By this, the critics mean that schools should operate within budgets, "cut out the fat" of wasteful extravagance, and focus upon core competencies…and quit engaging in unproductive activities.
The critics also mean that schools should have every student on grade level at the same time, and that the money allocated for this target is more than adequate. (For schools that cower and ask, "Please a little more, Sir," the answer is "You can be replaced by a more cost effective and efficient model" (of teacher, principal, director, superintendent).
These critics also calculate shrinkage (technical term for lost product) of students (students that fail to graduate on time and within budget) because students are categorized as products.
Sidebar
The shrinkage (loss rate) should include:
- Drop Outs: (School leavers). There is a conflict in the critics' thinking on this issue since they sometimes categorize students as products, and sometimes categorize students as "customers"
- Defects: Students that can't function or perform at grade level at the specific school month that performance is measured
- Theft of Service: Teachers on the dole, drawing and undeserved paycheck because students have not progressed to specification
Parents as Customers
Parents could also be considered customers, as in "The customer is always right." Of course, teachers see this philosophy as administrative "waffling" and lack of support.
The corollary to this belief is, "If parents are always right, then teachers who disagree with them are always wrong."
If students were to be treated as "always right " customers, then classroom management and discipline degrades to "The inmates are in charge of the asylum" level of control.
Sidebar
Teachers should be solicitous in fulfilling each student's learning needs.
What is detrimental is when one student places demands on the classroom system to the detriment of other students. The classroom milieu needs to operate for the benefit, satisfaction and support of all students. All students' rights must be maintained.
Of course, the Special Education needs of some students may require classroom compromise, and adjustments must be made.
What the critics forget is that substandard and defective materials are thrown on a pile by factory-based businesses, then sold for scrap, or, dumped into any convenient, unwatched place that can be found (such as our oceans).
Perhaps our run-schools-as-a-business critics would like to meet the children that they want to discard.
But, back to identifying the "Business" that our school systems should be in.
Sidebar
Classroom Toolkit identified the multiple, multivariate roles that teachers take, and we won't repeat these. Here is the link to that article, Teaching: The Science of the Art
Are schools diploma mills, job training organizations, college prep factories? Or, are our schools total care facilities, holistic personal service organizations or self-improvement agencies?
Are our schools flexible service providers that accede to the wishes of parents, bend to the will of the community, squeeze to the propaganda of the media or contort to the whims of politicians?
Are classrooms screening labs where experimental studies are designed to maximize learning outcomes? Or, are classrooms artists' lofts and environments of free expression, refuges of personal creativity and genius?
But as the Internet boosts efficiency and world-wide communication as it propels progress, business is moving from an Industrial Economy to an Information Economy.
With these economic realities, everything about business changes.
But, does the business of education change with the times and pressures of the real world? Does the curriculum change?
Some items that a competitive, business like school system curriculum would integrate (actually build from the ground up rather than just remodel) include:
- Problem-solving
- Decision-making
- Strategic Planning
- Project Management
- Collaborative Task Group Operations
- Marketing Skills
- Relationship Building
Some things that social engineers who believe that our schools should be operated as a business agree upon include…
- A focus on the job of teaching students
- A mandate for schools to live within the cash flow (abundant budget for what is important, not administrator whims
- To deliver results, not persistent excuses
- To give the "paying public" (customers, clients) what they want. Schools must not tell customers, clients, community members what the schools think that these stakeholders need
- Making innovation and testing high-priorities
- Acting on complaints, making changes that work
- Obeying the Law: Firing ineffective superintendents, administrators, teachers
- Keeping our schools safe. Prosecuting sexual abusers
- Providing sufficient, adequate training and supervision that encourages success
Note:
Efficiency means "doing right things right"
Effectiveness means "doing right things well"
Practical Barriers to "Bottom-Line Thinking"
Schools should heed the bottom line, but should not cower and crawl prostrate at its feet. (Excuse the mixed metaphor. We all know that that a line has ends, but not feet.)
Schools cannot be run as a bottom-line worshiping business. Here are the reasons…
- Businesses follow the 80/20 Rule. That is, businesses focus on the top, profitable markets.
Imagine if we decide to target (and graduate) the top 80% of our students, and let the other, harder to teach, less motivated students flounder. Oh wait! For some of our schools operate with a 60% graduation rate. For these venues 80% would be a over a 130% improvement.
- Businesses drop unprofitable product lines
Businesses quit "making the thing" and quit offering the item or service that the public doesn't want. Oh wait! Aren't we doing the same thing when we drop art, music, drama, health and P. E. classes? Aren't we doing the same thing when we support high school athletics (such as football, basketball, baseball)? Aren't we doing the same thing when we focus upon the public's appetite for "test score improvement" instead of providing a balanced and long-term focus on life-long learning?
- Businesses cut labor costs
Fire them, outplace them, offer retirement bonuses, save funds by a reduction in force… Oh, wait! Don't we offer early retirement incentives to rid the school district operation of costly seniority (long-time on the job) labor.
Of course, we loose lots of institutional intelligence in the process, but schools don't have the money to hire all those out placed folks back as consultants…often for more money than they were making when employed.
- Businesses go to great lengths to avoid litigation
Keep out of court, compromise with criminals when the cost of litigation (or bad public relations) exceeds the cost of the loss. Calculate costs before becoming embroiled in any legal proceedings. Oh wait! Don't we take prudent measures by pretending to offer Special Education students the services that they are "entitled to" by giving their parents everything that they want? Don't we continue to employ ineffective teachers who threaten to bring suit if they are fired? Don't we oust unpopular superintendents and pay them for the remaining years of their contracts (pay for no work), just to be rid of them?
If the mission of our schools is to act like a business, then our schools are performing this task with the noble skills of any bureaucracy.
The Real Mission
The real mission of our schools is to pull off an operation similar in complexity (but without the budget) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space program.
Here, fail-safe, i.e., expensive, multiple backup plans, feats of skill, engineering and an exquisite focus on collaboration account for success. Any margin of error is unacceptable, so every precaution is checked and rechecked to mitigate error.
Of course, fail-safe systems require backup equipment and backup employees. In the case of school districts, for example, what about a private tutor for every student that is "falling behind?"
Expecting "fail-safe systems" with "skimp and save" funding seems like the trait of someone that has been "sniffing moon gas."
If these "run schools as a business" rants typify the pontifications of our elected officials, we might stop and wonder who released them into the wilds inside the Beltway of through the metal detectors of our state capitals.
An Educated Response to Critics
So, the next time that folks say that schools should be run as a business, and do more with the resources that they have; ask them exactly what business they think that our schools should be in.
In a polite way, this simple questioning strategy will expose their ignorance, and, as long as you don't "rub it in," further gentle questioning on your part will make you look "very smart" in their eyes.
But, what do you expect to public to know about education? If school district executives and politicians don't know what it takes to teach children, how can we expect members of the public at large "to have a clue about the educational system that they complain so much about?"
Executive Decision-Makers
Another way that schools fail to mark time with businesses is in the hiring and paying of executive talent.
Can you imagine a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) leading a corporation with $33 million to $1/2 billion USD working for $100K to $600K in salary…with limited fringe benefits, few perks, and zero stock options?
Of course, the school district is not making a profit. All that money coming in is tax money or state and federal warrants.
Well, if schools are not making money, why don't we let them? Schools making as much profit as they could would really be running schools like a business, would it not?
Complex Challenges: Sound Bites too Small
The challenges facing school districts are complex, and often inflicted from outside (such as from politicians and the media). Sound bites prove to be too small a package to communicate these issues, yet sound bites are about the size of the attention span of our decision-making, customer public.
If that public had a clue about the complexities of our educational system, they would give teachers an olive-branch crown to wear and lavish praise at our feet.
Anyone want to bet that this won't happen anytime soon?
