Transforming Public Education: Let’s Do Something Together
Waiting in Houston Hobby International Airport, I was fondly remembering my visit with Jack in his home a month earlier. I was scheduled to visit him that afternoon. Instead, with a sudden turn of events, he passed away two days earlier. The Houston Chronicle had a great story on their front page celebrating his remarkable life. Jack, and APQC he founded, are international leaders in benchmarking and sharing of documented best practices. We cannot get better as a system and continuously improve performance if we don’t know what works.
My colleague Joy and I are excited and looking forward to presenting our ideas on how we can strengthen public schools and communities across the United States. This past year, I have had the privilege to learn a lot about the educational environment in Texas. They have great data statewide on four key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs provide actionable numbers to benchmark student performance. Their professional learning community is unparalleled. Their policymakers are committed to ensuring Texas becomes a “national leader in preparing students for postsecondary success.”
We use data from large school districts on the four KPIs to frame our conversation. We should all care about how schools are preparing children for the future. We know we can get good insights on student performance by starting with “district benchmarking.” Check it out and stay tuned . . .
To really see what Dr. Balasubramanian is describing, be sure to click on the links in blue. The information and demonstrations in these links is enlightening and impressive. Clicking on each dot in the “district benchmarking” allows you to see and begin to analyze the relationships between growth and achievement as well as the performance gaps and the increments of change from one year to the next. They are not what we hope for in systemic continuous improvement efforts across a district. Therefore, we are going to present “Transforming Public Education: Let’s Do Something Together” at APQC in Houston October 5. We invite you to attend and participate in this important discussion.