaching assignments revolve around Band, PE, and Exploratory classes. Sharing our band teacher with the high school requires us to offer band at specific periods of the day. Also, our PE/Exploratory teachers have to teach some social studies classes and this also is used as a deciding factor on the scheduling of classes. This year 7^th grade reading is taught in four class periods so our reading teacher could pick up a social studies class. This increases the number of students in each reading class and requires our reading teacher to plan and focus on two preparations. Many teachers do not feel this is the optimal scheduling and content area assignments especially when reading scores are used to determine adequate yearly progress.

TQM will identify areas of weakness for personnel so training and staff development can be employed to develop skills and resources necessary for success. Our school has moved to an inclusion model for our special education students. This model has been implemented without training and teachers are at odds on how to correctly apply the model to the teaching setting. Too often the special education teacher becomes an observer or disciplinarian to the regular classroom teacher. Resources and talents are not being efficiently engaged in our situation.

How will you get principals to know that "something is wrong?" What evidence will you provide to support your argument?

Data on principal, teacher, student, parent and community perceptions of the school will be collected through surveys and random follow-up interviews. This will provide informal feedback on how the school is functioning. Longitudinal standardized test scores and benchmark exam scores will be analyzed to look for trends of strengths and weaknesses. The success and the dropout rate of our students once they reach high school will be examined. Our local school council will be surveyed and interviewed to collected information. These methods will provide detailed documentation of how the school is performing and where weaknesses exist. It will pinpoint what stakeholders are concerned about.

Which of the TQM principles will you include in your implementation plan? That is, will you use Deming, Crosby, Juran, or a mixture of two or three of these theorists? List the principles you choose, the author of the principles, and state why you chose the principles.

I would use Crosby’s fourteen-step program in my implementation plan because it is a "well-structured, stage-by-stage development approach to achieving organizational quality" (Weller). I believe this program would incrementally provide success that would help serve as a motivator and encourage stakeholders to ‘buy in’ to the TQM process. I agree with Crosby that quality is the responsibility of everyone and that quality achievement can be measured and its progress evaluated even though it is an endless cycle. I also believe the principles of Deming and Juran could work, but Crosby’s "no-nonsense approach to achieving quality and his basic theme of zero-defects" (Weller) parallels with the No Child Left Behind philosophy. The stage-by-stage development approach will not overwhelm our already beleaguered faculty and staff. Since Crosby’s fourteen-step program is a holistic approach to TQM I would use all of the fourteen steps in some form or variation.

Step 1: Management Commitment. I would have the leadership of our school delineate in writing their commitment and their expectation of all stakeholders to commit to quality improvement. This would be shared with all stakeholders.

Step 2: Quality Improvement. Our school already has team/grade chairs in place. Their duties would also include overseeing quality improvement implementation.

Step 3: Quality Measurement. Quality measurement would need to be developed for the various areas in our organization. There would need to be an emphasis on quality measurement of instructional time during the regular school day, tutoring and intersessions (instructional time for at risk students during school holidays).

Step 4: Cost of Quality Evaluation. As an organization we need to know that we are getting the most ‘bang for our bucks’ for our various programs such as after school tutoring and intersessions.

Step 5: Quality Awareness. In our school we are all aware of the repercussions of not making Academic Yearly Progress and being placed on the Needs Improvement list. We would need to make all stakeholders aware of our goals for quality improvement and the results of not achieving this goal.

Step 6: Corrective Action. As an organization we would need to use the information generated from steps 3 and 4 as well as information gathered from stakeholders to design and implement corrective action.

Step 7: Zero-Defects Planning. A committee would be formed to design a zero defects program for our organization, programs and processes. Although we cannot control zero defects in our ‘raw material’ we can impact zero defects in our school organization.

Step 8: Supervisory Training. All grade chairs would be trained to fulfill their roles in the TQM process.

Step 9: Zero-Defects Day. A faculty meeting would be earmarked to ensure that all members of our school know and understand the new performance standards.

Step 10: Goal Setting. Grade level and content level meetings would be used to establish group improvement goals that are attainable and specific to their individual and group roles.

Step 11: Error Cause Removal. A clear method of reporting and correcting problems and errors would be established. Teachers and staff would have alternative routes to express concerns, problems and errors if there is a breakdown or lack of solutions.

Step 12: Recognition. Recognition would be solicited from all stakeholders. Principals, teachers, students, parents, and community members can provide recognition for the school, faculty and staff. This recognition would be published on the DAB (daily announcement board) and in our local newspaper.

Step 13: Quality Councils. Our councils would meet to ensure that communication throughout our school is working efficiently. The councils would ensure that all ‘voices’ are heard and addressed.

Step 14: Do It All Over Again. This would be necessary at our school due to the new teachers that come on board. It would also prevent veteran teachers from falling into a rut and losing their edge in our commitment to quality improvement. Also other stakeholders would need to be revitalized in our pursuit of quality improvement.

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