by Kennedy Smith

On Nov. 25, 2003, President George W. Bush and Commerce Secretary Don Evans announced the winners of 2003’s Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in recognition of their performance excellence and quality achievements. One of the seven winners was Community Consolidated School District 15 in Palatine, Illinois.

CCSD 15 is a kindergarten through eighth grade school system serving 12,390 students in all or part of seven municipalities in northwest suburban Chicago. It comprises 14 kindergarten through sixth grade schools, three junior high schools and one alternative school. The district operates its own transportation, maintenance, technology and food services departments.

Additionally, CCSD 15 is the first Baldrige Award recipient to be a part of the American Society for Quality’s Koalaty Kid initiative, a process that incorporates several quality tools into classroom learning.

What follows is an interview with Robert A. McKanna, CCSD 15’s superintendent. He took on the job in July 2003 after Superintendent John Conyers retired.

QD: When did your school district first decide to pursue the Baldrige Award?

McKanna: About nine years ago, our district launched a journey of continuous quality improvement centered on accountability to its constituents. As a framework for the district’s efforts, the board of education and district administrators adopted the Baldrige criteria. Without losing focus on its mission--producing world-class learners by building a connected learning community--our district has become a data-driven organization, measuring progress in all aspects of its operations.

QD: How much did you know about the Baldrige process before signing on with the district?

McKanna: A lot. I got my start in the Rochester, New York, area working with Kodak and Xerox, which were both providing training for many school systems in the area. There I became acquainted with the American Society for Quality’s Koalaty Kid program. I was on the ASQ Koalaty Kid Board and brought Koalaty Kid to the school system in suburban Rochester. That was about seven or eight years ago. I got involved with the Excelsior Award, which is New York’s state quality award. After getting a feedback report, I got excited enough that I went to the Rochester Institute of Technology and took courses to get certification in quality. I became an examiner in 1997. Later I earned ASQ certification as a quality improvement specialist.

QD: Is CCSD 15 involved with Koalaty Kid?

McKanna: Yes. I think I can safely say that this is probably the strongest Koalaty Kid program in the world. From my experience, you can’t beat the deployment that’s taking place here with Koalaty Kid.

QD: How well do Koalaty Kid and the Baldrige process fit together?

McKanna: They’re consistent because they both utilize the systems approach. The PDSA--plan, do, study, act--cycle is very much a part of Koalaty Kid and is deployed in the classroom, even to the extent where fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders have their own PDSA charts and their own run charts for enthusiasm and satisfaction scores. We require use of the PDSA cycle in each school as an improvement plan. This ties directly into the Baldrige process.

QD: When you first pursue a quality process like Koalaty Kid or Baldrige, is it difficult to get the entire faculty and staff involved?

McKanna: Absolutely. Getting buy-in is one of the most difficult aspects. That’s why it takes time to get to the levels of sophistication that we have here. You have to begin to see some successes with the program. The district actually applied for Illinois’ state Lincoln Award and won it in 1999 at level III (the highest of the award’s levels). From those processes, we received feedback reports. That’s probably been the bread and butter of our project--making applications, doing self-assessments, getting the feedback report, finding opportunities for improvement and actually implementing them. When you do that over an eight-year period, the staff begins to see that it really makes a difference in student performance.

QD: How important is the feedback report?

McKanna: The feedback report is everything. We never entered the process to win an award. We entered the process because it’s the best process out there to get better. And by implementing the opportunities for improvement, our test scores and other variables have just taken off.

The examiners worked all week long and late into the evenings. When they visited the first school, they said: “We’re amazed at what you’re doing with Koalaty Kid, PDSAs, the staff and teachers.” They asked, “What did you do, pick the very best school for us?”

We said: “Absolutely not. Guess what you’re going to see at the next 18 schools? Exactly the same.” That’s what I think really impressed the examiners. We have 19 buildings with 13,000 kids and about 2,300 employees. To make this happen across a system as large as we are is remarkable.

QD: What areas did you work on after the first feedback report, and what are you going to work on after receiving this most recent feedback report?

McKanna: I wasn’t here when they got the feedback report the first time, but I know part of it was getting better alignment in our school system from all phases--really focusing on the strategic plan. We have category champions for each category of the Baldrige process. We have champion teams that take those opportunities for improvement and analyze which can be done quickly, which will take more time and which will take money. We set up subcommittees that take those feedback items, share them broadly and try to figure out the best ways to make the improvements.

QD: What advice would you give a school district that wants to start the Baldrige process?

McKanna: There’s a number of things that are requirements to make it happen. First, senior leadership has to be totally committed. Second, the board of education must fully support the whole policy of developing a world-class system. From my 25 years as a superintendent, I can tell you there are too many boards of education that get overly involved in helping the superintendent run the district. Luckily, however, this is not the case in our district.

QD: How important was it for you to be an examiner and go through the process yourself?

McKanna: It’s critical. We will have seven new principals next year, and I’m expecting them to become Lincoln Award examiners. Whether you’re a state award examiner or a Baldrige examiner, I think it changes your whole perspective in the level of understanding the criteria. I would encourage anybody to do this, and I will expect our key leaders in this district to continue moving in this direction. Many of our teachers are state-level examiners.

That’s another variable. A big reason we’re so successful is the quality of our staff, from our transportation staff to our teachers. We’ve got 58 nationally board-certified teachers. It’s verified by the large percentage of staff with master’s and doctorate degrees and our employee retention. Our people don’t leave. When you look at the data, you find that our staff retention is far superior to other school systems. People want to be here.

QD: Since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, do more schools want to get involved with this kind of quality process?

McKanna: I’ve not seen a desire for Baldrige participation due specifically to it. No Child Left Behind has taken on a political flavor right now: There are people debating whether it’s practical and feasible, wondering where the funding is for the mandates that are required.

At this point, No Child Left Behind and Baldrige are unrelated. But pursuing a Baldrige-based program is one path to continuous improvement, and that’s how you bring out the best of your school system and staff. It certainly would help accomplish the goals of No Child Left Behind. And our goals and No Child Left Behind’s goals are the same: You want world-class performance out of kids. No Child Left Behind is a quagmire of problems and lack of understanding. I think the political motivations for it are setting up the United States toward school vouchers in the future.

QD: What are you looking toward in the future?

McKanna: We’re looking at Six Sigma as another opportunity for improvement. Six Sigma has some great ways to make improvements with reducing costs, and like all the other school systems, we’re faced with some financial challenges. We’ve got to find ways to keep doing more and better with less money.

About the author

Kennedy Smith is Quality Digest’s associate editor.