Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Continuous improvement and workload

Edclick provides web-based applications for continuous improvement in education

Here's a suggestion for improving education: just make teachers work harder and work longer. And while we're at it, let's cut budgets, cut their pay and threaten them with dismissal if things don't improve. That approach, which I've heard from a number of politicians over the past year, is absent any actual ideas of how to improve education and demonstrates an appauling lack of respect for teachers. Let's agree that that is the wrong approach.

In this respect, teachers are no different from those in other professions and other sectors of the economy. Provide teachers with an environment where their professional expertise is respected, where the administration is clearly focused on excellence and backs that up with inspiring leadership and where teachers are given the opportunity to improve their skills and their outcomes. Those elements improve motivation and performance.

The history of industry over the past hundred years is a story of improved productivity and improved quality. The improvements didn't come from making workers work harder, but by making them more efficient and developing better tools and work processes. This was done while worker hours were reduced, not increased. The history of the improvement of service businesses has been a story of improved consistency and quality, not through working harder or longer but through better tools and processes. This can be done. This has been done. We know how to do it.

Improvements to education that require teachers to work longer hours are going in the wrong direction. We want educators to have better outcomes while reducing their workload. We will work toward better outcomes and greater efficiency through one small improvement upon another, accumulating over time.

Ask yourself: What small change could I make that would save me five minutes per day?

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Keywords: continuous improvement