Except Those Beginning a Sentence, Should Be Article Review

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except those beginning a sentence, should be typed as digits rather than words. To count the number of words in this paragraph, select the paragraph, and on the Tools menu click Word Count.

Total Quality Management is a popular topic in education today. Japanese firms introduced total Quality Management (TQM) in 1951 (Hess & Gift, 2008). As Hess and Gift put it in the American School Board Journal, "TQM emphasizes carrying out all jobs and practices correctly the first time" (2008). However, this assumes that the jobs and practices were good to begin with.

Today's No Child Left Behind approach aims to fundamentally transform schools, not just perfect current practices (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 2002). Technically, the International Standards Organization (ISO) defines it as "a management approach, centred [sic] on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-run success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organisation[sic] and society" (ISO in Weinstein, 2009). In theory, this sounds like a win-win situation for all concerned.

Unfortunately, it's not exactly student centered, because students become products to meet society's expectations, say Obermiller, Fleener, and Raven (as cited in Weinstein, 2009). Congress established the influential Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in Education in 1987 to raise awareness of quality management (Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, 2011). Interesting enough, it does not even mention students' needs until it reaches criteria 2: Strategic Planning, and then moves to students as customers in Criteria 3: Customer Focus, where it talks about acquiring them (Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, 2011). Nonetheless, it insists that it has a focus on students (Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, 2011).

Body of Paper:

Experimental Evidence:

Type 1 -- in education:

The experimental evidence for TQM is mixed, at best. According to Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, where she dissects many of the so-called triumphs of these new management methods and points out their faulty data and methods (2010).

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For example, she devotes an entire chapter about District 2 of New York City, and describes how "corporate reformers…became convinced that District 2 was the model for success … and that other districts would experience similar improvement if every teacher were compelled to adopt District 2's methods unquestioningly" (Ravitch, 2010). She pointed out that two-thirds of the district's principals, nearly half of the teachers, and almost all classroom aides were either dismissed or replaced, but new staff developers held jobs in their hands as they reported on teachers' adherence to the constructivist instructional mandates (Ravitch, 2010). Finally, she shows how the gains in test scores can be attributed entirely to "demographic and economic transformation" instead of teaching methods (Ravitch, 2010).

Type 2 -- in business

Even businesses recognize that TQM is stifling. In fact, in 2007, BusinessWeek magazine's cover story focused on the loss of creativity at 3M from the implementation of TQM techniques (Hindo, 2007). Hindo describes how a TQM disciple named McNerney first laid off 11% of the workforce, made the rest of the workers more vulnerable to being laid off, and shrank the budget -- and then implented 6 Sigma, a TQM technique. But, the current CEO points out "You can't put a Six Sigma process into that area and say, well, I'm getting behind on invention, so I'm going to schedule myself for three good ideas on Wednesday and two on Friday. That's not how creativity works." (Hindo, 2007) Since 3M is founded on making money from inventions, that's a problem. As Charles O'Reilly, a Stanford Graduate School of Business management professor points out: "If you take over a company that's been living on innovation, clearly you can squeeze costs out. The question is, what's the long-term damage to the company?" This question is answered by the fact that over the last three years, 3M slid from number 1 to number 7 on the BusinessWeek / Boston Consulting Group's list.....

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