Total Quality.

Applied in the Classroom

Students in Virginia Beach Find Early Gains From New Instructional Practices

For some time educators have been urged to prepare student graduates for the high-performance work place of tomorrow. Schools across the country, like many businesses, are under pressure to produce results. Communities are clamoring to get more for their tax dollars.

As Lloyd Dobyns, the former TV news correspondent turned quality guru, said at a recent Community Quality Day in Virginia Beach: "There is a greater vision where everyone can benefit from doing one thing: adopting a quality system of management.

For education, the greater vision may lie with the use of total quality management strategies in K-12 classrooms and administration. While school system leaders have expressed growing interest in applying quality processes and theory, few have been successful at reaching the ultimate customer--students in our classrooms.

In our school district, the second largest in Virginia with 76,000 students and 82 schools, TQM strategies are being applied in the classroom with positive results.

With changing demographics and a decline in the number of graduates attending four-year colleges, the district began to apply TQM principles to help better prepare our next graduates.

Initial Approach

Four years ago, our school district first considered TQM in the classroom as a method of continuously improving instruction, first in the areas of school-to-work transition and technical and career education. As a first step, a small group of technical and career teachers were trained in TQM at a two-day workshop. Subsequently other teachers and administrators were encouraged to attend staff development on TQM awareness provided by city government in Virginia Beach.

Teachers found TQM interesting at first, but they were not sure how it would fit into the classroom. Technical and career education teachers figured this would be another fad that soon would pass. To respond to these concerns, a voluntary group of teachers, administrators, and business people began meeting monthly beginning in August 1992 to share quality strategies in education. As a result, the national office of Vocational Industrial Clubs of America selected Virginia Beach as a test site for its TQM curriculum.

Quality teaching practices began to spread to instruction when the school district's Office of Instructional Support Services adopted the mission of "continuously improving instruction." TQM paved the way for educators in leadership positions to spread the word that instructional practices should not be static and always can be improved.

Quality Deployment

After hours of introducing team training, facilitation skills, and TQM tools, the old classroom practices of "chalk and talk" and "drill and kill" started to fade in technical and career education. As more teachers became involved in training, growing numbers of academic teachers wondered how TQM would work in their classrooms.

The breakthrough for academic teachers, especially at the elementary level, happened after reading Future Force by Elaine McClanahan and Carolyn Wicks. This book served as a valuable staff development catalyst that immediately empowered teachers with tools and strategies to make their students lifelong learners and problem-solvers.

The Virginia Beach school system did two things to increase TQM's impact upon instruction. First, the district created a position of TQM trainer in the Office of Technical and Career Education. This ensured continuity of training for both classroom teachers and administrators, says Debbie Gentry, the district's coordinator of TQM/industry standards.

"Many of the teachers have discovered that they already were using elements of total quality management in their classroom. The training provided a vehicle for refining their use," she notes.

Second, the school district has given recognition to the teachers and teams of staff who have improved instruction by using the five cornerstones of quality endorsed by the superintendent:

* Continuous improvement,

* Customer focus,

* Teamwork,

* Empowerment, and

* Data-driven decisions.

Each month a Superintendent's Quality Award is given to an employee or student who demonstrates these cornerstones to improve teaching and learning. This recognition has been ongoing since December 1992. Meritorious projects include:

* a fourth-grade classroom TQM implementation using force field analysis, flow charts, cause-and-effect diagrams, issue bins, and run charts;

* a statistical process control field trip by manufacturing and statistics students to the Ford Motor Company's assembly plant in Norfolk;

* implementing TQM in a middle school social studies class; and

* benchmarking fourth-grade reading and math progress at Williams Elementary School.

All classroom teachers have access to TQM training, but students may choose to have more intensive training by enrolling in a TQM pilot course offered at Salem High School in Virginia Beach. Students have embraced the team-oriented teaching style of instructor John Ledgerwood because they are empowered to make decisions about the way the class is taught.

The highly interactive, 90-hour TQM course asks students to examine the elements of the continuous improvement process. Students apply these elements to solving both personal and organizational problems. Ownership, team building, and decision-making activities provide students with opportunities to improve their education and attain future career goals. Most emerge from the class with a working knowledge of quality on both a personal and leadership level that will prepare them for a competitive global workplace. Students with at least a B average can receive three hours of college credit.

Some students make a special trip every day from their home school to take the TQM class at Salem High.

On an administrative level, the Strawbridge and Williams elementary schools in Virginia Beach are training entire faculties and staffs as a part of their schools' strategic planning process. Both school principals have requested that all teachers receive a minimum of 14 hours of TQM training. It is not unusual to see teachers using the tools of total quality--nominal group voting, course mission statements, plus/delta charts, cause-and-effect diagrams, affinity diagrams, force field analysis, and other charts to collect data and measure progress with their empowered students.

Dianne Kinnison, a third grade Strawbridge Elementary School teacher, helped her students develop a class mission statement: "We are the Strawbridge Sharks and the totally cool members of the exciting Seahorse Class. We will have a happy, safe, and clean learning environment that's a radical place to be. We will make learning fun by using successful teamwork and intelligent thinking. We will help each other stay focused so we can all learn together."

Early Results

Qualitative and quantitative data are being collected to assess the value of introducing TQM philosophy and strategies to classrooms. Ernie Sawyer, a Salem High School assistant principal, says, "The TQM initiative has created a new enthusiasm for instruction by teachers and a new enthusiasm for learning by students. It's really making a difference."

One parent of a student enrolled in Salem High School's TQM course noted on a parent survey the positive impact the class had had on her daughter. "Since its beginning, my daughter has been running strong and in the right direction. She has demonstrated a wonderful assertiveness I had not noticed before. More power to her!"

Students in Elaine Johnson's fourth grade class at Williams Elementary School demonstrated the most promising results by scoring 28 points higher than the school average on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Johnson, a 20-year veteran teacher, says, "I just challenged my students to have the best year ever. I highly encourage all principals to take a look at TQM. While hard data is not in yet, nearly all teachers trained who have tried the approach could tell you participation has increased and teaching is more fun."

Definitive results will be forthcoming next year since the National Education Association has chosen the Virginia Beach school system as Virginia's Learning Lab project site. Learning Lab projects around the country are designed to create change and innovations in education. Our project will research the use and measurement of TQM strategies in the classroom at two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. The study will determine the impact of TQM on academic excellence.

Contributing Partners

One exciting development of the system's progress has been the formation of the Virginia Beach Quality Alliance, a liaison among the school division, city, business, and military communities. While the mission of the alliance is to provide a sharing of quality materials, services, resources, and expertise, a primary feature is to certify Virginia Beach students in TQM.

In partnership with classroom teachers, the alliance has developed a competency-based TQM certification for students, the only one of its kind in the country. Alliance members serve as mentors for students who elect to go through the certification process. At a recent executive meeting of the alliance, three corporate board members pledged to fund three $500 scholarships for students who completed the certification process.

Timothy R. Jenney, superintendent of Virginia Beach schools, sees TQM certification for students as "a contribution to the local corporate culture that will boost economic growth and development."

One corporate partner, Reza Hashampour, president and CEO of IMPAQ Computers Inc., says he was startled to discover public schools in Virginia Beach teaching TQM. "I worked with Fortune 500 companies who were just starting to implement quality approaches," he noted. Hashampour's company sponsored one of the student scholarships.

The certification process has been endorsed by the following quality focused businesses: Motorola; the National Alliance of Business; Dobyns, author of the book Quality or Else; General Motors; Ford Motor Company; and National VICA. Endorsements are pending from Arthur Anderson and the American Society for Quality Control.

To date, seven students have undergone the rigorous TQM certification process, and 40 more students now are seeking certification. The first TQM-certified graduate has been hired to conduct company TQM training for new store employees at Harris Teeter, a major supermarket chain.

Our experience makes it apparent that public schools can empower students to succeed. Virginia Beach's quality focus is creating partnerships to ensure that students succeed academically, personally, and professionally within a thriving quality community.