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Why schools can't improve

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Why the Schools Cant Improve:
The Upper Limit Hypothesis

Robert K. Branson
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 2

Are Quality and Productivity Problems? ....................................................................................................... 2

Responsibility ................................................................................................................................................ 4

The life-cycle of a maturing system .............................................................................................................. 4

Marketing perspective............................................................................................................................... 6

Negative research results ............................................................................................................................. 6

Conventional fixes .................................................................................................................................... 7

Design versus operations problems.............................................................................................................. 7

Overload ................................................................................................................................................... 8

Undercapacity........................................................................................................................................... 8

Obsolescence ........................................................................................................................................... 8

NASA's management system failure ........................................................................................................ 8

Meeting changing requirements.................................................................................................................... 9

Recommendations of the National Commission on Excellence in Education ............................................ 10

Recommendation A ................................................................................................................................ 10

Recommendation B ................................................................................................................................ 10

Recommendation D ................................................................................................................................ 11

Do more, more ............................................................................................................................................ 11

The miracle worker ................................................................................................................................. 11

Historical perspective .................................................................................................................................. 12

The USDESEA project ................................................................................................................................ 13

Comes the villain......................................................................................................................................... 14

The Korean model....................................................................................................................................... 15

Management structure ................................................................................................................................ 16

System requirements.............................................................................................................................. 17

What Will Not Work ..................................................................................................................................... 18

The Implementation Problem...................................................................................................................... 18

Implicit models ........................................................................................................................................ 19

C e n t e r f o r P e r f o r m a n c e T e c h n o l o g y
F l o r i d a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y W h y S c h o o l s C a n t I m p r o v e
2
Explicit models........................................................................................................................................ 19

Conclusions................................................................................................................................................. 20

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... 21

Author.......................................................................................................................................................... 21

References.................................................................................................................................................. 21



Introduction
The first purpose of this paper is to question whether there is a significant discrepancy
between the current levels of productivity and quality of American schools and the levels
required to serve the society well. The second purpose questions whether the current
approach, or the approaches of blue ribbon commissions are likely to produce significant
improvements. A third purpose sets forth the hypothesis that the current school operations
model cannot be improved by the recommendations offered by the National Commission.
The fourth purpose is to suggest that some form of technological intervention must be made
before any substantial increases are made in productivity.
Are Quality and Productivity Problems?
Numerous researchers have recently addressed this persistent question from a variety of perspectives:
including Murname 1975), Heyns (1978), National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983),
Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore (1982), Aker, Spaulding, Adams, and White, (1984), Walberg (1984), Kozol
(1985), Bickel (1986), Pallos (1986), Bureau of the Census (1987), and Walberg and Fowler (1987).
Common among these researchers and reports is the conclusion that school performance and quality are
severely inadequate to meet the needs of modern society. Further, Boulding (1972, established that not
only are the results disappointing, but that the real costs of schooling doubled between 1930 and 1970.
Parent organizations, state education agencies, the U. S. Department of Education, and blue ribbon
national commissions have all agonized about the problem, and some have offered concrete proposals
for improvement (e.g., A Nation at Risk, 1986). Virtually all of these proposals have centered on trying to
repair, stimulate, and improve the existing educational establishment. They have implicitly accepted the
current operations model as adequate and have urged changes intended to improve it. A major
contention in this paper is that the existing operations model is seriously flawed and cannot simply be
patched up for modern use. A second contention is that even if these proposed changes could be
successfully made, they could produce, at best, a limited improvement.
C e n t e r f o r P e r f o r m a n c e T e c h n o l o g y
F l o r i d a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y W h y S c h o o l s C a n t I m p r o v e
3
Commissions, state education agencies, and teachers organizations all seem to urge additional funding,
but the empirical evidence has not demonstrated any solid relationship between funding and school
performance (Boulding, 1972; Murname, 1975; Walberg & Fowler, 1987).
Is there a documented problem in quality and productivity? In this paper, "quality" refers to both quality
control and quality assurance concepts as elaborated by Lessinger (1976). The quality control question
centers on how closely what happened resembled what was planned, (e.g., Do actual mean achievement
scores match expected scores?). The quality assurance issue addresses the fitness for the intended use,
(How well prepared is the graduate to meet employability requirements or succeed in additional
schooling?) (Juran, 1974). Productivity refers to the relative achievements of the students compared to
the relative expenditures.
Walberg (1984) compared American students with those in other developed countries and found that we
are clearly second-best compared to any other industrialized country, on commonly used measures of
language, mathematics, and science. More recently Walberg and Fowler (1987) concluded:
A substantial literature shows no consistent association between spending on education--
including total per-student expenditures as well as specific spending on such things as
class-size redu