Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1 PROBLEM STATEMENT ........................................................................................................................ 2 HOW WILL WE TEACH CREATIVE THINKING? ....................................................................................................... 3 HOW WILL WE TEACH COLLABORATION? ............................................................................................................. 3 HOW WILL WE TEACH INITIATIVE? ........................................................................................................................ 4 HOW WILL WE TEACH INNOVATION? ..................................................................................................................... 4 ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................................................. 5 RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................................................................ 8 REFLECTION .......................................................................................................................................... 10 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 12

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Introduction JHT Wildcats, a charter school, was formed in 2010, after most if not all of the public school districts of New Jersey had their state aid reduced by 5% or more. In an article found online at NJ.COM (Randquist & Alloway, 2010), the budget cuts by the Christie administration will force many schools to layoff hundreds of employees, eliminate programs for students, cut services such as courtesy busing and after schools activities, as well as increase class size. The idea of charter schools has been around for quite some time, but since the 1990’s more than 3400 charter schools throughout the country emerged. Charter schools fit in a niche between private and public schools. They are funded with public money (except for their facilities) and they are an alternative to regular public schools systems. A private group of people can submit and get approved a charter to run their own school. Charter schools receive waivers from public school districts in exchange for promising better academic results. Charters are usually given for 3-5 years, where an eye is kept on academic performance. If academic performance lags behind comparable public schools, then the “charter” is pulled and the school is closed. (Chen, 2007) After one academic year, the JHT WILDCATS charter school increased its’ enrollment to the maximum of 500 students and 30 instructors. The school is fully integrated with technology and each student is provided a laptop with Internet access. Every three years, the New Jersey State of Education requires a three-year education/technology plan, whereby public and charter schools must take a look at where they are now, and where they want to go. The three year education/technology plan is a roadmap to assess what

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was done, how it was done, what is still needed and how and what resources will be required to carry out the plan. (Education, 2010) The three-year education/technology plan addresses many areas to monitor and control quality. In order for the JHT WILDCATS charter school to compete in tomorrow’s job market, the Superintendent along with the elected board members are pursuing ideas to improve their quality management philosophies.

Problem Statement

In 2010, there were 3,823,142 teachers in public, charter, private, and Catholic elementary and secondary schools. They taught a total of 55,203,000 students, who attended one of 132,656 schools (The Center For Education Reform). The parents and teachers who have decided to create a charter school so that high academic standards, small class size, innovative approaches, and educational philosophies to improve quality in education could be accomplished founded the JHT Wildcats. Even though the first year for the JHT Wildcats was successful, the Administration realizes that in order to continue to deliver a higher quality for education, the following questions should be analyzed: 1. How will we teach creative thinking? 2. How will we teach collaboration? 3. How will we teach initiative? 4. How will we teach innovation? Furthermore, JHT Wildcats charter school is looking to further expand and utilize

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technology in order to help move away from a one-size-fits-all approach, personalize learning, and enable students to progress and succeed at their own pace.

Literature Review How will we teach creative thinking?

In order to address the question of how to teach creativity seems to lend itself to the concept of workforce engagement. According to our textbook, engaging the workforce, it states, “People are the key to process excellence.” They create innovative ideas, initiate and implement improvement projects, and apply tools and techniques to solve problems. (Evans & Lindsay , 2011) Student engagement occurs when "students make a

psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives. (Newmann, 2011)

How will we teach collaboration?

The JHT Wildcat charter school is committed to helping our students by providing a 21st century faculty; teachers who are always learning and stretching their own ability to use technology. We are committed to providing abundant access to a well-maintained fleet of computers with an array of productivity and educational software to enhance their learning. We are committed to providing our students with opportunities to use and explore interactive social media within controlled spaces in order to model and practice safe, smart and civil behavior online.

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How will we teach initiative?

According to Walden, teaching students to take initiative in their lives by never saying no unless it is a matter of health and safety. For matters of health and safety, we are adults and it is our responsibility to keep kids healthy and safe. That said, and with the exception of health and safety issues, the answer to any question about allowable activities should always receive a yes. Students need to do, to act, to experiment, to try, to move, to build, and to create. All of these verbs involving initiative require space, stuff, and adult patience. (Walden, Nan) Educators need to get out of their way once they have provided them with materials and opportunity, and they need to let them be.

How will we teach innovation?

The charter school will haven classrooms that encourage and enable innovation in all students, and then patience will be needed to help them mature. These finding will be used to sort out who will do what in the future, and some of them will rise to the top of the innovation charts, while others will play more quiet, but equally important, roles. Senator Barack Obama spoke to the National Educators Association (NEA) Representative Assembly in Washington, DC via live satellite on July 5, 2008. He addressed the need for innovation in public schools including improved technology and quality charter schools. Senator Obama’s key education advisor is Dr. Linda DarlingHammond, a strong advocate for teacher quality. (Obama, 2008) In Results Now, (Schmoker, 2006) discussed the importance of teacher quality in promoting innovation. A new culture of teaching is needed in which teachers see themselves as intellectual and creative professionals. For too long, teachers have looked 4

for direction from above instead of taking initiative in the school improvement process. “Unfortunately, few teachers see themselves as inventive, adaptive professionals upon which improvement primarily depends

You must address a minimum of 8 scholarly resources in this section (excluding the text). Provide an analysis and synthesis of the various authors from the research that significantly informed your analysis and proposed solutions. You may have found conflicting opinions\theories related to your topic area. Identify and discuss any such contrasts and/or describe in detail significant agreement among your sources. Your literature review should be separate and distinct from your analysis section; it is a summation of your research. The “best practices” of quality management that was covered in the course and that links with your direction should be cited in this section.

Analysis
He
believed that adoption of, and action on, the fourteen points was a signal that management intended to stay in business. Deming also encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the widely known Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle is also known as the Deming cycle, although it was developed by a colleague of Deming, Dr Shewhart. Plan -­‐ what is needed Do it Check/Study -­‐ that it works Act -­‐ to correct any problems or improve performance

Tom Peters identified leadership as being central to the quality improvement process, discarding the word “Management” for “Leadership”. The new role is of a facilitator, and the basis is “Managing by walking about” (MBWA), enabling the leader to keep in touch with customers, innovation and people, the three main areas in the pursuit of excellence. He believes that, as the effective leader walks, at least 3 major activities

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are happening:

• Listening - suggests caring • Teaching -values are transmitted

• Facilitating -able to give on-the-spot help

Explore the problem in depth and with scholarly rigor. Provide an identification and description of the potential root causes of the problem/issue. Be sure not to address only symptoms of your problem. Diagnose the problem and its origins as best as you can. A critical element of this section is to apply the best practices of Quality Management concepts and models from the text, class discussions, and from researched sources. Discuss the concepts, ideas, or insights that are most valuable in helping you make sense of the causes of the problem. Support your analysis with reference to appropriate research material. Citations are a MUST!

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Recommendations

Identify the quality management initiative and recommended direction that you have chosen. Explain its relevance and significance in how it will address the quality management issue(s) and reason(s) that you identified in the problem statement area. Citations are a MUST! Note: Please remember in this section you also need to touch on how they will be able to measure their success. Think of the "lead-lag" indicator concepts from the course readings and lectures.

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Reflection

We need to transform our ways of knowing about teaching and learning, about our content, and about systems and theory. I believe that quality metrics in general when talked about in education have never been clearly understood. If educators are to transform American education in the ways necessary to prepare students to flourish in the new high-performance organizations, we will need an incredible amount of support from the public. Business and community leaders who are involved in significant Quality transformations (not just “into TQM) understand the time and focused effort it takes to change an organization. (Garvin, 1991) As we embark on long-term, extensive change efforts, we need to find allies and champions in these leaders. I have learned that understanding Deming's system of profound knowledge applies to any type of organization, but to successfully apply his ideas, an organization needs a deep understanding of its own business. Educators need to be aware of how teaching and learning, their our core technologies, are being informed by educational research. I learned that Deming's idea of knowing our extended processes is another reason this “business model” applies to schools. We need to better understand our suppliers and customers, both external and internal. For example, how can we take our data in real time, and extrapolate this information quickly and efficiently in order to assess whether or not XYZ program is improving intended quality metric. For example, we must guard against becoming a school that is whole-language or cooperative learning without an understanding of how all the pieces of schools must work

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in a fine synergy—what Deming calls optimizing the system. What I found most interesting in during researching this topic and writing this paper of quality is that I learned there are many similarities between what the current Obama administration is doing with education reform and the role of Deming’s quality methodologies.

My role in education is strictly in Technology; however, I anticipate there will be significant changes not only in personnel but in mandates which will hold our educational organization to a quality standard whereby I will asked to participate in leading our organization into a 21st century learning community.

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Bibliography

Chen, G. (2007, December 04). http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/3. Retrieved July 14, 2011 Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT, Center for Advanced Engineering Study Education, N. J. (2010, July 16). http://www.state.nj.us/education/techno/localtech/checklist.htm. Retrieved July 16, 2011 Evans , J. R., & Lindsay , W. M. (2011). Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence (8th Edition ed.). South-­‐Western: Cengage Learning. Garvin, D. (1991). How the Baldrige Award Really Works. 69 (6), 80-­‐93 . Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). The Balanced Scorecard. Boston: Harvard Business School. Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (2011). Engagement theory: A Framework for technology-­‐based teaching and learning. Educational Technology , 38 (5), 20. McClure, P. A., & Smith, J. W. (1999). Distributed Computing Support -­‐ Renewing Administration -­‐ Preparing Colleges and universitites for the 21st Century. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc. Newmann, F. (2011, August 16). Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools. Teachers College Press , 2-­‐3. Obama, B. (2008, July 5). Speech to National Education General Assembly. Randquist, J., & Alloway, K. (2010, March 23).

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/nj_gov_chris_christie_budget_c.html. Retrieved July 16, 2011 Schmoker, M. (2006). Result Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning. Alexandria, VA, USA: Association for supervision and curriculum developement. The Center For Education Reform. (n.d.). K12 Facts. Retrieved from http://www.edreform.com/Fast_Facts/K12_Facts/. Walden, Nan. (n.d.). http://www.quora.com/Nan-­‐Waldman/about. Retrieved August 16, 2011

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