Vana Prewitt makes an excellent case for use of something like the
Balanced Scorecard for evaluating schools. I, too, am a fan of this
methodology. I don't recommend that clients slavishly follow the
prescriptions, but the general idea that there are more things of
importance to measure and evaluate than just financial outcomes (or
whatever their favorite "bottom line" outcomes are) is very powerful.
I have one thing to add and one thing to take issue with.
1. I'd like to suggest that one excellent way to truly know what should
be measured in a system is to build a system dynamics model of the system.
The information requirements jump out at you when you analyze such a
model. Much gnashing of teeth and much wasted effort (and money) could be
saved if one first built such a model then decided what information was
needed to "run" it. As a way of identifying the minimal set of
information requirements (that information with the highest leverage for
affecting outcomes) I know of nothing better.
2. My issue has to do with Vana's apparent assumption that "the customer"
for public education is the student. At least, that's what I read when
she writes:
>With education, real customer satisfaction occurs 10, 20, 30 or more years
>down the road of experience...
Now, I'm very supportive of considering the student as a customer. If
only schools took that notion as seriously as businesses do, many of their
problems would go away. However, there are other customers whose needs
must be served (nearly) as much as the students, and some of the most
important of them have measurable outcomes that are much closer than 10
years.
I'm thinking, particularly, about employers -- the organizations who hire
students right out of school and try to put them to meaningful and
productive work. They know almost instantly after hiring how well
educated the students were. This is a feedback loop that's short enough
to be helpfully used in educational improvement.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>