Education is in dire need of an action plan

There are things we can learn from sports, and some of those lessons can be applied to business and life. But there are limits to sports analogies. Not everything in life, or even in business, is about victories clearly defined by numbers on a scoreboard. And despite the large number of people who believe otherwise, there isn’t a sports quote appropriate to every situation.

There are lessons, too, from private enterprise that can be applied profitably to our public sector efforts – again, if we don’t overload the process with analogies. This relationship could be helpful as we interpret the most recent report from ACT, an organization which tests the academic achievements of high school students and measures their readiness for admission to college level studies.

The 56-page report is an analysis of the test scores of 1.2 million students across the U.S. who took the ACT tests this year. Sadly, the cut-to-the-chase conclusion is that after all the reforms, reports, restructuring, refinancing, politicking, chest-beating and hand-wringing, our high school graduates today aren’t any better prepared for college, or work, than the graduates of 10 years ago. We have achieved a decade of standing still.

Fewer than half our students tested are prepared for college – 22 percent could be considered ready in math, science and English, while another 19 percent were qualified in two out of the those three areas.

Is there anything that the private sector can contribute to the discussion of this report? More specifically, are the management approaches used in the private sector of any value to us in figuring out what we should do to fix the problem?

It isn’t very helpful to say things, like, “This would never happen in the private sector because the market wouldn’t let it happen.” And beyond unhelpful, it is simply wrong – on two counts. First, things just like this actually do happen in the private sector. The market simply covers them over in its litter box and forgets about them. (One of the characteristics of a market is an exquisite disdain for the past.) Second, education is not simply a public sector product line, like canned kumquats, that can be dropped if it doesn’t meet performance expectations.

Many companies in today’s economy commit to long-term projects whose progress is often fitful. Between a project’s beginning and the finished product there are times when lack of progress forces a management review.

A private sector management review of a failing project looks to answer some pretty fundamental questions about the source of the problem. Is it a people problem, a financial problem, a technical problem or a structural problem?

In the case of our public schools, the performance problems are so widespread that a pure people problem seems unlikely. That is not to say that we may not have created some people problems in our schools through unnatural selection a management term referring to the tendency in stressed organizations for mediocre staff to remain while outstanding performers become discouraged and move on. But it doesn’t seem likely that a management reshuffling would produce a turnaround.

Much the same can be said regarding finance as the cause. It would be a difficult sell in any corporate management review to explain how pumping more cash into a project whose unit costs – costs per student in this case – have been rising for decades without visible effect on quality (performance) and are extraordinarily high when compared with competitors (other nations around the world).

So, if it were a private sector review, we are left with two possibilities: technical or structural. On the technical side it is clear that the educational process hasn’t changed all that much since our public schools began here in the 19th century, and that is a problem. But, while computer and Internet technology offers some gleaming possibilities, a private sector assessment would have to count these still as experimental; unproven as to their effect on cost efficiency and performance.

What’s remaining on the table, then, is that it is a structural problem. And here a corporate management team would look at the public schools situation and conclude that we have to examine our commitment to the local school district concept. And a good CEO would say, “OK. But which is it? Do we give them more decision-making authority or less?”

We need to answer that question. And perhaps the best lesson we can draw from the private sector in this situation is the so-called “bias toward action” – the tendency for vital organizations to grasp the need for a decision and make it. The ACT report makes it clear that our public schools strategy isn’t working. We need decisive action, and the sooner the better.

James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes “Business 101,” which appears monthly in The Snohomish County Business Journal.