Quality in Education

People often ask "what is continuous improvement anyway?  I decided to do an Internet search to find out how others define continuous improvement. Below is my own definition.. what's yours?

What is Continuous Improvement?

Continuous improvement (CI) is a philosophy, an approach and a paradigm rather than a program or instructional materials.  CI is designed to provide a positive and collaborative school climate and an enthusiastic, participatory learning environment focusing on being better tomorrow, next week, next month and next year.  CI is about understanding that being “good” is good enough; there is always room for improvement.

The goal of CI is to engage every student through empowerment, ownership and accountability for their own learning.  This is accomplished through creating a “student centered environment” that involves students in the implementation of the components of the continuous improvement classroom including:

·  Classroom ground rules:  Students participate in the creation of classroom expectations that all agree to follow in order to accomplish the mission of the classroom.
·  Classroom mission statements:  Students collaboratively create a mission statement that focuses the learning for the year and gets everyone “on the same page.”
·  Classroom SMART goals:  SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented and Time bound.  It is important that all classrooms in the school have goals and action plans that are aligned to school improvement goals.  Students participate in goal setting that put a “laser like focus” on instruction.
·  Classroom data centers:  Once goals have been created in student-friendly language, it is important that students participate in the collection and monitoring of progress toward the goals.  The data center is the collection point to monitor academic progress.
·  Individual student data folders:  To connect every learner to the classroom goals, students maintain a data folder that tracks and measures their individual progress toward their goals.
·  Classroom meetings:  Effective classrooms take time to revisit the classroom data center, mission and goals to make sure that continuous improvement is progressing.  This forum provides students an opportunity to problem-solve and modify the classroom system to obtain maximum results.
·  Student-led conferences:  In a student-centered classroom, students are expected to be able to articulate their own progress of learning demonstrated through the review of their data folder.  Students (instead of the teacher) facilitate the conference with parents.
·  Quality tools and PDSA in the classroom:  21^st century learners prepare for creative problem solving in the world ahead by learning and applying quality tools and the Plan Do Study Act cycle of continuous improvement.  These CI tools and processes keep productivity at its peak!

Students play a unique role in continuous improvement driven systems. They are not only served by the system, but are active workers and participants in the system. The product they produce is learning, through a dynamic interchange between and among students and their teachers. Learning is focused on “what’s most important” and students are able to monitor their performance and readily observe their academic/instructional progress.

They are able to track their own progress in individual data folders and monitoring class progress toward goals in a classroom data center. Consequently, students become more receptive to learning when they are active participants and learn powerful 21^st century skills that will prepare them for the world ahead.

What is your definition of continuous improvement and quality?

Jay