Why School Districts Use the Baldrige Quality Framework
What would make the CEO of a major online hunting and outdoor retailer decide to give $1 million to a Missouri public school district? "We want to impact the educational system, to make the school districts more accountable, to better prepare and educate the next generation so that our nation can continue to compete in the global marketplace," said Larry Potterfield, CEO of Midway USA. Potterfield plans to do this through his pledge of $1 million to the first public school district in Missouri to earn the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
What is the Baldrige Award and the Missouri Quality Award?
Through the framework that shows leaders and performance excellence look like, the Baldrige program and the Excellence in Missouri Foundation help organizations improve.
According to the Baldrige program, high performing organizations demonstrate core values like visionary leadership, a focus on students, agility, ethics, transparency and delivering results. From manufacturers to hospitals to small businesses, organizations across Missouri and across the country use this framework to manage their processes and improve their results. In recent years, educational institutions and government agencies also started using these criteria for improvement, with excellent results.
This framework works for all these different kinds of organizations because it focuses on improving processes and measures and making them consistent. "Measuring our work and using those measures to impact our results is the most important thing we do," said Dr. Daniel Clay, dean of the University of Missouri's college of education, which began its continuous improvement journey in 2010.
Organizations use their criteria to apply for the Missouri Quality Award (MQA) or the Baldrige Award. Both awards use the same criteria; however, the benefit of going through the state program first is the opportunity to receive feedback that identifies opportunities for improvement that can be resolved prior to applying at the national level. Applicants going through their state programs first tend to do better at the national level. After an organization completes an application detailing how it addresses each of the award criteria, it finds out whether it qualifies for a site visit from a team of expert examiners. Whether or not the organization earns the award, the examiners provide feedback, listing both strengths and opportunities for improvement. Using this feedback, organizations have made dramatic improvements in everything they do.
"It's not a silver bullet. But we have very clear evidence that a focused and sustained effort over time leads to better outcomes for everybody."
