Category Archives: Opinion Pieces

Measuring What Matters

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Measuring What Matters

performance measurement, results-based management, schoolsPulling Teeth

Results-based performance measurement is a dirty word.  At least it used to be.  Years ago I was involved in a multitude of projects aimed at moving Canadian government departments away from counting widgets and towards measuring what matters.  RESULTS!!

Many workshops went something like this:

Consultant:  How do you know that your program is making a difference?

Stakeholder:  Because we serve x number a given community.

Consultant:  But how do you know that you are meeting their needs?

Stakeholder:  We just know that what we are doing is important.

One of the hardest projects that I ever worked on was for a small program that faced losing its funding if it couldn’t develop a results-based performance model.  Helping these stakeholders re-define their business in terms of results was like pulling teeth.  We helped them renew their funding. I don’t believe we convinced them that the model would help them deliver their program.

A Commitment to Measuring Results

You can imagine my delight on hearing the Chief of Staff and Strategic Planning for Wake County Public Schools, Dr Marvin Connelly, present the district’s commitment to measuring its results!

Dr Connelly talked about Wake County’s determination to measure whether or not the school system is creating productive citizens.  In other words, the high-school graduation rate alone tells you nothing about whether or not students learned what they needed to in school.  Instead, it is much more instructive to look at how they are doing in the real world.

Dr Connelly threw out some possible measures:

  • do former students vote?
  • how many freshman within the UNC system are enrolled in remedial classes?
  • are WCPSS students graduating from college?

Making it Count

As a parent with three children in the public school system I am deeply invested in the district following through on this commitment to shift towards measuring results.  However, I believe that until this commitment shifts down into the classroom it will be a challenge to produce the productive citizens we need our children to become.

In my perfect world, the net effect of the implementation of results-based management in schools will be a shift away from using test scores as THE metric towards a more well-rounded assessment of both how well students and their teachers are doing.  A teacher at my children’s elementary school shared a wonderful article from the Boston Globe that sets-out seven things kids need to master.  These skills include:  reading, having a conversation and asking questions.  Would I ever love to facilitate a workshop focused on developing metrics to measure these things!!

Let me tell you, you don’t need to hire a consultant to tell teachers that a simple test-score does not measure what matters most in the classroom:  whether or not children are actually learning and growing.  I look forward to the day we start measuring that!

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Kids and Guns

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boys playing Lucky Shot

Airsoft gun is a dirty word in our house.  Over the new year a seventh grader in our neighborhood was shot in the eye by one of these pellet guns.  He had taken his mask off for a minute and thought he was out of the game.  Not so thought another child.

Fortunately, the injured child is going to be fine.  His parents threw out all the newly acquired airsoft equipment immediately and are telling everyone to be wary:  just because rules are in place (e.g., facemasks) does not mean these guns are safe toys.

It is worth noting that the twelve year old in question is a very cautious, responsible kid.  As his mother puts it “he is the child who never needed to be reminded to look both ways.”  Furthermore, his mother is one of the most sensible people I know.  She is smart, level-headed and is usually a “NO” parent.

Not so Lucky Shot

This incident has made my boys very interested in the Tamir Rice shooting. “Why would the police shoot a twelve year old?” my eleven year old wants to know. “It was pretty clear the gun was fake” piped in the eight year old after sneakily watching youtube clips of the incident.

It is interesting to me that neither one of them sees race as central to this shooting. That is not discounting the very real racial tension at the heart of the matter, but it is encouraging to see a child’s perspective. One of them looked at me squarely and said “I just don’t get why people would think that” when asked whether Tamir being black might have influenced the police.

From their perspective the safety of airsoft guns issue is much more thought provoking.

The heart of the matter

So in my world, we are now wrestling with a somewhat uncomfortable question about whether or not these realistic toys guns are appropriate toys.  My very black and white daughter wants to know “why people are even calling them toys when they are actually guns?”

My sensible friend maintains the incident has reminded her why children need boundaries.  No matter how mature they seem they are still children and do not always understand the consequences associated with a given action.  How many fifteen year olds do you know who think they are ready to drive?

I hope people share stories like this one, helping to institute appropriate boundaries within families and across communities.  At the end of the day, however, I think my kids got it right:  Race should not matter.  The police should NOT have shot a twelve year old.  Guns should not be toys.

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Let’s get Engaged!

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seeing the political landscape from a glass half-full perspective

My eleven year old son became engaged in the electoral process for the first time this past month.  Not in the way a parent would hope though.  He did not develop a passionate stance for or against a particular candidate, nor did he engage in any particular issue.  Instead, he grew disgusted by the process.

I first figured out that he was attuned to North Carolina’s senate race when he referred to “being tired of hearing about Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis” in a poem he wrote for a school poetry slam.  He then wrote about the race for a school assignment. “The recent election changed us by annoying us with those ads.  No one was saying positive things, just making fun of their opponent.”

I am not sure the campaign itself changed many people, but I certainly hope and believe its result will change the political landscape.  The Republican victory this time around was paved by repeatedly pointing out they were not Democrats — not much substance from my perspective.

Not that the Democrats did much better.  Their campaign in North Carolina was narrow.  It focused on wedge issues, like women’s health, not on tangible policy-driven results, like the ECONOMY.  Democrats seem scared to trumpet what they have accomplished and seem mired in how closely to associate with the President.

So why my optimism?  Now that they control both houses, the Republican Party is going to have to stop being the party of “no” and is going to have to put together a policy agenda that is broader than repealing Obamacare.  Whether or not any substantive legislative passes will likely be less important than how the issues are framed in the next general election.

I believe both parties are going to need to redefine what they stand for post-Obama.   The electorate is becoming more diverse and younger, but as this election showed this does not necessarily translate into Democratic victories.  I actually think this up and coming generation is going to change the political process in a way Obama only dreamed he could.    I wonder how this electorate, who just voted overwhelmingly Republican would respond to a well-thought out vision for the country?

So here is to hoping that next electoral cycle politicians on both sides will try to win FOR something.  That should be enough for all of us to raise our glass!

 

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