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Community Forum on Job Shadowing in
St. Paul High Schools May 17 - 28
http://www.stpauljobshadow.org
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Bob,
The person which you refer to is William Ouchi and his latest book on the topic is
called Making Schools Work. Ouchi is a world renowned organizational management
researcher who is one of the people who led the decentralization or "flattening" of
organizational structures in corporations. He coined the concept of "Theory Z" as a
new way to manage organizations.
He applies his theories to education in his book. Among the things he argues are:
A) School disctrict funding needs to be tied directly to students and that students
come with a certain dollar amount based on their circumstances (poverty level, ELL,
etc.). The result is there is an incentive for schools to have a balance of students
across economic, social and cultural strata.
B) Resources and decisionmaking should be focused on the school building, not the
school district. In many of the districts which he studied, schools had direct say
over between 85% and 95% of their resources. Ouchi argues that it is not teachers who
are the problems in schools, but the systems in place. His research confirms that if
those who are "on the ground" in schools make decisions they usually yield results.
C) School choice for families is a must. Parents should have full access to all of
the schools in the district, including transportation.
D) Accountability is critical. Superintendents and School Boards must have very
specific measurable standards to which schools must adhere. In other words, schools
can make the decisions, but must be held accountable to some strict standards to
ensure quality. Ouchi is a proponent of No Child Left Behind.
Eric is partly right that the St. Paul School System does embody many of these
principles. However, not to the extent to which many of the successful districts
studied in Ouchi's book do. It might be interesting to here from Ann or others more
connected to the district to share how they compare the St. Paul Schools to Ouchi's
theory.
Bruce Vandal
West Side
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Not so long ago, I heard someone interviewed on the radio about a better
way to fund public education. I think he said they were doing it in
Seattle or someplace out west.
The system assigns a cost to each of several different factors that may be
represented by a single student. The cost for all those factors is added
up, and that amount of money follows the student wherever s/he goes.
Because of this system good schools compete for all the students, not just
the cheapest to educate.
Some factors he mentioned:
English learner
Medical or special emotional needs
disadvantage home environment
insufficient preparation for first grade.
Under this funding plan, schools were provided with several times as much
money for hard-to-educate kids than for normal kids.
Treating all kids as if they have the same cost basis isn't rational, and
if families can move to environments, such as suburbs, where the kids are
less costly to educate, they will naturally be able to afford better
schools for the same money.
I wish I could remember who the speaker was, and where this is done. Has
anyone on the list heard of this system?
Mary C. Zanmiller said:
>
>
> Tom is just plain misinformed when he perpetrates the fallacy about a
> purported "decline in public education."
>
> Public schools can successfully educate students and should be supported
> both financially and politically to do so. Research does not support an
> advantage to non-public schooling. An analysis of published research on
> this question found that:
>
--
Bob Treumann, Saint Paul
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