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Implementation of performance indicators for the district office of the Dos Palos -Oro Loma Joint Unified School District

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Implementation of performance indicators for the district office of the Dos Palos -Oro Loma Joint Unified School District

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Content IMPLEMENTATION OF PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR THE
DISTRICT OFFICE OF THE DOS PALOS-ORO LOMA
JOINT UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
by
Brian William Walker
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2005
Copyright 2005 Brian William Walker
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UMI Number: 3180496
Copyright 2005 by
Walker, Brian William
All rights reserved.
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ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The start of a quality journey requires the help, support and the
understanding of many people. I have been fortunate here in the Dos Palos-Oro
Loma Joint Unified School District to have encountered such conditions and there
are many to thank.
I must mention the University of Southern California, and particularly the
Rossier School Education, who provided me this opportunity. But more than that,
the staff has shown great patience and has allowed me to explore many paths
before settling upon this one. I specifically want to thank Debbie Chang who
opened doors when I thought they were closed and worked tirelessly to push my
paperwork through when it was needed.
Motivation is a key factor in completing a project like this and I had two
great motivators. Dr. Guadalupe Solis never let me forget that I had invested a
serious amount of time into the doctorate and that I should finish. Dr. Charles
Martin served as a role model on how it could be done when the commitment was
made; and forever the coach, his tips and suggestions did come in handy.
I cannot say enough about the staff here in Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint
Unified School District. Never once did they shy away from the brutal facts and
they were willing to work hard at improving performance. Likewise, the
governing board recognizes the value of professional growth and consistently
supports all staff in obtaining it.
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iii
I am blessed to have two mentors who, although are very different, have
each been very influential in my development as a leader. Mr. Edward Butler
welcomed challenges and was willing to change the world if it was “good for
kids.” Dr. Robert Fore was a calm and steadfast leader whose character was
above reproach. His vision not only moved this district but also the entire county.
It was Dr. Fore who first introduced me to the Malcolm Baldrige Performance
Excellence in Education Criteria (Blazey, Davidson, & Evans, 2003) and the
quality principles in education.
Dr. Dennis Hocevar has been everything a dissertation chairman should
be. His willingness to accept action research and make it work was invaluable.
He provided feedback that improved each draft and was always available to
answer even the most ridiculous questions. Dr. Carl Cohn and Dr. Glen Thomas,
whom also served on my dissertation committee, traveled around the state and
shared their valuable time to help me complete this project.
I have the good fortune of working everyday with Mrs. Donna Buie. She
has read every word multiple times and has made many suggestions that have
greatly improved this project. She has protected my time, helped staff with their
questions, and has been a great general manager of this project.
I have saved my last and most special thank you for my family. My mom
and my dad who instilled in me the attitude that it is not necessarily talent that
leads to accomplishments, rather it’s hard work; my children who were very
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understanding during those times I could not go outside and throw the ball; and
most significantly my wife Shelly. After 20 years of marriage she continues to
step up to the plate and meet everyone’s needs as I undertake yet another
professional responsibility. She has the unique ability to keep me grounded and
none of this would be possible without her.
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V
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................................................................ii
LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................ vii
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................viii
Chapter
1. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS...................................... 1
2. ACTION PLAN........................................................................................ 13
3. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE..........................................................19
4. PROBLEM AWARENESS AND DATA COLLECTION...................33
5. INTERVENTION DESCRIPTION........................................................ 44
6. RESULTS, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS................51
SELECTED REFERENCES...............................................................................65
Appendices
A. PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK SURVEY PARTICIPANTS.............71
B. 2003-2004 BOARD PRIORITIES AND OBJECTIVES............................72
C. PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE
CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION DEPARTMENT 2003-2004............. . 74
D. PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE FISCAL
DEPARTMENT 2003-2004.........................................................................76
E. PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE HUMAN
RESOURCE DEPARTMENT 2003-2004....................................................77
F. SURVEY LETTER........................................................................................ 78
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v i
G. SCORING RUBRIC FOR THE PERFORMANCE
BENCHMARK SURVEY............................................................................ 80
H. PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK SURVEY.............................................81
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1. Action Plan Steps and How Steps are Interrelated...................................... 13
2. Overall Percent Scores by Items 1.1 to 1.16................................................36
3. Overall Percent Scores by Items 2.1 to 2.6..................................................37
4. Comparison Average Scores of District Personnel and Principals,
Items 1.1 to 1.16..............................................................................................41
5. Comparison Average Scores of District Office Personnel and
Principals, Items 2.1 to 2.6.............................................................................41
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ABSTRACT
viii
The age of accountability has arrived in public education. The
performance of students, schools, districts, and states is being measured both at
the state level and federal level like never before. However, within the district
office of the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District, the various
departments do not have a means to measure their own performance. This action
research study analyzed this problem using the Clark and Estes (2002) gap
analysis in which current performance is benchmarked against desired
performance.
For the purposes of this study, the Malcolm Baldrige Performance
Excellence in Education Criteria were selected as the benchmarks. The district-
level managers and the site level administrators responded to a behaviorally
anchored survey tool that provided them data required for problem awareness.
The survey data substantiated the gap analysis in revealing specific gaps between
current performance and benchmarked performance. A nine step continuous
improvement cycle, based on the quality principles found in the Baldrige criteria,
was selected as the intervention methodology. The Baldrige in Education Center
and the Association for California School Administrators provided consultants to
work with our managers and administrators to understand the performance gaps
and create action plans to decrease the gaps. The results of the intervention were
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ix
measured using information gathered from interviews, document reviews, and
observations.
From the triangulation of the information, four changes were identified
that would impact the previously diagnosed performance gaps. First, was the
notable increase in the use of hard data to justify decisions on all levels. Second,
the annual performance indicators for each department were measurable and more
aligned to the district goals. Third, managers began to examine their processes
when problems or employee issues became apparent. Fourth, the use of quality
tools by managers improved the efficiency of our meeting and decision making
processes. These results prompted several recommendations including the
re-writing and alignment of our job descriptions to our performance evaluations
and selected staff development to support those needs identified in the
evaluations.
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CHAPTER 1
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The public schools within the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School
District, as well as those in the broader context of American society, face
unprecedented challenges to the current educational model of No Child Left
Behind.
Public schools are increasingly expected to compensate for the shifts in
society and family that effect children: changes in family structure,
rapidly shifting trends in television and popular culture, commercialism
without end, poverty and the inadequate nutrition and health care that go
with it, violence, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and
incessant social upheaval. (Senge, 2000, pp. 9-10)
Despite forces that are beyond our control, a remarkable finding has
emerged about schools and organizations that succeed. They are concerned with
processes only insofar as these processes affect results (Brigham, 1994). In
addition, they are concerned with short-term, as well as long-range results. Short
term results act as vital feedback and provide encouragement and momentum
toward continued improvement (Schaffer & Thomson, 1992). This focus on
measured results or data is well documented in the literature. In the early 1980s,
Edmonds advocated for a more rigorous and frequent concern with performance
data when he wrote that
the days are long gone when an educator’s best judgment constitutes
sufficient proof of learning outcomes. One of the principles of Effective
Schools that he fathered is that successful schools frequently monitor
progress, (as cited in Bullard & Taylor, 1993, p. 17)
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Wiggins believes a serious problem facing education is “the failure of
educators to be results focused and data driven. Coaches regularly adjust
performance in light of ongoing results” (Wiggins, 1994, p. 18). Joyce, Calhoun,
and Wolf, in the name of action research, exhort us to “collect, organize, and
interpret on-site data” (Joyce, Calhoun, & Wolf, 1993, p. 8). Levin and his
associates call for school improvement that uses “data, qualitative and
quantitative information, disaggregated test scores and other measures of
performance” (Hopfenberg, Levin, Meister, & Roers, 1990, p. 14). Glickman
urges us to ask for
clear indicators of what data or information about effectiveness are
currently collected? How complete is the data? How does the school
community share the data and use them for setting priorities and
determining actions? (Glickman, 1993, p. 51)
Fullan and Stiegelbauer not only emphasize the importance of data to
evaluate and monitor progress and monitor results, they also stress the role of data
gathering: “gathering data is crucial, the success of implementation is highly
dependent on the establishment of effective ways of getting information on how
well or poorly change is going in the school or classroom” (Fullan &
Stiegelbauer, 1991, p. 87).
Well measured results by themselves may not accomplish the type of
performance improvement necessary to meet the diverse needs of the Dos Palos-
J
Oro Loma Joint Unified School District. Within the state of California, there is an
increasing amount of implementation of quality management practices (Snyder,
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1994). With the enormous success of quality practices in the profit and non-profit
sectors, many school systems are adapting the principles found in the Baldrige
Quality Standards for Schooling (Blazey, Davidson, &Evans, 2003). The national
quality in education effort features breakthrough concepts, practices, and research
findings about the use of quality principles for reshaping schools and school
organizations. The principles of quality management that guide most change
initiatives within this framework are built upon the principles of systems thinking
and provide a customer focus for improvement. Multiple forms of information
guides change within a work team that is accountable for results. Schools and
school systems that are emerging as quality organizations are characterized by
these common features: systems thinking, various types of learning communities,
a shared vision and common goals, an interdependence of services and functions,
and an emphasis on information that drives the improvement of programs and
services for students, their families, and communities.
Herein lies the paradox or problem for the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint
Unified School District. The case, as mentioned above, is strong for well
collected, measured, analyzed, and reported data leading to informed decision
making. That informed decision-making occurring within the framework of a
quality management system using quality principles such as systems thinking and
customer focus provides a powerful mechanism for performance improvement.
The individual school sites within the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School
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District are following such a recipe for success. They are consumed with the
amount of data they collect and report each year and it is increasing. In addition,
each school has implemented a performance improvement system based on the
quality in education principles.
However, the district office has not. The organizational unit responsible
for such crucial functions as leadership, human resources services, fiscal services,
and curricular/instructional services does not have performance indicators, does
not collect performance data, does not benchmark and perform gap analyses, and
does not action plan to reduce those identified gaps (Clark & Estes, 2002). This
apparent disconnect between the performance expectations of the individual
school sites, stakeholders or consumers in this case, and the district office is even
more alarming when you consider the widely substantiated belief that the
leadership unit should champion the core values of the organization.
The purpose of this action research study was for each department within
the district office to embrace performance improvement based on performance
data that produced an action plan that was measured and reported. The
performance data included a gap analysis that identified the difference between
current performance and desired performance indicators. The action plan
included individual and team goals that closed each gap.
The Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified'School District is located in the
heart of the San Joaquin Valley, one of the richest agricultural regions in
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America, at the geographic center of California. The 600 square mile school
district, centered in Merced County, also includes a portion of Fresno County and
has a total population of 8,000.
Merced County is the youngest metropolitan county in the United States,
according to Census Bureau figures from 1996. Thirty-one percent of the county
population was under the age of 15 and 37% were 18 years or younger (California
State University, Stanislaus, 2000).
According to the 2000 Census, 32% of Dos Palos residents had high
school diplomas, and 3.6% were college graduates. Average income for the
93620 zip code, which includes both the city of Dos Palos and nearby
unincorporated areas, was $36,700— 13% below the rate for Merced County and
21% below that of Fresno County. Income grew only 26% in Merced County
since 1990, compared to 31% in Fresno County.
Unemployment rates were 50% higher within the 93620 zip code, which
more closely matches the school district than do city boundaries. Unemployment
in South Dos Palos, a part of the school district, was 50%.
The Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District served 2,734
students at six schools. Sixty-nine percent of the total student population were
Hispanic, 26% were Anglo, and the remaining 5% were African American. The
district provided language services tfr 37% of the students and 62% of the students
were considered economically disadvantaged. Although district size had
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historically been stable, a nearby area was growing rapidly as families spread
away from the Silicon Valley in search of affordable housing. Dos Palos
anticipated some near-term effect from such regional growth.
The central office of the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School
District was organized in a traditional manner consistent with school districts in
the central valley of the state of California. The Superintendent was supported by
one Assistant Superintendent responsible for educational services, one Manager
of Human Resources, one Chief Business Officer, and one Information Systems
Director. In addition, the district office had three fiscal technicians and three
clerical staff. The Informational Services Division had one Network Engineer
and one Database Analyst (Appendix A).
“Alignment between the organization and its employees begins with
compatible goal structures. Without this initial step, all other attempts to
improve performance are like traveling in the dark to an unknown destination
through dangerous territory” (Clark & Estes, 2002, pp. 22-23). Organizational
goals often result from a vision of where and how a company must develop in
order to survive in a changing economy (environment), (Clark & Estes, 2002).
In the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District, the governing board,
in collaboration with the leadership team, establishes organizational goals.
This process is facilitated by an external consultant and occurs as a one-day
workshop. For the 2003-2004 school year the organizational goals were
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organized into four categories: (a) maintain a safe, supportive school
environment, (b) improve academic performance for all students, (c) maximize
the use of district resources, and (d) support transition from school to career
through academic and vocational training (Appendix B). These district goals are
more similar to traditional strategic goals in that they are the basis for aligning the
organization’s work processes with its strategic direction. Given the collaborative
nature in which the district’s organizational goals were defined, including an
environmental scan that reflected changing conditions, the goals were consistent
with what would be considered satisfactory organizational goals (Clark & Estes,
2002).
Individual performance goals cascade or follow from organizational or
business goals. A performance goal is a description of tasks or objectives that
individuals and teams must accomplish according to specific deadlines or criteria
(Clark & Estes, 2002). The managers of each department in the Dos Palos-Oro
Loma School District office submitted goals each year that were used as the
performance indicators for themselves and their departments (Appendices C, D,
and E). For the first time, the performance goals of each manager for the 2003-
2004 school year were aligned with the organizational goals established by the
governing board. However, when examined in the context of the Malcolm
Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria (Baldrige Criteria) definition for a goal,
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they appeared very vague and many gaps were apparent. The term goals refers to
a future condition or performance level that one intends to attain.
Goals can be both short-term and long-term. Goals are ends that guide
actions. Quantitative goals, frequently referred to as “targets,” include a
numerical point or range. Targets might be projections based on
comparative data and/or competitive data. The term “stretch goals” refers
to desired major, discontinuous (nonincremental) or breakthrough
improvements, usually in areas most critical to an organization’s future
success. (Blazey, 2004, p. 325)
To better understand the effectiveness of the Dos Palos-Oro Loma District
Office departmental goals as performance indicators, Clark and Estes (2002)
describe a framework to critically analyze performance goals. In the Clark and
Estes process model, benchmarks of the industry leader’s achievement in each
goal area must be identified and, to the extent possible, quantified. For the
purposes of this study the Baldrige Criteria were selected as the industries
benchmarks. The Baldrige Criteria were created in 1987 by the United States
Congress through the Department of Labor and named posthumously for former
Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige. Designed to help American business
and industry gain a competitive edge in the global market, the Baldrige Criteria
reflect current best-thinking on organizational practice.
The education version of the Baldrige Criteria was created in the mid-
1990s as a framework for understanding and improving school performance and
student learning. The Baldrige Criteria provide the basis for assessment and
feedback to organizations and create the foundation for an organization's
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continuous improvement. The criteria have three important purposes: to help
improve performance practices, capabilities, and results; to facilitate
communication and sharing of best-practices information among organizations of
all types; and to serve as a working tool for understanding and improving
performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning (Blazey*,
2004).
The first category of the Baldrige Criteria is Organizational Leadership.
This specific category examines and benchmarks the kind of performance
indicators found for senior leaders in the most successful school organizations.
The leadership system must promote organizational core values, set performance
expectations, and promote an organization-wide focus on stakeholders, customers,
employee empowerment, learning, and innovation. The leadership category looks
at how senior leaders guide the school organization in setting directions and
seeking future opportunities. Seniors leaders must communicate clear values and
performance expectations that address the needs of all stakeholders. The category
also looks at how the district office practices effective governance, meets its
responsibilities to the public, and practices good citizenship (Blazey, 2004).
In the process model proposed by Clark and Estes (2002), the gap between
desired and actual performance must be assessed and closed if organizational
goals are to be achieved. Three sources of information were used to triangulate
and determine the root causes of the apparent gap between actual performance
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and desired performance. Interviews were conducted, called “pre-conferences” as
cited in the clinical model of supervision. This is part of the regular evaluation
procedure within our district. The goals and objectives submitted by each
manager were used to conduct a document review, and lastly actual job
performance was observed. This analysis produced some very clear indicators as
to why gaps exist. Clark and Estes identify knowledge and skill enhancement as
an area that could produce performance gaps. Through discussions with each
manager and after reviewing their goals, it is clear that collectively they need
further information and training on what a benchmark performance indicator
looks like as well as what kind of information is needed to measure it.
Administrators have excellent and relevant experience that allows them to see the
need and value. However, Baldrige Criteria goals or performance indicators
come from years of refinement in the business sector and thus some training
would be valuable in helping us to develop a “how to” process.
Another contributor to performance gaps in the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint
Unified School District is identified by Clark and Estes as motivation. More
specifically the concept of persistence where many distractions, problems, and
ever-changing external forces cause focus and energy to be spread too thinly.
After conducting formal and informal observations of each manager and then
comparing the amount of time spent on their identified goals and objectives verses
what would be considered their every-day activities, there was no observable
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connection. The activities the managers were involved in were obviously
important to the successful operation of the district, they just did not provide the
time for goal attainment. Depth instead of breadth is a concept that needs to be
considered in light of this gap resulting from motivational factors.
A root cause of a gap that became very apparent from the interviews
conducted is described by Clark and Estes as conflict between organizational
goals, policies or procedures, and the organizational culture.
Work culture is present in our conscious and unconscious understanding
of who we are, what we value, and how we do what we do as an
organization. In many ways, organizational culture is the most important
“work process” in all organizations because it dictates how we work
together to get our job done. (Clark & Estes, 2002, p. 107)
It had been the organizational culture in Dos Palos to base organizational
decisions upon antidotal information and the perceptions and feelings of the key
stakeholders. This culture was allowed to develop because, for the most part, no
one is put on the spot and made to feel uncomfortable because they are
accountable for performance. Nearly every event, situation or level of
performance could be explained away in this kind of culture. The goals and
procedures of our district were aligned with our district culture. However, when a
comparison was made between our organization culture and performance
indicators consistent with the Baldrige Criteria for goals and indicators, a large
gap existed and there was a clear misalignment.
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As expected, the results of this problem analysis were identifiable gaps in
a combination of work processes and organizational culture. As apparent as the
gaps were in performance within the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School
District leadership, further data collection was needed to specifically triangulate
the needs and propose specific action plans to close the gaps.
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CHAPTER 2
ACTION PLAN
With the awareness of the problem clearly established by the problem
analysis, the next step was to apply a methodology to reduce the identified gaps
between desired performance and actual performance. The methodology to
improve the performance of district-level management for the Dos Palos-Oro
Loma Joint Unified School District was framed by the combination of three
fundamental concepts: meaningful, informed teamwork; clear, measurable goals;
and the regular collection and analysis of performance data (Schmoker, 1999). To
clarify the action plan, Figure 1 details each step and shows how they are
interrelated to another.
Step 7
Improve
Performance
Step 9
Step 4
Make
development
opportunities
available
Step 1
Create
performance
council
Step 5
Managers
develop
personal
improvement
plans
Step 2
Identify
desired
management
behavior
Step 6
Share
development
plans with
faculty/staff
and implement
Step 3
Assess
faculty/staff
opinions
about their
managers
Step 8
Assess
faculty/staff
opinions
again
Figure 1 : Action Plan Steps and How Steps are Interrelated
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In step 1, the district level managers and site level administrators will
come together to form a Performance Improvement Council. Their function will
be to ensure the nine-step action plan is implemented, measured, and reported to
the district employees and the governing board.
In step 2, the desired management behavior or performance was identified.
Clark and Estes (2002), in their Performance Improvement Framework, call this
benchmarking and quantifying the industry leader’s achievement. The desired
performance behavior for the district-level managers in the Dos Palos-Oro Loma
Joint Unified School District came from the Leadership section of the Baldrige
Criteria. These indicators are recognized benchmarks for educational
organizations. The district-level managers were introduced to the performance
indicators in May 2004, as part of the performance survey conducted in May. A
very detailed training on the performance indicators occurred in step 4 and
allowed the managers to become much more comfortable with them and their
evaluation.
Step 3 of the action plan involved data collection by asking the site
administrators to score the current performance of the district managers against
the desired performance indicators outlined in the Baldrige Criteria. This method
of surveying is called formal upward evaluation, using a behaviorally anchored
survey. This data collection is step 3 in the Clark and Estes (2002) framework in
which the organization is to quantify current achievement and performance levels
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15
in designated areas. There are three primary reasons why this method is very
informative. First, the validity is strong because subordinates interact regularly
with their managers and have a unique vantage from which to assess performance.
Second, reliability can be assured because numerous subordinates provide the
data. Third, the involvement and morale is high because asking people to
comment on the effectiveness and style of their managers sends a message that
the district is serious about involvement and performance improvement. The
survey was administered in May 2004.
Step 4 and step 5 were planned to occur concurrently. Before personal
improvement plans could be drafted by the district-level managers, a careful
examination of the Clark and Estes gap analysis and the results from the
performance survey was reviewed. This occurred with the help of an outside
facilitator from the California Center for Baldrige in Education. They conduct
individualized trainings for districts under the title of Integrated Management
Systems for Educational Leaders. Using the data from the gap analysis and the
performance survey, the Baldrige facilitator worked with the performance council
members to meet strategic and operational goals that ultimately closed the
performance gaps diagnosed with the data. Strategically, the performance council
determined what was expected as leaders of organizational change, reviewed and
ensured that the effective governance systems were in place to protect the
interests of all stakeholder groups, served as role models of performance
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excellence for all faculty and staff, set clear strategy and directions to enhance
future opportunities for the district, and created measurable performance
expectations and monitored performance to achieve key performance
improvements. From the operational side, the performance council defined key
performance measures; put into place systems to review district success,
performance, and progress relative to goals; and continued to develop and utilize
performance review findings, together with faculty and staff feedback to assess
and improve senior leadership effectiveness. Both steps 4 and 5 were scheduled
for Fall and Winter of 2004.
Step 6 was crucial to the success of the performance improvement
methodology. The faculty and staff did not have the training that the Performance
Improvement Council had. Therefore, communication with them was very
important. By using the data from the gap analysis and the data from the
performance survey, a need for performance improvement in the district-level
managers could be explained. To close the identified gaps, the improvement
plans for each district department were shared with specific goals and measures.
This occurred by representatives of the Performance Improvement Council and
the Superintendent meeting with the faculty and staff of each school site. These
meetings were scheduled for Fall and Winter of 2004.
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Step 7 was ongoing and indefinite. Improved performance occurred as the
plans were implemented and the specific performance indicators or goals were
obtained and reported.
Step 8, the assessment of improved performance, occurred in two phases.
Phase one was scheduled for February 2005 and included the same triangulation
of data used to conduct the Clark and Estes (2002) gap analysis. This provided
some initial data as to the effectiveness of the performance improvement plans to
that point. Phase two was conducted in May 2005. The data for phase two was
not included in this dissertation, but was utilized in other ways. The performance
survey was re-administered to the site-level administrators and the district-level
managers. This information, combined with the gap analysis, was used to report
to the governing board the progress made towards performance improvement for
the district-level managers.
Step 9 ensured that a continuous improvement cycle occurred. With the
data gathered in step 8, an evaluation determined where existing gaps between
desired performance and current performance remained, and if new gaps had been
identified. Based on this data, new or revised performance indicators were
generated and applied to the ongoing performance improvement plans.
The methodology applied in this action plan comes directly from the
continuous improvement cycle utilized in the Baldrige Criteria. These steps have
been battle tested in the private business sector for over 20 years with tremendous
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success. It is time for us in education to use that wealth of research and
knowledge to improve our management practices.
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19
CHAPTER 3
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The organization and operation of the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified
School District is consistent with most public education systems within the United
States. However, the evolution of public education to its current level of
bureaucracy is fascinating and has a profound influence on how schools in Dos
Palos, as well as the rest of the United States, are governed today.
The roots of these bureaucratic traditions are grounded in the distant past,
but are very real in the every-day operation of our public schools. The birth place
of modern-day physics was in the sixth century B.C. in Greece, where science,
philosophy, and religion were all integrated, and where answers were sought to
the meaning of life and how things work in the universe (Capra, 1991). “It was
Descartes who developed many of the techniques of modem mathematics and
gave us the picture of the universe as a giant machine” (Zukav, 1979, p. 50).
Scientific reasoning began to take the form of mathematical descriptions
of nature and thereafter spawned the scientific revolution. Scientists used
this dichotomy to separate themselves (the mind) from the material world
(matter) in pursuit of new knowledge. In time, the growing preeminence
of scientific knowledge diminished the influences of both philosophy and
religion in the Western world. (Capra, 1982, p. 54)
“It was within this context of identifying the fundamental fragmentation of
matter and mind that Sir Isaac Newton constructed the laws of mechanics in
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20
classical physics, laws that have guided the work of scientists for centuries”
(Zohar, 1990, p. 69).
John Locke made use of the principles in his atomistic view of society, in
which the basic building block was not society but individuals (Capra, 1982).
This new emphasis on the individual paved the way to modem economics and
political thought, with a focus on individual property, rights, and responsibility. It
was this value on the individual as the basic unit of society that led to prevailing
practices in twentieth-century schooling.
For example, classrooms have been regarded as a collection of individual
students and an individual teacher; students have worked alone and have
been tested individually; teachers work in isolation away for the most part
from their peers; and principals and superintendents within the same
district perform separate as well as independent functions. (Capra, 1982,
pp. 68- 69)
By the nineteenth-century, scientists believed that the universe was a huge
mechanical system running according to Newton’s laws of motion, which firmly
established the clockwork assumptions of the world that were characterized by
repetition and predictability. The classical principals of physics are still used
today as a foundation for machines and technology, which are both static and
controllable.
The laws of a fixed, machine-like universe, which are grounded in
Newtonian physics, functioned as a guide for early management theorists such as
Max Weber and practitioners like Frederick Taylor. Their pioneering work led to
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21
the rigid structures, policies, and practices of the twentieth-century organizations
including schools.
Tenants of the bureaucracy evolved to prevent any kind of fundamental
change in work systems, for established practices are protected even today
by the complex system of control that has evolved over this century.
Because of the strength of bureaucratic traditions, many public institutions
today are finding it virtually impossible to sustain any kind of change in
the basic systems of work and their services. (Snyder, Acker-Hocevar, &
Snyder, 2000, pp. 25-26)
The widespread adoption of bureaucratic and scientific management
principles influenced industrial and social institutions throughout the world. In
time, educators adopted many of the same scientific practices for a rapidly
growing population. “The emergence of the school administrator as the
educational efficiency expert during the first several decades of the twentieth
century was to become one of the most significant movements in educational
history” (Callahan, 1962, p. 97). “By 1925, the superintendency had more
characteristics of a managerial job in business and industry than of one that was
educational” (Callahan, 1962, p. 148). Because the number of educational
administrators was so large by then, and the management needs were so similar to
those in the business world (including school board members), business
perspectives were adopted throughout the schooling enterprise.
Additional bureaucratic features were developed early in the twentieth-
century to control the performance of teachers as well as educational leaders. “In
1913, the American School Board Journal published a report of teacher rating in
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22
Park City, Tennessee, which led to a national movement for schools to devise a
means of measuring teacher and principal efficiency” (Callahan, 1962, p. 105).
Theories of motivation and leadership emerged between 1920 and 1950
and reflected the laws of interactions, connections, energy, and curved space-time
evolving in physics. Each of these influenced the thought and practice of
organizational theory. Mary Parker Follett, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, and
Kurt Lewin all contributed knowledge that led to what is called transitional
developments in management thinking (Snyder, Acker-Hocevar, & Snyder,
2000).
In 1968, Bertalanffy’s major work General Systems Theory documented
30 years of scientific inquiries into the understanding of quantum theory in
biology, mathematics, physical systems, the sciences of man, psychology, and
psychiatry. He is credited with the major translation of quantum principles to
other natural sciences and with the introduction of the name Systems Theory.
Systems theory fostered a greater understanding of life within organizations
(Bertalanffy, 1968).
Cleland and King were among the earliest theorists to translate the
concepts of systems theory into the processes of management. Their operational
definition of management includes multiple features: (a) it is a process of
organized activity where thereds an objective, (b) objectives are achieved by
establishing certain relationships among available resources, (c) authority is a
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23
legal right to direct activity, (d) objectives are achieved by working through
others, and (e) it requires an active involvement of decisions within an
environment of risk and uncertainty (Cleland & King, 1972).
Throughout the twentieth century, the field of educational administration
followed primarily the traditions in classical, human relations, and organization
and management theory. In the 1970s, Immegart and Pilecki (1973) introduced
the concepts of systems theory to the work of educational administration. They
sought to address the unfolding of complex problems through systems thinking.
Their approach to a systems analysis was logical and rational and functioned to
help administrators gain control of work life in their institutions (Immegart &
Pilecki, 1973).
In the 1980s, customers and their needs became the focus for problem
solving within organizations and gave birth to new work systems and patterns.
This new movement was labeled quality management and the early writers
(Deming, 1986; Juran, 1988; Ishikawa, 1985) demonstrated the power of
information and statistical analyses for refining products, service, and programs to
meet quality standards.
By the late 1990s, leaders at all levels of organizational hierarchies, as
well as researchers, have come to value both quantitative and qualitative data, for
each generates different kinds of information about the effects and the degree to
which customers are satisfied with quality and value.
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Given the organization and nature of today’s schools, with their rigid
structures to ensure that all youth receive a standard education, the effort to re
engineer education to utilize practices such as systems thinking and quality
management is very challenging. One clear component of educational
organizations that is improving performance and is well documented in the
literature, is the relationship between measurable goals and teamwork.
Goals give teamwork meaning. Maeroff writes that teams are vehicles for
increasing efficiency, effectiveness, and motivation. “What motivates and
energizes effective teams are a clear and elevating goal and a results driven
structure, pointing to the interdependency between teamwork and tangible
improvement” (Maerof, 1993, pp. 514-515).
Clearly, goals can drive us to higher levels of performance. Psychologist
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has made one of the most interesting discoveries in
recent times about the connection between goals and happiness: Goals are the
stuff of motivation, persistence, and well-being. He discovered that generally
what people enjoy most is pursuing a clear, doable goal that they value. This
connection accounts for why many people are as happy or happier at work than at
leisure. In the absence of goals, entropy and aimlessness rush in
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
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Unfortunately, the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District and
most school organizations do not make the connection between goals, motivation,
and improvement.
We have what is perhaps the most striking, contradictory, self-defeating
characteristic of schooling and our efforts to improve it: the gap between
the need and intent to improve educational performance on the one hand,
and the conspicuous and virtual absence of clear, concrete goals in school
or district planning efforts on the other. Without explicit goals or
performance indicators, we are simply not set up and organized for
improvement. Only having such goals will allow us to analyze, monitor,
and adjust practice toward improvement. (Schmoker, 1999, p. 23)
Goodlad and Klein (1970) pointed out the absence of key reforms that we
might reasonably expect to find in schools and school systems. “One of them,
already acknowledged for decades, is the necessity of clearly discernible, specific
goals for schooling at all levels” (Goodlad & Kline, 1970, pp. 12-13). “The lack
of clear goals may provide the most credible explanation for why education is
inching along in its effort to improve performance” (Maeroff, 1994, p. 52).
Rosenholtz wrote that clear, measurable goals are the center to the mystery of
school’s success, mediocrity, or failure. The introduction of specific, measurable
goals is among the most promising yet underused strategies we can introduce into
school improvement efforts (Rosenholtz, 1991).
Goals or performance indicators themselves lead not only to success but
also to the effectiveness and cohesion of a team. This is different from the
J
traditional thought of only the right people with the right chemistry can make for
a productive committee or team. Katzenbach and Smith found among the dozens
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of teams they studied “that a clear, common purpose and set of performance
goals, not personality or predisposition, promotes effective teamwork”
(Katzenbach & Smith, 1993, p. 44). Little’s research corroborates the same
principle that “the most effective forms of collegiality succeed quite apart from
their personal friendships or dispositions, and instead depend upon shared
responsibility for a task that individuals acting alone cannot complete” (Little,
1990, pp. 519-520).
The combination of goals and teamwork is essential to performance.
However, a goal or performance indicator can be written many different ways and
too often in education they are too general. “This case of general goals creates a
sense of false clarity, the erroneous belief that we understand and know how to
work toward achieving goals” (Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991, pp. 34-35). Specific
goals are the vital ingredient of purpose. Performance improvement cannot occur
without them. It is no coincidence that Deming’s first principle is “Create
constancy of purpose” (Deming, 1986, p. 23). In Walton’s books (1986,1990) on
the success of Deming’s methods, she details how closely connected this purpose
is to specific, unambiguous goals, reducing turnaround time and waste, meeting
deadlines, and meeting or exceeding quality standards (Walton, 1986, 1990).
Goals are an essential element of success and the data created by working
toward those goals is another essential element for success. However, unless a
continuous improvement cycle is in place to analyze and report the data that lead
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to informed decisions about goal attainment or change, true, lasting performance
improvement will not occur.
Since the early 1980s with the release o f A Nation at Risk (National
Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), a significant number of
educational efforts to improve performance have been initiated in the United
States. Although popular, very few of these reform strategies have been
successful (Glasser, 1998; National Research Council, 1999; Sarason, 1990).
There is a range of reasons why educational reform has produced such a small
number of successes. Many attempted reforms have focused on outcomes,
accountability, and local control, including site-based management, outcomes-
based administration, charted schools, and privatization. More recently, many
states have-instituted high-stakes testing as a way to force reform and
accountability (Barton, 2001). What these reform movements have typically
lacked are leadership, decision-making based upon data and analysis, an
understanding of educational institutions as interdependent systems, and an ability
to change the culture of schools (Sarason, 1990).
One performance improvement reform effort, with a primary focus on
improving quality process in the schools, has been slowly adapted from industry
with some reported success. Efforts focused on improving quality based upon the
Baldrige Criteria hold promise for fundamentally improving K-12 education. The
Baldrige Criteria addresses many issues that other failed educational efforts have
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not, including leadership, systems thinking, changes in school culture, and data
driven decision-making.
The literature reflects that focusing on quality practices in education
greatly improves teaching, learning and administration, and the Baldrige Criteria
specifically attempts to address these improvements (Blankstein, 1992; Bonstingl,
2001; Karathanos, 1999; Schafer, 1996; Siegel, 2000; Sumberg, 2000; Walsh,
2000). The forerunners to the Baldrige Criteria are Deming’s quality model and
Total Quality Management (TQM). Although theoretically distinct TQM,
Deming’s model, and the Baldrige Criteria have core elements that remain
constant across each model.
The five most common core elements across the models are vision, a focus
on continuous process improvement through data collection and analysis, a long
term perspective, conceptualizing the entire organization as a system, and
emphasizing overall improvement of core processes rather than individual
improvement (Betts, 1992; Bradley, 1993; Holt, 1993; Kaufman & Hirumi, 1992;
Rhodes, 1992; Siegel, 2000; Sumberg, 2000; Swan, 1996).
In the Baldrige Criteria, the core elements discussed above outline the
main issues to address and are embodied in eleven core values (National Institute
of Standards and Technology, 2002b; Satterlee 1996). From these core values all
the methods, criteria, and measures for implementation are derived. These 11
values (Blazey, 2004), as listed in the 2004 Baldrige Criteria, are visionary
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29
leadership; learning-centered education; organizational and personal learning;
valuing faculty, staff, and partners; agility; focus on the future; managing for
information; management by fact; public responsibility and citizenship; focus on
results and creating value; and a systems perspective.
Evolving from these 11 core values are seven categories that schools and
districts can use for self-assessments--Baldrige Criteria implementations, and
Baldrige Criteria applications. The seven categories are (a) leadership— how the
organizations’ senior leaders address organizational values, directions, and
performance expectations; (b) strategic planning— how the organization develops
strategic objectives and action plans; (c) student, stakeholder, and market focus—
how the organization determines requirements, expectations, and preferences of
students, stakeholders, and markets; (d) information and analysis— the
organizations’ information management and performance measurement systems
and how the organization analyzes performance data; (e) faculty and staff focus—
how the organization motivates and enables faculty and staff to develop and
utilize their full potential in alignment with the organization’s overall objectives;
(f) core process management— the key aspects of the organization’s process
management, including learning-focused education design and delivery, key
student services, and support processes; and (g) organizational performance
results— student learning results, student- and stakeholder-focused results,
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30
operational effectiveness, and financial results are all analyzed for performance
improvement.
These seven categories are then supported by 19 basic requirements, with
30 specific areas to address under these 19 requirements. Each school and/or
district is free to choose how to address each area, item, and category. Baldrige
Criteria does not specify or prescribe a method for addressing the requirements,
but addressing all is required. It is expected that schools and districts will decide
how to address Baldrige Criteria categories, items, and areas within their own
contexts (Garvin, 1991).
Of the 16,000 public school districts in the United States, only
approximately 200, as of the mid 1990s, were using TQM techniques or Baldrige
Criteria (Detert & Jenni, 2000; Horine, 1992). Following the establishment of the
Baldrige Award for Business in 1987 (Baldrige Award), Baldrige Criteria began
to transfer to education in two ways. The first began when some districts began to
translate and apply the criteria in their own organizations (Shipley & Collins,
1996). The second application of Baldrige Criteria to education gained strength
as states began to include educational institutions in the eligibility for state-quality
awards. A 1992 survey found that 65 K-12 institutions had been working on
TQM implementation for more than a year (Horine, 1992). By the mid 1990s, 24
states included schools and Universities in the competition for awards
(Karathanos, 1999).
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States have involved schools in Baldrige Criteria in different ways
(Johnson, 1996). New Mexico, Tennessee, North Carolina, New York, Florida,
and New Jersey have provided statewide support and specific initiatives that
encourage the use of Baldrige Criteria in schools. North Carolina’s partnerships
with businesses encouraging Baldrige Criteria implementation in schools have
incorporated 45 districts and 70% of students statewide (Siegel, 2000).
New Mexico and Tennessee have generated interest in Baldrige Criteria
by creating multi-tiered state-level awards. Tennessee’s award has four different
levels; the first two are designed to encourage beginners (Johnson, 1996).
Schools are not required to demonstrate improvement until the third and fourth
levels.
Six states— Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas— are
participants of the Baldrige in Education Initiative (BiE) (Siegel, 2000). BiE is a
partnership of 26 national education and business organizations, six state pilots,
and growing numbers of states and communities that are using Baldrige Criteria
methods to improve school performance. This national initiative seeks to improve
educational management and student achievement by accelerating the adoption of
Baldrige Criteria (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2002a). Many
states and organizations have encouraged districts and schools to adopt Baldrige
Criteria. Those involved in these efforts, certain that such adoptions can
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dramatically improve education and educational outcomes, are working to ensure
the spread of Baldrige Criteria throughout their states and the entire nation.
Detailed information and comprehensive data are the keys to fulfilling the
promise of Baldrige Criteria. The literature indicates that implementing Baldrige
Criteria successfully requires a long-term perspective and a focus on changing
core processes, especially teaching and learning. Training in Baldrige Criteria
concepts and utilizing quality tools are essential, as is working together in diverse
and dedicated teams toward common objectives. Leadership, particularly from
the districts senior leaders, is crucial for success.
Successful implementations are not easy to achieve. Educators have
found that utilizing accumulated data in decision-making is difficult (Hackman &
Wageman, 1995). Efforts to actually change behavior and improve performance
in education are arduous and often unsuccessful. While difficult and complex,
educational problems are not unsolvable, and Baldrige Criteria offers educational
leaders two major benefits: (a) it is a holistic, systematic, and systemic course of
action based upon the principles of accountability and data-driven decision
making and (b) as an information-based model that focuses on numerous
educational processes, Baldrige Criteria is compatible with many assessments,
including those that are state and federally mandated.
J
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CHAPTER 4
PROBLEM AWARENESS AND DATA COLLECTION
Communication cannot replace an inspiring vision and sound goals, but
poor communication can scuttle them. Educators have spent an inordinate
amount of time trying to sell the public on solutions to fix public education by
introducing and defending reform efforts. A far more effective approach is to sell
the problem.
A crucial and valuable piece of action research is the increased level of
organizational and public awareness that occurs throughout the research process.
Reason and Bradbury write that action research is a “participatory, democratic
process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile
human purposes” and that its primary purpose “is to produce practical knowledge
that is useful to people in the everyday function of their lives” (Reason &
Bradbury, 2001, pp. 1-2).
In the action research methodology the practitioner as researcher conducts
research about their own institutions, and by doing so they acquire
knowledge they can use to bring about change in those institutions.
Because institutional insiders conduct the actual research, the role of the
professional researcher shifts from research producer to consultant and
facilitator for the practitioner researchers. The practitioner as researcher
model requires that the professional researcher be skilled in building and
maintaining personal relationships as well as in research design. Above
all, it is important for the insiders to assume ownership of their findings.
The outcome is knowledge that heightens the members’ awareness of what
is occurring within their institutions and increases their motivation to
effect change. Thus, the knowledge produced in this model is practical
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34
and effective in directing change. (Bensimon, Polkinghome, Bauman, &
Vallejo, 2004, p. 108)
To promote problem awareness, as well as further clarify the gaps between
current performance and desired performance within the district office of the Dos
Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District, a behaviorally anchored survey
was administered to each department manager and each school administrator
(Appendices F, G, and H). A behaviorally anchored survey contains elements of
a written narrative and a survey approach to conducting a self-assessment. This
assessment instrument is more diagnostic than an instrument that utilizes a Likert
Scale because the scoring rubric has specific indicators embedded in the narrative
that are unique to the school district. A score of 1 is low and means Not Evident-
none of the district leaders spend time on this particular item. A high score of 6
means Role Model-all the district leaders model the effective use of this item and
benchmark-level achievement has been the outcome of its use. The actual survey
items were taken from the leadership category of the Baldrige Criteria (Blazey,
Davidson, & Evans, 2003). These quality criteria are recognized benchmarks for
educational organizations.
The survey is divided into four parts with a total of thirty items. Items 1.1
through 1.16 assess senior leadership direction, items 2.1 through 2.6 assess the
effectiveness of organizational performance review, items 3.1 through 3.4 assess
the level to which we meet our responsibility to the public, and items 4.1 through
4.4 assess our support of key community groups. For the purposes of this action
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35
research study, sections 1.0, leadership direction and 2.0, organizational
performance review provide the most relevant data for analysis and are examined
in this study.
Figures 2 and 3 provide aggregate scores for the entire leadership team of
the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District. The two charts show the
percent scores, on a zero to 100 scale, for each item. Using the six point rubric,
each leadership team member scored each item. The sum of each item was used
to calculate a percent of the total points possible. The higher the percentage, the
more evident the performance indictor was to the leadership team. The data on
these charts collectively provide a way for us to measure our current performance
against benchmarked performance such as the Baldrige Criteria.
The scores in Figure 2 range from a high of 60% to a low of 47% with the
median score 54.
Items 1.1 and 1.2 ask about the involvement and time spent on
performance improvement activities. Comparatively, these two scores are high.
That would be consistent with the effort, resources, and training the district has
committed to performance improvement for the last four years, particularly at the
individual school sites. Perhaps more telling are the comparatively low scores on
items 1.3 and 1.5. Both of these items inquire about the extent in which the senior
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36
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
0 9
65
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60
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Figure 2. Overall Percent Scores by Items 1.1 to 1.16
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37
100 T
95
90
85
80
75
70
Item 2.1 Item 2.2 Item 2.3 Item 2.4 Item 2.5 Item 2.6
Figure 3. Overall Percent Scores by Items 2.1 to 2.6
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38
leaders are involved in visible activities such as goal setting and measurement,
and action planning as well as the use of quality tools in everyday situations.
The scores on items 1.4,1.6,1.7,1.8, and 1.11 are the highest for this
section of the survey. What is interesting with each of these scores, is they all
have a similar theme. Each item addresses the concept of organizational values.
Learning focus, student and stakeholder satisfaction, role model leadership,
continuous improvement, and employee involvement are all values of the Dos
Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District. Clearly there exists an
understanding, knowledge, and agreement throughout the leadership team as to
the values for the district. In addition, these items address the development,
communication, articulation, and discussion of organizational values.
What becomes very clear when comparing the scores of the above items
with the scores of items 1.9,1.10, 1.13,1.14, and 1.16, is that the leadership team
is more comfortable with the knowledge and communication of the organizational
values but the actual implementation or the ability to operationalize them is
problematic.
The common theme running through items 1.9, 1.10, 1.13, 1.14, and 1.16
is the alignment, use, and measurement of goals or performance indicators. Items
1.9 and 1.13 are very specific about the alignment of organizational values and
organizational goals and if systematic processes are in place to evaluate
organizational goals and personal performance indicators. The scores on items
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39
1.9 and 1.13 are the lowest for this section of the survey. Item 1.10, another
relatively low score, asks if the roles and responsibilities of senior leaders are
clearly defined and used to evaluate and improve performance. Items 1.14 and
1.16, again with comparatively low scores, ask about the personal involvement of
leaders in listening to needs and using that to monitor goal attainment as well as if
meetings are structured to include the review and presentation of organizational
data.
Figure 3 is a chart that provides a comparison for section 2.0 of the survey.
The data in section 2.0, items 2.1 through 2.6, are valuable for this study as it
surveys how the staff feels about the internal reviews of performance.
The range of scores for section 2.0 is from a high of 58% to a low of 42%
with the median being 50%.
Item 2.1, with a low score of 44%, asks if measurable performance
standards are used when the district reviews or evaluates its performance. The
achievement of the students is certainly compared to performance standards, but
what this score reveals is a perception that the performance of the senior leaders is
not measured against standards. Item 2.2 assesses the extent to which actions are
taken to assist departments that are not meeting goals or targets. Again, a score of
47% is relatively low and would indicate that not enough action to support the
departments in obtaining their goals is occurring. Item 2.3 is the lowest of this
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40
section and asks if senior leaders systematically check on the effectiveness of
their leadership activities. A score of 42% would indicate that they are not.
Items 2.4 and 2.5, with comparatively high scores, move away from
implementation and behaviors into the formulation of the district priorities and
organizational decisions. Similar to the data in Figure 2, the leadership team feels
that the discussion or knowledge of performance review is stronger than the actual
practice of it.
In an effort to drill down deeper into the data and confirm the performance
gaps identified in Chapter 1, the data from the survey were differentiated into two
sub-groups: the district-level managers and the school-site principals and vice
principals. In Figures 4 and 5, the actual rubric score for each member of each
sub-group were combined to determine an average for that sub-group.
In Figure 4, there are clear gaps in a number of areas between the district-
level-managers and the site-level administrators. Items 1.1 and 1.2 pertain to the
involvement and time spent with performance improvement activities. The site-
level administrators who would be considered customers of the district-level
managers and who would benefit most from improved performance from the
district office, indicate that the time spent and the activities used to improve
performance are not adequate. Not only do this data indicate they are not
adequate, but the site-level administrators reveal they are happening considerably
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41
6.00
5.50
5.00
4.50
4.00
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
Figure 4. Comparison Average Scores of District Personnel and Principals,
Items 1.1 to 1.16
O District Office
■ Principals
6.00 y
5.50 -
5.00
4.50
4.00 -
3.50
3.00 -
2.50 ■
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00 -
Item 2.1 Item 2.2 Item 2.3 Item 2.4 Item 2.5 Item 2.6
J
Figure 5. Comparison Average Scores of District Office Personnel and
Principals, Items 2.1 to 2.6
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O D istrict Office
■ Principals
■ I S I - * - f i i * 3 :'I ff | 1 . $
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ------ - O ......... -
Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item Item
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16
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less than the district-level managers believe they are. A similar situation exists in
items 1.5, 1.7, 1.14, and 1.16, in that the district-level managers believe they are
providing leadership direction in a better fashion than do the site-level
administrators.
The most compelling issue to be revealed in these data is found in items
1.6, 1.9, 1.10,1.11,1.13, and 1.15. Each of these items dealing, with a variety of
activities associated with performance improvement and senior leadership
direction, show the site-level administrators actually scoring the performance of
the district-level managers higher than the district-level managers did themselves.
This strongly suggests that the district does not have effective performance goals
for the district-level managers cascading from the organizational or district goals
in a manner that is articulated, measured, and reported. If such a flow of
performance goals existed, the site-level administrators would be able to respond
with much more accuracy when asked about the level of performance of the
district-level managers.
Each subgroup scored items 1.3, 1.4, 1.8, and 1.12, with nearly the same
score. This similar scoring indicates an agreement in performance evaluation.
Ideally all the items would be scored like the above items, but at a significantly
higher score such as a 5 or 6.
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The data provide a more specific picture in Figure 5 of how the Dos Palos-
Oro Loma Joint Unified School District does in measuring, examining, and
reporting the performance of district level management.
Items 2.2 and 2.3 reveal agreement between both the district-level
managers and the site-level administrators. Unfortunately both the scores in these
two areas are below a 3, which would be considered very low.
In items 2.1, 2.5, and 2.6 the same disconnect exists as was apparent in
Figure 4. The gaps show that the site-level administrators scored the performance
of the district-level managers higher than the mangers did themselves. This is
again an example of process failure in terms of organizational performance
review as it pertains to the district-level managers.
In summation, the survey data provide compelling evidence in support of
the problem analysis completed using the Clark and Estes Gap Analysis
Framework (Clark & Estes, 2002). Distinctive gaps exist between desired
performance as identified by the Baldrige Criteria and the current performance of
the district-level managers within the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School
District, particularly in the areas identified by Clark and Estes as: (a) Knowledge
and Skill; and (b) Organizational Processes (Clark & Estes, 2002).
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CHAPTER 5
INTERVENTION DESCRIPTION
To specifically address the knowledge and skill gaps as well as the
organizational process gaps, Connie Benton, the Assistant Superintendent of the
Santa Cruz County Office of Education, and Bruce Kint, the Director of the
Baldrige in Education Center, were contracted as consultants to provide training.
The professional development opportunities provided by the consultants are
identified as step four of the action plan and have five goals: (a) participants will
gain knowledge of the Baldrige criteria for performance excellence, (b)
participants will deepen their understanding of the role of the administrator in
diagnosing barriers and opportunities for Baldrige implementation district-wide,
(c) participants will practice using quality tools for organizational process
improvement, (d) participants will expand their knowledge of the PDSA (plan-do-
study-act) cycle of continuous improvement, and (e) participants will survey their
progress in deploying Baldrige criteria and identify steps for further
implementation.
The consultants facilitated an initial, introspective dialogue about our
district as an educational system and organization. They helped us see that in our
organization, problems or “system noise” as they described it, are usually created
by misaligned or, in some cases, nonexistent systems. A school district is
composed of many interrelated systems that influence one another. Misaligned
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systems occur when people do not understand the organization’s goals or
directions, so they do not really know what they are expected to do. If employees
do not know where they are headed, it is hard for them to stay motivated and
maintain a good attitude and even harder for them to perform at an optimal level.
A very important symptom of a misaligned system and something that is very
apparent here in the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District is when
employees try to function in such a system, even when they are doing their very
best, all you get are random acts of improvement that give a false sense of
accomplishment. We all agreed that random acts of improvement best described
the improvement as it has occurred within this district.
The goal of aligned acts of improvement is to have every employee to be
in alignment so that what they do contributes to the accomplishment of the
organization’s mission. The concept of aligned acts of improvement verses
random acts of improvement was very relevant and apparent here in Dos Palos.
After developing an understanding of aligned acts of improvement, we
next examined possible barriers to alignment within our district. The first and
most obvious barrier is the lack of clear, measurable purpose or goals. The
district does have a mission statement, which identified a purpose, and by
consensus of the group was determined to be adequate. However, like most
mission statements it is very difficult to measure whether or not we, as a district,
met the components of the statement. The mission statement for the district is:
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“Working with the community, we will create a safe and challenging learning
environment. Each of us has the responsibility to help students become
responsible, productive world citizens.” What must be in place for this mission
statement to be effective are very clear and measurable goals that start at the
governing board as organizational goals and cascade down through the
department goals into the school and classroom goals. To quote Harry and
Schroeder, “Organizations that do not measure what they profess to value do not
know much about what they value” (Harry & Schroeder, 2000, pp. 44-45).
The second barrier we identified as perhaps impacting our ability to align
acts of improvement is what the consultants describe as a people problem.
Aligning the school district’s systems will violate the comfort zone of many
people. Elmore illustrates this point well:
With increased accountability, American schools and those who work in
them are being asked to do something new-to engage in systematic,
continuous improvement in the quality of the educational experience of
students and stakeholders and to subject themselves to the discipline of
measuring their success by the metric of performance improvement. Most
people who work in public school systems weren’t hired to do this work,
nor have they been adequately prepared to do it either by their professional
education or by their prior experience in school. (Elmore, 2002,
pp. 24-25)
There is a fear or at least an uneasiness that the process of aligning
performance with goals will threaten the ability of the individual employees to do
their jobs in the way they think is best. The consultants warned us that this
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apprehension may indeed exist, and we as an organization needed to be prepared
to address it.
Next the consultants informed us that the first step in aligning our school
district for performance excellence was to ensure that we, as the senior leaders of
the district, truly understand the Baldrige criteria. To apply the seven criteria
effectively, a high-level of understanding of the focus of each category and the
linkages between categories is necessary. The seven criteria areas were
introduced and each one of us received a manual titled The Education Criteria for
Performance Excellence. We examined each area and identified current practices
within the district that were consistent with the descriptors in each criteria area
and those that were not. We further developed our understanding of the criteria
areas by identifying benchmark practices from other school districts and
discussing what the specific descriptors would look like in practice or action. The
consultants concluded the training with helping us to develop a set of talking
points designed to help us speak consistently about what the Baldrige criteria are,
why the district is using the criteria, and what they will do for the organization.
The three key statements were:
1. The purpose for using the Baldrige criteria is to build capacity to
accelerate and sustain continuous improvement in student achievement and
system performance. It is not about winning an award.
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2. The Baldrige criteria are simply a description of what excellent
organizations do. In the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District, we
use the criteria as a powerful internal and external self-assessment tool.
3. By adopting the Baldrige criteria as the measure of organizational
performance, we have also adopted the strategy of systems improvement. This
means that when we find opportunities for improvement, the discussion and focus
is about how we improve systems, not people.
The next step or intervention to help align our organizational systems to
ensure performance improvement was the annual Board of Trustees workshop.
The district contracts with Sharon Robison, a senior consultant for the Association
of California School Administrators. She leads the entire leadership team,
including the board members, through an environmental scan in which we
identify external and internal forces that influence the school district. From this
data we define organizational goals that help set direction for the district. This
year, because of our efforts with Baldrige and the attempts to better align our
organizational systems, she added an exercise on core values and a focus on
results.
Core values are embedded beliefs and behaviors that are a guiding force in
high-performing organizations. They are the foundation for integrating key
requirements within a results-oriented framework that creates a basis for action
and feedback. Within the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District we
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identified the following as our core values: visionary leadership, learning-
centered education, agility, managing for innovation, management by fact, focus
on results, and valuing people. These values will now become the standards by
which we check and balance ourselves against as we plan and take organizational
action.
Robison concluded the board workshop with a strategic planning exercise
in which we reviewed the 2004-2005 district goals and reported on our progress
or achievement of those goals. This information, combined with the
environmental scan information, set the context for our leadership team to frame
organizational goals for the 2005-2006 school year. The training with the
Baldrige in Education Center was very valuable during this part of the workshop.
The knowledge of systems alignment helped us to be more selective in writing
measurable goals that were consistent with the core values and able to cascade
throughout the district. The entire leadership team felt strongly that this strategic
planning process had allowed us to develop a clear and compelling purpose for
the district.
The final intervention that is embedded in step five of the action plan is to
operationalize and define key departmental goals that, if achieved, will ensure that
the organization accomplishes its defined purpose and performance improves. An
operational definition identifies what needs and expectations the customer has and
at what level those needs and expectations need to be met in order to satisfy or
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even exceed the expectations of that customer. A measure, or measures, need to
be determined or designed that will help departmental managers understand how
well their customers’ needs and expectations are being fulfilled, and a
standardized data collection process shall be developed so measurement variation
is not a problem. These operational definitions are translated into behavioral
goals for each district department and each department manager. The
superintendent has been meeting with each manager, as a function of the pre
conference to their evaluation process, to ensure that the departmental goals
written this year are consistent with the training that was provided by the Baldrige
in Education Center. The departmental goals must be aligned with the
organizational goals defined during the board workshop and be written in such a
fashion that each one can be measured and ultimately placed on a score card for
determination of system-wide performance improvement.
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CHAPTER 6
RESULTS, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This action research project has been very valuable for the leadership team
of the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District because the process we
utilized proved to be just as valuable as the outcomes. Through the participation
in this action research, the leadership team identified and developed an awareness
of a problem that negatively influenced our performance. We chose a course of
action that allowed us to build capacity; and we felt empowered to use our newly
acquired expertise to improve the performance of our organization.
To examine specific results at this point of the project, I used the same
three data sources that I used to conduct the initial problem analysis. By using
these same data sources I was able to do a pre-intervention and post-intervention
analysis. The results of the pre- and post-analysis could then be used as one
indicator that the gaps between current performance and benchmarked
performance were indeed decreasing. The three data sources were: (a) interviews
with each of the department managers in the district office, (b) the goals and
objectives submitted by the managers for their departments, and (c) the
observations I conducted and the subsequent field notes generated of actual job
performance. This triangulation of data provided very useful information about
the changes in our district that could contribute to improved performance.
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The interviews were conducted as a function of the evaluation process in
this district. The initial interviews were called pre-conferences and were designed
to establish the areas the managers wished to focus on during the school year and
subsequently have evaluated. Several less formal interviews were conducted
regularly throughout the school year and the evaluation process concluded with a
post-conference in which the progress made on those identified areas was
discussed. It was during the informal ongoing interviews that I noted a distinct
difference in our discussions as they pertained to two concepts or practices
covered in our interventions. The first was the use of data to justify decisions that
do or do not align to the district goals. The following comment from one of the
managers summarizes closely the feeling of the entire group. “I have spent years
reporting to people what I do, now I am being asked to report how well I’m doing
it. The only way to do that is with numbers and stats.”
The director of our Human Resources Department described a process
implemented that greatly improved her department’s efficiency and was very
dependent upon quantifiable data.
This year we put into place a new process for supervisors to request a new
position. Previously, the process was extremely subjective and questions
of fairness could not be answered well. Now when a supervisor requests a
position they must respond in writing to five pre-established standards.
This request is then forwarded to the cabinet and each cabinet member
scores the request. If a minimum score of 12 is achieved then the request
is forwarded as recommended. If the minimum score is not met then the
request is sent back for further information or denied at that time. Having
quantifiable data that corresponds to a set of standards has made defending
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the decisions to both the supervisors and the board much less
controversial.
The slow shift to data-driven decision making has not been without bumps
in the road. Prior to the initial training by the Baldrige in Education Center, the
expectation to collect data was viewed as one more thing added to everyone’s
plate. All the department managers agreed that data were important, however
what data to collect and how to collect it were identified by some managers as
factors inhibiting the collection of data. Just as concerning as the process
questions were, another concern became apparent during the interviews. The
following comment by one of the department managers summarizes a similar
feeling shared by other managers.
Some of the site administrators are unhappy with my department. There
are two sides to every story. I don’t believe it is fair to put all the blame
on just my department or the staff. If they would do what we ask,
everything would be better off.
Clearly this was a somewhat defensive response and is indicative of a fear
of what the data may reveal. In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies
Make the Leap and Others D on’ t, Jim Collins (2001) addresses this issue
specifically, “all good-to-great companies began the process of finding a path to
greatness by confronting the brutal facts of their current reality” (Collins, 2001,
pp. 71-72). The brutal facts are difficult to confront, but until the data are
collected that is not even possible.
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After the first round of training by the Baldrige in Education Center, a
mantra developed among the district managers. Recognizing that data and
information was the only way to improved performance, we as a leadership team,
agreed that we would make feedback our friend. There were several occasions
when we were confronting the brutal data or just trying to figure out what it meant
that we reminded ourselves that the data were our friends and that provided a
degree of humor and helped keep things in perspective.
After several administrative meetings in which we looked at different sets
of data and discussed what the next steps might be, the Assistant Superintendent
of Educational Services made a comment that described perfectly the realization
she came to:
After the training and during the meetings with the other department
managers, it dawned on me that we were already collecting a tremendous
amount of data. What aligning the arrows for us meant was to identify the
data that provided information on the goals and priorities of the board.
Continue to collect that data and perhaps reduce or eliminate the other
less-useful data.
In my discussions with the managers after the trainings, everyone of them
described a plan to utilize data as evidence that their goals and objectives were
being achieved. The Baldrige criteria had provided us with a framework to better
understand the need for data as well as sending us down the road toward a
common language about data and continuous improvement. This was a
noticeable shift between my initial interviews and the interviews I conducted after
the trainings or interventions.
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The second noticeable difference involved the concept of meeting
customers’ needs. In the pre-intervention interviews, not one manager mentioned
the concept of customers or providing a service which meet the needs of another
system within our organization. However, in the post-intervention interviews,
nearly all the managers mentioned that customers needed to be identified and their
needs were an important factor in helping them to focus their goals and
objectives. The following comment accurately describes how most of the district-
level managers felt.
Prior to the trainings, I had never considered asking the principals or
teachers how they felt I was helping them do their job. Quite honestly, I
saw our jobs as very different and not dependent upon on one another.
But now I can see how me knowing their needs and them knowing my
needs could make each of our jobs more efficient and, for sure, increase
the respect for what each does.
Awareness that each of our departments has customers and that we
provide a service to them that is crucial to their success, and ours for that matter,
was a good first step. However, identifying those customer needs and then
quantifying how well we are doing in meeting those needs is the key to
continuous performance improvement. This comment by our Information
Systems Director sums that idea up well.
Wow, what a wake-up call that survey data was. I knew that our scores
would be low since we were comparing ourselves against benchmarked
performances, but I didn’t realize how little our principals (customers)
knew about what we did. I can see this stuff (continuous improvement)
doesn’t happen by itself.
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The post-intervention interviews were different than the pre-intervention
interviews. Each manager’s awareness level, particularly in regards to the need
for data and customer service, was very evident. The fact that we have begun to
develop a common language about performance improvement is a very obvious
and positive result.
The document review was the second comer of my data triangulation to
help measure the results of this action research project. The documents that were
reviewed are the goals and objectives submitted by each of the department
managers, and any supporting documentation that provided evidence of the
attainment of the goals and objectives. As you can see in appendices D, E, and F,
the pre-intervention goals and objectives were well organized and contained very
worthy goals. However, when compared to benchmarked goals and objectives
such as described in the Baldrige criteria, large gaps were apparent. The
differences between the pre-intervention goals and the post-intervention goals are
perhaps the most easily discemable of all the results.
The literature on well-aligned and measurable goals as a catalyst for
performance improvement is abundant and very powerful. What distinguishes
good goals or performance indicators is that they not only identify what is going
to happen but how that will be measured, and most importantly they define what
successful attainment is. These goals must then cascade throughout the
organization. For example, the organizational goals operationalize the mission
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and are consistent with the core values; the departmental goals align with the
organization goals; and the school, classroom and individual student goals align
with the departmental goals.
The goals submitted by the department managers of the Dos Palos-Oro
Loma Joint Unified School District for the 2003-2004, or what I am calling the
pre-intervention goals, had 28 out of 39 (71.7%) of the goals aligned with the
district or organizational goals. The post-intervention goals submitted had 38 out
o f44 (86.3%) of the goals aligned. Alignment was determined by identifying the
goals and objectives that directly supported the four priority areas selected by the
Board of Trustees. Clearly the training provided by the Baldrige in Education
Center was effective in helping the mangers see the need for alignment.
Alignment helps turn random acts of improvement into well-planned and
organized acts of improvement.
With the improved alignment of the organizational and departmental
goals, I next examined the measurability of the goals. Goals were considered
measurable if embedded with quantifiable requirements and an indicator to use to
determine if success had been achieved. In the pre-intervention goals, only 4 of
39 (10.2%) were measurable. Of the goals that were submitted after the
intervention, 23 of 44 (52.2%) were measurable. Again the training provided
during the intervention was effective in helping us to improve the quality of our
performance indicators.
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Below are some examples of the differences in goals before the
intervention and after.
From the Human Resource Department:
Pre-intervention: Research and implement an HR records management
system and a substitute calling system.
Post-intervention: Populate the EdRM system by completing six out of
nine employee record-tabs for all staff by the end of the 2005 school year.
From the Fiscal Services Department:
Pre-intervention: Provide training and information to the sites to improve
budgetary understanding and financial accountability.
Post-intervention: Restore school site unrestricted, 4,300 budgets by 10%
a year, over the next three years.
From the Educational Services Department:
Pre-intervention: Develop a comprehensive professional development
program for teachers that includes performance learning, literacy and math
intervention strategies, cognitive coaching, and English as a non-native
language.
Post-intervention: Facilitate a book study one day a week for eight weeks
with the book Strategies that Work, in which 15 people attend for at least
75% of the time.
From the Information Systems Department:
Pre-intervention: Implement a system that allows teachers to quickly scan
and store student data in a common database.
Post-intervention: The number of support requests for student information
systems will be accounted for and the completion times will be recorded
throughout the year. Our goal will be to complete 90% of these support
request within 48 hours of submission of the support request.
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By all accounts, the level of understanding and the ability to write
effective goals was greatly increased after the intervention. In addition the
strategic planning that has occurred in each of the departments has taken a
dramatic turn from a compliance mentality with the federal, state, and county
requirements to an achievement mentality as the progress toward achieving the
district’s goals and priorities was monitored.
The third data source used to examine the results of this action research
project was the actual observations of job performance. To make the observations
and field notes more manageable, I reduced the scope of the observations down to
two primary settings. The first setting was the informal, individual meetings I had
with each manager as we dealt with the issues that were specific to their
departments. The vast majority of these meetings involved a problem or a
concern that had arisen and we were usually using problem-solving strategies.
Again the most obvious difference I noted, which was consistent with the
interviews I conducted, was the increased dependency upon data. I noted several
situations in which decisions were postponed because the course of action being
discussed was not supported by the information available. Until enough data
were available, no one was comfortable in defending a decision.
A secondary benefit of our more sophisticated use of data was that the
department managers started to move away from the initial blame for a situation
always falling on a person. Just the process of looking for more information and
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data to resolve a situation or help make a better decision caused us to examine our
systems. And as more of this was done, it was observed that our managers
recognized that often it was the system that failed or placed an employee in a
position to make a bad decision, which resulted in a problem or concern.
The second setting in which I made observations of the department
managers were in formal, structured meetings such as administrative meetings,
cabinet meetings, and board meetings. These meetings were considered rich in
cultural memory. Therefore, the opportunities to introduce processes and
procedures that were different were challenging. What became apparent in these
meetings was that the department managers understood alignment. As they
provided required information and various reports, they did an excellent job of
connecting the information to the board’s priorities and goals.
Another observable change in the managers during formal meetings was
their use of quality tools. Quality tools, as they were demonstrated to us during
our training, are thinking tools that help in problem-solving, decision-making, and
critical thinking. To gather ideas, the managers used affinity diagrams, lotus
diagrams, and an issue bin. In presenting data that sometimes was difficult to
understand, they used a run chart or a Pareto diagram and they were very effective
in helping everyone understand the data. To solve problems and make decisions,
the managers used force field charts, fishbone diagrams, and decision matrixes.
The use of these tools greatly increased the efficiency of our meetings and helped
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make some potentially controversial decisions much more objective and easier to
support.
Clearly, by triangulating the information from the interviews, documents,
and the observations, there was a change in the management of the Dos Palos-Oro
Loma Joint Unified School District. Performance indicators that are aligned to
the organizational goals and are measurable have been implemented within a
system that provides for continuous improvement by following a cycle of constant
monitoring and modification when the data suggest it is necessary. Although we
now have a way to measure and improve the performance of the department
managers in the district, there still exists a need to make changes that
institutionalize continuous improvement. Therefore, I have six recommendations
that will push the district further toward quality practices and performance
excellence.
First, implement the Baldrige criteria as a change management strategy. It
is crucial for all the district-level managers and site-level administrators to
understand each of the seven Baldrige criteria. How well we manage change will
determine how well our district achieves our organizational goals, and more
importantly, the quality of education provided to students. After training is
provided to help develop a deeper understanding of the criteria, category
champions should be selected to help' each department implement the criteria and
monitor the progress. The category champions should meet with the managers
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and administrators and brainstorm possible action-plan components. This will
establish a healthy dialogue about what the next steps would be.
Second, modify the performance benchmark survey to become a
continuous improvement self-audit for each department. The feedback from these
surveys is vital to the development of the operational definitions. The items on
the survey must be drawn from the Baldrige criteria because they are considered
benchmarks in performance excellence. By collecting data on the departments
specifically, unique areas of strength can be recognized and areas in need of
improvement can be addressed as well.
Third, develop operational definitions for each department within the
district office. More than just goals, operational definitions are comprised of four
elements: a quality characteristic, a measuring instrument, a method of
measurement, and a decision criteria. Operational definitions are directly linked
to the organizational goals of the district and allow the managers to determine
how well their services are meeting or exceeding their customers’ needs and
expectations. They are key to helping monitor progress toward department
excellence and to helping all staff members understand their contributions to
achieving the district’s mission. By clearly identifying operational definitions
within the departments and having measures that can be tracked over time, senior
leaders can see at a glance hbw well the district is progressing.
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Fourth, rewrite job descriptions to align with the operational definitions.
The job descriptions for each employee in each department must be reviewed with
the operational definition in mind. Job descriptions need to reflect the change in
practice toward quality indicators and performance measurement and
improvement.
Fifth, redesign performance evaluations. Job performance evaluations are
usually negotiated so that must be considered in the redesigning of the
evaluations. In addition to a changed document, the process may need to be
reviewed as well. The key is to have alignment and agreement between the
operational definitions, job descriptions, and the job evaluations. Without
alignment, staff members cannot be expected to clearly understand the
expectations of the job or what their contributions to the organization would be.
This alignment between the operational definitions, job descriptions, and the
evaluations will go a long way in institutionalizing a quality system to ensure
performance improvement.
Sixth, provide professional development that specifically focuses upon the
feedback provided by the aligned job evaluations. This last recommendation ties
together all the other recommendations and has the capability to ensure that a
continuous improvement cycle occurs within the district.
The Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District has made
measurable progress toward implementing performance indicators in the district
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office for each department. The increase in our level of awareness and knowledge
has clearly increased our capacity to improve performance by reducing the gaps
between current performance and benchmarked performance. The
implementation of the recommendations will be the next step in moving the
culture of our district toward continuous improvement based on quality practices.
The Baldrige criteria will provide the framework for deployment throughout our
entire district.
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71
APPENDIX A
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK SURVEY PARTICIPANTS
Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District
Brian Walker Superintendent
CABINET
Jan Wood Assistant Superintendent
Elizabeth Wisener Chief Business Officer
Shirleen Stanley Human Resource Manager
Paul Chounet Information Systems Director
ADMINISTRATORS
Mike Rivard Principal-Dos Palos High School
Lee Yonkers Principal— Bryant Middle School
Dwight Thompson Principal— Dos Palos Elementary School
Betsy Walker Principal— Marks Elementary School
Norma Delgado Principal— Oro Loma School
Mike Ashmore Principal— Alternative/Special Education
Terri Coelho Vice Principal— Dos Palos High School
Katy Miller Vice Principal— Bryant Middle School
Johne Lennon Vice Principal— Marks and Dos Palos Elementary
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72
APPENDIX B
2003-2004 BOARD PRIORITIES AND OBJECTIVES
1. SAFE, SUPPORTIVE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT
a. Implement the District Safety Plans. Schools add their sections.
Review annually
b. Develop strategies to address the changing district demographics
c. Implement “Character Education” with particular emphasis on
conflict resolution
2. IMPROVE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE FOR ALL STUDENTS
A Develop specific numerical targets for each assessment tool and
increase student performance on the following state assessment
measures:
• API— All Grades— Increase the emphasis on history/social
studies and science
• California High School Exit Exam (CHSEE)
• California English Language Development Test (CELDT)
• University of California A-G Requirements
• No Child Left Behind
1. Immediate Intervention for Underperforming Schools Program
(IIUSP) and Title 1 Schools make sufficient progress to exit the
designation as a low-performing school.
2. Continue to stress the use of assessments and data in making
instructional" decisions.
3. Increase the emphasis on 8th grade algebra.
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73
4. Focus on 0 to 3 Reading.
5. Seek resources for birth-Pre K programs.
3. MAXIMAL USE OF THE DISTRICT RESOURCES
A. Maintain fiscal solvency.
B. Maintain and expand the teacher induction program.
C. Develop a year-round comprehensive professional development
program for administrative, classified and certificated employees.
D. Fund and expand technology for instructional and management
support.
E. Develop staffing formulas.
F. Prepare for enrollment growth: Facilities-Land use acquisition.
G. Implement Measure G.
H. Look for increased operating efficiency.
I. Enter into Strategic Planning.
4. SUPPORT TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO CAREER THROUGH
ACADEMIC AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING
A. Develop modules for the Tech Center.
B. Explore Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE).
C. Explore training in various trades.
ADOPTED: March 13, 2003
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74
APPENDIX C
PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE
CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION DEPARTMENT 2003-2004
Jan Marie Wood
Assistant Superintendent
To support the 2003 -2004 Board Priorities and Objectives, LEAP Plan,
Employees o f Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District (DPOLJUSD)
and students, I will:
GOAL 1: Support a Safe School Environment
Objective 1-1: Implement “Character Education” district wide.
Investigate and support the implementation of Character Education on each
school site.
Objective 1-2: Continue interaction of community resources including law
enforcement, Mental Health, Community Resource Center, etc., to provide
services to the students, parents and employees of DPOLUSD.
GOAL 2: Improve Academic Performance for All Students
Objective 2-1: Develop charting system for principals to implement in the areas
of:
1. Focus Lessons
2. Standards Mapping
3. Standards Assessment
4. Individual Student Goals
Objective 2-2: Develop Comprehensive Reporting of Adequate Yearly Progress
(AYP) and Academic Performance Index (API) for the community, schools and
Board of Education.
Objective 2-3: Assist IIUSP and High Priority Program (HP) schools in fulfilling
plans'submitted.
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75
Objective 2-4: Develop a comprehensive professional development program for
teachers that includes: Performance Learning, Literacy and Math Intervention
Strategies, Cognitive Coaching, and English as a Non-Native Language.
Objective 2-5: Demonstrate Focus Lesson observations for site principals.
Objective 2-6: Facilitate implementation of goals in the Local Educational
Agency Plan (LEAP).
Objective 2-7: Will follow all compliance issues according to Coordinated
Compliance Review (CCR) Guidelines.
GOAL 3: Maximize Use of District Fiscal Resources
Objective 3-1: Develop awareness to site administrators in the use of Categorical
Funds. Assist in the planning of expenditures to meet the needs of students and
compliance issues.
Objective 3-2: Seek outside resources to supplement programs within the school
district.
GOAL 4: Support Transition for School to Career Through Academic and
Vocational Training
Objective 4-1: Will assist the Technology Department in developing technology
training for staff.
Objective 4-2: Will assist sites in vocational education plans and compliance
issues.
Professional Growth:
Objective : I will continue my learning in the implementation of the No Child
Left Behind Law, the impact it will have in regards to the district as a whole, and
most importantly student progress.
Jan Marie Wood Date
Brian Walker Date
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76
APPENDIX D
PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE FISCAL
DEPARTMENT 2003-2004
1. Provide quality, timely financial information to sites and departments
so that they can make informed decisions about the funds for which
they are accountable (Board Objectives 2 and 3).
2. Provide training and information to sites to improve budgetary
understanding and financial accountability (Board Objectives 1 and 3).
3. Move forward with the implementation of the results from the
classified wage study (Board Objective 3).
4. Complete fiscal department reorganization (Board Objective 3).
5. Improve department’s availability/customer satisfaction for customers
and district staff (Board Objective 3).
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77
APPENDIX E
PROFESSIONAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE HUMAN
RESOURCE DEPARTMENT 2003-2004
TO: Mr. Walker
FROM: Shirleen Stanley
REF: Goals and Objectives 2003-2004
DATE: Monday, December 01, 2003
1. Personnel Office
a. Identify Personnel Department Customers.
b. Develop Customer Service oriented procedures/tools for the
identified customer.
c. Develop evaluation instrument to measure customer satisfaction.
2. District Resources
a. Research and implement (depending upon available funding) an HR
Records Management system and a Substitute Calling system.
3. Professional Growth
a. Identify, research, and implement a personal professional growth plan.
b. Begin collection of evidence (portfolio) for Mr. Walker’s review.
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78
APPENDIX F
SURVEY LETTER
Office of the Superintendent
Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. Given the nature of the
survey and the fact that it is the first time, some explanation is necessary. The
purpose of the survey is to quantify and compare the current performance of the
district office (Educational Services, Human Resources, Fiscal Resources, and
Information Systems Services) to benchmarked performance as identified in the
Baldrige Quality Criteria. Please use the following list as the parameters to
complete the survey.
1. When assessing each item, please view the district office collectively.
I realize Human Resources may do better on a particular item than say
Educational Services, but for the purposes of this first survey please
view the district office leadership together.
2. This is a “Behaviorally Anchored Survey” and has the potential to be
more diagnostic than a simple “Likert Scale.” However, not all the
items will fit perfectly with the scoring rubric so choose the score that
most closely assesses your opinion of the performance.
3. Senior leaders are those people that manage each of the four
departments mentioned above.
4. Performance/Organizational values are: learning focus, student and
stakeholder satisfaction, role model leadership, continuous
improvement, and employee involvement.
5. Organizational goals are the “Board Priorities and Objectives”
established each year.
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79
6. Performance goals are the individual goals and objectives each
leaders is asked to complete each year.
The data collected from this survey will be reviewed and used by the
district office to create action plans to provide better service. The data will also
be used in my dissertation for the University of Southern California. All
responses will be kept confidential and you are not required to put your name on
it. I will hand the survey out on Monday, June 7,2004. Please complete it and
have it ready for the administrative meeting Thursday, June 10, 2004. Again
thank you, and if you have any questions please call.
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80
APPENDIX G
SCORING RUBRIC
FOR THE PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK SURVEY
1
Not Evident
None of the district leaders spend time on this particular item.
2
Beginning
A few district leaders spend a minimal amount of time on this item
with no or very little change in operation.
3
Emerging Effectiveness
Some district leaders spend a limited amount of time on this item
with inconsistent results.
4
Mature
Many district leaders spend most of their time working with item
and the results are noticeable.
5
Advanced
Most district leaders focus on this item as a means to improve performance.
The results are very clear.
6
Role Model
All district leaders model the effective use of this item. Benchmark level
achievement has been the outcome of its use.
7
Not Applicable
I do not have enough information to answer this item or
it is not applicable to our district.
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81
APPENDIX H
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK SURVEY
1.0 SENIOR LEADERSHIP DIRECTION
1.1 Senior leaders are personally involved in performance improvement.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.2 Senior leaders spend a significant portion of their time on performance
improvement activities.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.3 Senior leaders carry out many visible activities (i.e., goal setting, planning,
and recognition and reward of performance and process improvement).
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.4 Senior leaders regularly communicate performance values to administrators
and ensure that they demonstrate those values in their work.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.5 Senior leaders use quality tools and practices.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.6 Senior leaders study and learn about improvement practices of other
organizations.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.7 Senior leaders clearly and consistently articulate values (i.e., learning focus,
student and stakeholder satisfaction, role model leadership, continuous
improvement, and employee involvement) throughout the organization.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
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82
1.8 Senior leaders ensure that organizational values are used to provide
direction to all faculty and staff in the organization to help achieve the
organizational and performance goals.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.9 Senior leaders use effective and innovative approaches to reach out to all
faculty and staff to spread the organization’s values and align its work to
support organizational goals.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.10 Roles and responsibilities of leaders are clearly defined, understood by
them, and used to evaluate and improve their performance.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.11 Many different communication strategies are used to reinforce performance
values and organizational goals. Leaders at all levels make two-way
communication easy through personal methods.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.12 Leader behavior (not merely words) clearly communicates what is expected
of the organization and its faculty and staff.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.13 A systematic process is in place for evaluating and improving the integration
or alignment of the performance values, organizational goals, and personal
performance goals or indicators.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.14 Senior leaders are personally involved in listening to student and
stakeholder needs, facilitating the accomplishment of district goals and
monitoring results.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
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83
1.15 District leaders monitor the effectiveness of the action plans to achieve the
organizational goals through staff and faculty feedback, classroom
observation, and ultimately, student performance results, and make
adjustments accordingly.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
1.16 A typical meeting of district leaders includes, review and presentation of
analysis of test scores or survey results, progress reports on annual issues,
staffing issues, budget planning, environmental scanning, and
building/department updates.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
2.0 ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW
2.1 Reviews against measurable performance standards are held frequently.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
2.2 Actions are taken to assist departments that are not meeting organizational
goals or performing to plan.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
2.3 Senior leaders systematically and routinely check the effectiveness of their
leadership activities.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
2.4 Student learning, performance, and budgetary/financial data drive priorities
for organizational improvement and innovation.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
2.5 Senior leaders base their organizational decisions on reliable data and facts
pertaining to stakeholders, operational processes, and faculty performance
and satisfaction.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature J
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
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84
2.6 Senior leaders hold regular meetings to review performance data and
communicate problems, successes, and effective approaches to improve
work.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
3.0 RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE PUBLIC
3.1 The district’s principal organizational activities include systems to analyze,
anticipate, and minimize public hazards or risks.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
3.2 The district considers the impact that its operations and services might have
on the community and considers those impacts in planning.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
3.3 The effectiveness of systems to meet or exceed regulatory of legal
requirements is systematically evaluated and improved.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
3.4 The district communicates in formal and informal ways its policies and
procedures.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
4.0 SUPPORT OF KEY COMMUNITIES
4.1 Senior leaders and faculty and staffs at various levels are involved in the
organizations, committees, task forces or other community activities.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
4.2 District resources are allocated to support involvement in community
activities.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A -1
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85
4.3 Faculty and staffs participate in a variety professional quality and
organization improvement associations.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
4.4 The effectiveness of processes to support and strengthen key communities is
systematically measured, evaluated, and improved.
1-Not Evident 2-Beginning 3-Basically Effective 4-Mature
5-Advanced 6-Role Model N/A
SPECIFIC COMMENTS:
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Asset Metadata

Creator Walker, Brian William (author)

Core Title Implementation of performance indicators for the district office of the Dos Palos -Oro Loma Joint Unified School District

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag education, administration,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Hocevar, Dennis (committee chair), Cohn, Carl (committee member), Thomas, Glen (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-388393

Unique identifier UC11340365

Identifier 3180496.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-388393 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3180496.pdf

Dmrecord 388393

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Walker, Brian William

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA