Assembly Line Education
H. James Harrington
jharrington@qualitydigest.com
If the results of our education system are any indication,
the United States isn’t on par with other high-income
countries. Sure, we spend a lot more money and have more
computers per student than other countries, but we don’t
get proportionately better results. If I were to grade our
education system, I would have to rate it an F.
An ETS Center for Global Assessment study shows that the
United States ranks 12 out of 20 when literacy skills of
U.S. adults were compared to those of 19 other high-income
countries. The United States scored well below countries
such as Canada, Germany, Great Britain and Sweden. The study
shows that a wide gap exists between the best and worst
U.S. performers—and indications of improvement in
the future aren’t optimistic.
We must question why we’re not performing when we
throw money at the problem, cut class sizes and provide
more technology to help teachers. Why is 3.8 percent of
the U.S. workforce absent from work on a given day and between
8 to 10 percent of teachers absent from classrooms on the
same day? (Source: Utah State University’s Substitute
Teaching Institute; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
To try to get to the root cause of this problem, I used
the “Ten Whys and the What” approach with a
tenured teacher.
Why is the U.S. adult literacy rate so bad? There are three
reasons: high immigration rate of illiterate people, high
administrative costs and lack of long-range planning.
Why is there a high number of illiterate immigrants coming
into the United States? Because we don’t impose standards
regarding literacy when we take people in. Most immigrants
come in because they’re willing to take low-paying
jobs.
Why does that affect our literacy rate? Many immigrants
are illiterate in their native languages. Then we try to
teach them English, and they drop out. It’s politically
correct to keep reducing our dropout rate. States have applied
pressure to cut dropout rates in all the schools, so we
lower our standards.
Why cut dropout rates? It’s a way for the principal
to show that the system is improving; thus, we end up graduating
students with no skills.
Why are our administrative costs so high? Because we have
too many administrative people who contribute very little.
Why do they contribute very little? Poor teachers get promoted
out of teaching into jobs like “curriculum specialists.”
Most of these people add no value and often detract from
the education system.
Why do poor-performing teachers get promoted? Because they
have tenure and can’t be fired.
Why do schools have tenure when industry doesn’t?
That’s the way the teacher’s union protects
its people.
Why does the lack of long-range planning affect literacy
rates? We know we have a problem, so we bring in consultants.
They have their own concepts that they want to try out on
us. We bring in a reading consultant, who recommends a new
reading approach. We were taught to use this approach for
a while and it doesn’t work, so we drop it. There
doesn’t seem to be a plan that we stick to.
Why don’t we try to use the Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award as a guideline? Some educational systems have
used it very effectively. We were all trained on the Baldrige
Award two years ago. The concept sounds good, but the key
decision makers don’t understand the concept. It sounds
like a good idea to get teachers involved in decisions that
affect them, but that’s not the way it works in real
life. The principal makes a decision, and we’re told
we all have to do it. For example, we tried “small
group communities.” It was a lot of work to get it
going, and it was just starting to get results when it was
dropped for another approach. This year it’s coming
back again. No one is serious about it this time because
we know that before it becomes effective, it will be dropped
for something else. We don’t follow through on the
plan-do-check-act model. There’s a complete lack of
consistency.
What can the quality profession do to help you? Help us
to develop measurement systems that assess the added value
of administrative areas. Help us to get parents involved
in their children’s education. Too many parents don’t
have time to help their children with their homework or
show interest in the work they’re doing. Too few parents
attend parent-teacher meetings, showing little regard for
the education their children receive. If education is a
low priority in the parent’s mind, it becomes a low
priority in the student’s mind. Help us to keep the
public focused on quality of education, not on simply getting
people through the system. In some schools students are
passed just by attending—no matter what their grades
are. That’s not preparing them for life.
The United States has a lot of very dedicated teachers
who are doing their best to provide quality education to
our children, but they’re getting little help from
the rest of us. As a quality professional, what have you
done to improve the quality of the education system? Don’t
you think we have an obligation to our children and to the
United States to help correct this quality problem?
H. James Harrington is CEO of the Harrington Institute
Inc. and chairman of the board of four other companies.
Visit his Web site at www.harrington-institute.com.
Letters to the editor regarding this column can be sent
to letters@qualitydigest.com.
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