Turning to the school of management

Efficiency

As is the case with pursuing innovative organization structures, schools must also begin the active management of their operations by implementing systems of greater awareness to engage students.

Metrics

10.1 The central means for measuring a school’s performance will be through several standard metrics compared across all schools. School effectiveness will be measured using the metric of:

[Budget per child] divided by [Percentage of students who meet or exceed standards / percentage of satisfaction]

The metric is highly influenced by the ideal that performance is rightly only one portion of a school’s success, and that an increase in budget is irrelevant for political ends. The denominators can easily be interchanged with other measurements relevant to the specific school.

For example, a school system with a budget of $12,500 per pupil is divided by one-hundred percent of students at or above expectations and a level of one percent happiness (a measure of students and teachers satisfied with their school). The result is 125. In another instance, a school with the same budget with only one-percent of expectations and one-hundred percent of happiness will achieve a tally of 1.25.

The essence is the degree of effectiveness—in example one, the school may be said to be one-percent effective, and in example two, ninety-nine percent ineffective. From another perspective, in the former example, the school system is demanding too much from the car engine, and in the latter, there is an excess of capacity.

Each school’s score would be plotted—with the goal of being one-hundred percent effective. Scores are calibrated from right to left by demanding what more can we demand of our children? And from left to right by asking what more can we do for you? One may speculate that public schools in current form would tend towards the left (high expectations, minimal liberties), Montessori schools to the right (giving too much while demanding too little), and private schools gravitating towards the center.

10.2 Schools should also pay a significant focus on measuring the allocation of their teacher’s time—emphasis placed on developing engaging lesson plans versus the burden of bureaucratic duties, including grading papers.
10.3 Secondary metrics include dollars spent per child per percentage scored, et al.

Deep tracking

10.4 Due to the significant importance of elementary and initial secondary education in ultimate outcomes, schools will be held to account to some degree on the performance of past pupils. This data would factor minimally in a school’s funding due to the array of uncontrollable factors.

10.5 Statistics of interest for deep tracking measurements will be the percentage of an elementary and middle school’s students that continue on to college, graduation rates, and improvements in performance.

Children in bloom

10.6 Indeed, some schools will be so emboldened that they will take their measurements even further into the classroom by assessing their level of interest and engagement in the course as well as rating the teacher. Whether taken as surveys taken at the end of class or other means, a fuller sense of the student’s environment becomes available. Then it is a matter of action.