Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 91

© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).DOI: 10.1002/tqem.20031

Jeff Weinrach

THE BUSINESS OF EQM

The Business of Educating

Even though this column is entitled “The Busi-

ness of EQM,” I want to stray a bit this time and

discuss quality management in the educational

setting.

I have heard the absurd analogy that students

are like parts in an assembly line. But that is not

why I am addressing this topic.

Instead, I decided to discuss it because schools

and school districts are now beginning to em-

brace quality and performance principles in a

manner similar to the way businesses have been

embracing them for years. And environmental

quality management is going along for the ride,

as it should.

Quality Goes to SchoolJust as businesses must be accountable to

their customers and stockholders, schools have to

be accountable to parents and taxpayers (assum-

ing the schools are publicly funded institutions).

They also have to be accountable to their stu-

dents, even if students themselves do not think

in these terms. New federal requirements such as

“No Child Left Behind” in effect hold schools ac-

countable for student achievement.

As schools find that they need to address ac-

countability, educational leaders and administra-

tors are beginning to investigate quality ap-

proaches as a path toward performance

improvement.

Quality practitioners have responded to this

growing interest. For example, the Baldrige Crite-

ria for Performance Excellence started addressing

educational issues several years ago as schools

began looking toward the Baldrige approach for

school and student improvement. Similarly, some

school districts have started to adopt ISO 9000 as

their quality approach.

From Boardroom to ClassroomThe formal adoption of quality principles in

educational settings is certainly an interesting de-

velopment, especially for those of us who are try-

ing to understand how quality approaches can

work in “non-traditional” settings.

It is also interesting to note that schools and

school districts that deploy these approaches

often attract considerable support from their

local business communities. Business leaders gen-

erally are already familiar with quality ap-

proaches—and they also have a vested interest in

the quality of their local schools.

Similarly, environmental quality is entering

educational settings in the same way that it is en-

tering business settings—though a bit more

slowly and less formally. This is in part because

there is less regulatory incentive for schools to

pursue environmental quality.

Nonetheless, as is the case with many busi-

nesses, environmental quality is increasingly

being promoted in educational settings because it

is the right thing to do, even if it is not actually

required by regulation.

Jeff Weinrach92 / Autumn 2004 / Environmental Quality Management

The Role of StudentsStudents play an interesting—and pivotal—

role in educational quality deployment.

Students certainly are not like parts in an as-

sembly line, although I can see why quality prac-

titioners use this analogy quite often to explain

the correlations between manufacturing and edu-

cation. Rather, students are an integral part of the

overall system. In effect, they are part “product,”

part worker, and part customer.

The “worker” part is perhaps the most novel

aspect of quality deployment in the educational

setting. In schools that embrace quality princi-

ples in education, students often take on more

responsibilities in the

classroom. In such

schools, classrooms

become “learning-

centered” (as opposed

to “teaching-cen-

tered”) environments.

Students also take

on more responsibility

for managing the

classroom. They maintain the classroom environ-

ment, monitor one another, and measure class-

room results.

How Teachers BenefitTeachers—who otherwise often are over-

whelmed with their classroom responsibilities—

find that students are genuinely interested in

monitoring classroom performance with relevant

data, and using such data to improve.

Students generally like visual images, and

classroom data often are displayed on the walls in

picture form to show how the class is performing.

When teachers see how much students enjoy

these “quality” activities—and how much they

pay attention to the data that are being col-

lected—it becomes clearer to the teachers that

students are more interested in learning, and that

they are becoming better students for it.

Systems ThinkingStudents also often seem to understand “sys-

tems thinking” more easily than do their adult

counterparts. I have always contended that the

TV/video game age has been primarily detrimen-

tal to our children. But at least one positive seems

to come from “viewing” rather than “reading”:

Children can often see an entire ensemble in

front of them, as opposed to having to scan with

their eyes.

I don’t believe that it is just hand-eye coordi-

nation that makes children better at video games

than adults. It is their ability, in my opinion, to

assimilate the full picture in front of them faster

than adults can. As a result, students can often

understand the principles of systems more effort-

lessly than adults, and can be more innovative in

thinking about system improvement.

Schools that view students only as their

“product” and “customers”—and not as work-

ers—thus are missing a great opportunity for sig-

nificant improvement.

Quality in the CurriculumAn interesting development in the deploy-

ment of environmental quality in school settings

is how it aligns with the educational curriculum.

Schools now see environmental quality as a fun-

damental principle. Thus, today’s students learn

about environmental quality—and how to im-

prove it—from an early age because they are pres-

ent in the school setting, and are the primary re-

cipients of the school’s educational offerings.

Typically, other quality-related topics are not

formally introduced into the curriculum until

college. But environmental quality can be intro-

duced as early as preschool—with concepts such

as recycling, for example.

An interesting development in thedeployment of environmentalquality in school settings is how italigns with the educationalcurriculum.

Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 93The Business of EQM

Learning what works well, and why. Learning

how things impact one another. Learning how

teamwork improves an organization. Learning

how to measure performance.

It is no coincidence that as the business world

becomes more aware of quality principles, our ed-

ucational systems are also making the transition

from teaching-centered to learning-centered in-

stitutions. Both are doing so because they see bet-

ter results from “quality” systems.

In the Baldrige Education Criteria, one of the

“core values” (basically, best practices) discussed

is the notion of “learning-centered education.”

Interestingly, the comparable core value from

the Baldrige Business Criteria is “customer-

driven excellence.” This makes perfect sense,

don’t you think?

As a result, we may find over time that envi-

ronmental quality is easier to deploy in school

settings than is organizational quality—and that

students are able to take lessons learned from en-

vironmental quality and use them throughout

their lives. What an exciting opportunity we have

in front of us!

Quality and Education: The LearningCombination

Quality principles do not fit easily into

command-and-control environments, where we are

simply told what to do. In order to flourish, quality

principles need a more flexible setting, where inno-

vation and understanding are encouraged.

This is in part because quality systems usually

involve a significant component of learning:

Jeff Weinrach, PhD, is president of Q-Network, Inc., an environmental management and quality systems consulting com-pany. He can be reached at jbwein@nmia.com.