As a former process consultant, I have sometimes been overwhelmed by the number of process improvement opportunities I have observed while visiting a school or speaking with an educator. One opportunity that frequently strikes me is building processes around students.
I like to think of students as the ultimate customer for educators. A customer focus has long been a critical component to successful business processes. Yet despite the focus on student outcomes, educational institutions seem to tailor few of their processes around students.
If public education had focused on students, the process of creating a student record would have long ago incorporated the longitudinal history of a student as s/he developed academically, emotionally and personally across grades, schools, districts, and even states. A holistic student focus would have also gathered knowledge from all facets of a student's life, from home, extracurriculars, and academic enrichment activities, to build a complete picture of a student's situation. Armed with this knowledge, a teacher would be better prepared to design lesson plans to address students' specific strengths and weaknesses, to be sensitive to extraordinary family situations, and to suggest appropriate enrichment activities not tried before.
Student-focused processes also have tremendous potential at the aggregate level. Just as customer surveys provide valuable input, student feedback could help schools improve their inquiry processes toward continuous improvement. Student performance could also serve as input into curriculum design.
In summary, most school processes still acknowledge a gap in fully addressing student needs. Schools are closing that gap by slowly incorporating more knowledge from and about students at both the individual and aggregate level. It is in this transition that schools are discovering technology as an enabler for coordinating knowledge.
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