\doc\web\99\08\iso.txt june 1999 From: Fred Battey Subject: Re: Please post; Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellance Joan, the Malcolm Baldridge program is based in instituting of ISO 9000 criteria (International Standards Organization). ISO is the global version of our ANSI, American National Standards Institute. These organizations originally established manufacturing, materials, quality standards to be met so that a specific product turned out in one company would be an exact match for a product turned out by another for a specified application. Essentially ISO has become a "world standard" by direction of many world governments. ISO is also a gigantic bureaucratic organization and involves itself into the smallest nitty-gritty of every detailed operation of company involved. You not only must initially meet an exacting performance standard and procedure, but once declared ISO qualified a company is subject to unannounced inspections and requalification periodically. ISO is Total Quality Control (TQC), Total Quality Management (TQM), all combined into a larger monster and world-wide standards. There has been a continuing effort to bring it into education for some time and looks like "here we go again" time. The basic premise would be all courses taught, curriculum established, assessment, etc. so that every student taking those subjects would meet a pre-established criteria world-wide. Teachers/administration presenting curriculum would all meet specified world-wide criteria and standards. In my opinion it is the epitomy of turning teachers and students into little robots who know the same things, think the same way, and march in unison in the direction established. It destroys creativity and regiments people as parts coming off an assembly line. The Baldridge Criteria is simply a continuation of the agenda educators and government have been instituting for the past decades, only I fear it is the culmination of global control of the education system. It completes the turning of education into a huge industrial operation supported by our money. The system wins but the students and taxpayers lose. Fred At 02:41 PM 6/28/99 -0400, you wrote: >Fred, I'd like to request some information from the Loop, > >There was a short AP article in the Metrolpolitan section of the Washington >Times this morning (6-28-99, p.C5). It concerns a meeting of 170 Maryland >teachers and administrators "gathered in a banquet hall earlier this month >to learn about the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellance, a >corporate standard that school officials are trying to incorporate into >education." A management consultant gave the lesson and called "students >and parents 'stakeholders' ." Apparently, several school districts in >Maryland are already using this program. It was named after former Commerce >Secretary Malcolm Baldrige and is said the system "seeks to ensure that all >parts of an organization are working effectively for the same mission." >After explaining that many corporations, in the 1980s, used it for >"self-improvement", the article says a "growing number of schools" have >been using it also. Using facilitator newspeak, Marilyn Caldwell, "the >Florida consultant who was paid $3,500" to lead the orientation, said, "You >can have great teachers. You can have great plans. You can have great >books or the most innovative curriculum in the world. Baldrige takes all >the necessaries and figures out what the relationships are. It's changing >the way a district thinks." Already Miss Caldwell has taught the system to >"about 25 school systems nationwide" and uses as an example the schools in >Pinellas County, Florida. She said that because of its use there, "student >achievement across all subjects rose by 30 percentile points." Maryland's >State Teachers' Association has endorced it and that association's vice >president is quoted as saying, "...teachers will be encouraged to think of >society, the business community and parents [notice who came last, JM] as >the ultimate 'consumers' of their work." > >My questions: Do any of you out there know about this program? As this >consultant firm is based in Florida, do any of you living there know about >it or the Pinellas County schools? Does this sound like PPBS/TQM to the >Loop? Thanks for any help you can give. > > Joan Masters > .