Serving the Customer (Brett Pawlowski)
You can’t work in education very long without hearing The Blueberry Story. In it, an executive of an award-winning ice cream company gives a speech to a group of teachers – teachers who grow angrier by the minute as the executive tells them how business principles could save education.
As the executive finishes his speech, a teacher begins asking questions about the executive’s company, which recently had its blueberry ice cream named as best in the country. She catches him flatfooted as she points out the difference between businesses and schools: if a business sees inferior products arriving on the receiving docks, they can send them back; schools, on other hand, take every student, no matter what challenges those students face.
It’s a compelling story, and it’s been used for years to explain why schools struggle so mightily to produce results: without eager, capable, and committed kids, the argument goes, there’s no way we can produce strong and capable graduates.
There’s only one problem: the analogy is fundamentally wrong.
It’s wrong to consider kids just one more ingredient in the mix. There are a lot of ingredients that go into the education system – from textbooks to teachers, from buses to blackboards – but kids aren’t on that list.
If we looked at the analogy correctly, we would see that children, along with their families, are education’s customers. Just as an ice cream company needs customers to buy its premium ice cream, schools need children and their families to essentially buy their services. Every child going to school essentially walks in and hands over thousands of dollars to that school and, in doing so, expects in return to receive a relevant education so that they may successfully function in the world around them.
But are we providing these consumers with a product they want? We cannot look to market behavior for the answer – after all, the vast majority of kids cannot take their business elsewhere. But we can look at what students do, and ask them what they think, to tell us whether they are satisfied customers. And their actions and reported attitudes show us, by and large, that they are not satisfied at all.
Approximately 30% drop out of school before graduation, and it’s not because they can’t pass their classes: 90% have passing grades at the time they drop out. And in a 2000 survey, only 28% of 12th graders said that school work is often/always meaningful; 21% said that courses are quite/very interesting; and 39% said that school learning will be quite/very important in later life. And these numbers are actually higher than one would find in the total population, considering that most students who drop out – the ones who completely reject schooling – do so before 12th grade, when this survey was administered.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between what schools provide and what consumers want to receive. If we are to create a product our customers need and want – one they see as relevant and valuable – our education system must understand and respond to its market environment, just as businesses across the country do in order to tailor their services to customers’ needs.
The education system was initially designed with a keen understanding of its market. When Horace Mann created the first public school system, he took a simple approach: he looked at the world around him and created a system that reflected what he saw, responding to the developing industrialized age by creating a system that not only prepared students for factory work, but imitated many of the processes of those factories.
Things have changed dramatically since the creation of the school system, but our schools have unfortunately not kept up. We can no longer allow the dichotomy between an interconnected, all-at-once world and schools that parcel out knowledge in discrete and sequential chunks that lack context. We can no longer place a choke hold on technology in the classroom when it is ubiquitous outside the school walls. We can no longer artificially restrict learning to limited blocks of time in a single location in an anytime, anyplace world. And we can no longer try to prepare kids for today’s jobs in a system designed to reflect life 150 years ago.
If the education system wants to adapt to the current market and corresponding customer needs, it can learn from the business community. Time and again, businesses have proven their ability to adapt to changing market conditions. Competition forces companies to pay close attention to changes in their markets and respond accordingly – or face the consequences of losing their customers to businesses who were better able to serve them.
It’s time we take the critical first step of viewing families and children as our customers. Once we do that, we can respond to the questions that inevitably follow – what those customers need, and how best to serve them – and begin to revolutionize American education.
Brett Pawlowski is president of DeHavilland Associates, a consulting and communications firm that helps businesses help education. He is also the founder of the Business/Education Partnership Forum, an online clearinghouse featuring news, information, and resources for anyone interested in building effective business/education partnerships.
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“Under the existing system, schools must keep teachers of all types, good and bad, because of tenure. Pay does not reflect quality, but empty union metrics.”
I disagree with you Cathy. Tenure is not what it once was. Yes, we have this wonderful little thing called “due process” so if I, or another teacher, happens to disagree with an administrator or principal, we aren’t fired capriciously. And, although we are immediately put on leave when the following happens, we aren’t fired immediately when a student, who is disgruntled about a bad grade, accuses a male teacher of inappropriate behavior (happened at my school).
And “top dollar”? I’d really like to know what you think “top dollar” means. In my district, our principals often pass on the more experienced and qualified teachers, those with higher degrees, simply because yes, teachers with more experience and more schooling do get paid more.
“Empty Union Metrics”
Pluh-ease.
I actually take home less now than I did three years ago, due to higher insurance costs, and declining enrollment. Oh, my class size is still 35 per period, five periods a day, my workload hasn’t lightened at all, and I’m supposed to do more with less materials.
The reason, the only reason, there are bad teachers in schools (and, yes, just like any other professions, there are individuals who are not truely competant), is due to the fact that there aren’t ENOUGH teachers.
Unions aren’t keeping bad teachers in schools. It’s just that so many of the good ones have left.
Get your facts straight before sounding off.
Great story as in not reality, Mr. Vollmer has it wrong. The “blueberries” he refers to are not the students, they’re the teachers. Under the existing system, schools must keep teachers of all types, good and bad, because of tenure. Pay does not reflect quality, but empty union metrics.
The ice cream maker cannot make good ice cream if he’s forced to use substandard blueberries and forced to pay top dollar regardless of quality. Similarly, schools cannot educate effectively while the teachers union requires them to keep bad teachers and pay top dollar for them.
Dear Mr. Pawlowski:
OK. My last post on this topic. You need not be offended, really, because my sole point is that those who reflexively make the blanket assertion that American schools are failing American students are simply incorrect. It’s like the missing children craze of the 80’s. For a time, people thought that huge numbers of children were going missing in America, but eventually, cooler heads prevailed. I hope that will be the case in this area as our schools do, for the most part, serve America well. Of course some schools don’t do well, but the mechanisms are in place to correct that, if the public is paying attention and is willing to exercise their powers in a democracy.
I’m afraid you’re also missing a bit of another of my points which was that in schools where the teachers are doing their part to provide a proper educational opportunity for each student, then it is the fault of the student and their parents when the student fails to take, for any number of reasons, advantage of that opportunity. I did not suggest, nor do I believe that we cannnot do better and that we should not try to improve. But really, if the school/teacher is doing their part, who else do we fault when Johnny can’t read?
Finally, I’m all for school choice. And mirable dictu, we have it now. Any parent who doesn’t like their local school can immediately remove their child and take them to the private school of their choice (if that school will allow them to enroll of course). Saying that we don’t have school choice unless the public pays, in part or whole, for whichever choice any parent might want is a bit misleading.
Hi Mike,
To quote:
where are the tens of millions of complete illiterates, drooling morons and miscreants one would expect to be turned out by our defective schools? Shouldn’t there be generations of Deliverance-like banjo pickers on every street corner in America?
I have to say, I find this offensive. Life isn’t like a Monty Python episode: no one is out looking to fill a village idiot position, putting their failures out for public display. In reality, illiteracy is an intensely embarrassing and painful situation, and people try to hide it if/when they can. Furthermore, illiterate adults aren’t stupid, just illiterate, and it’s wrong to automatically link the two.
But if you want evidence of illiteracy and an ill-prepared workforce, let’s start with the National Institute for Literacy. Their National Assessment of Adult Literacy found a total of 21-23 percent – or 40-44 million – of the 191 million American adults (defined as age 16 or older) at Level 1, the lowest literacy level. Although many Level 1 adults could perform many tasks involving simple texts and documents, all adults scoring at Level 1 displayed difficulty using certain reading, writing, and computational skills considered necessary for functioning in everyday life.
Let’s also look at workforce preparedness. A report from the National Association of State Workforce Board Chairs highlights the current state of the workforce and the challenges we face. They highlight workforce trends showing the rapid growth in jobs requiring advanced skills and students not gaining those skills, a trend which leaves us in 2020 lacking 12 million people with some post secondary education who are needed to fill the jobs of our knowledge-based economy.
Meanwhile, US employers are currently spending $62 billion per year on basic skills training for their employees, and repeatedly say that their workers are unprepared for a knowledge-based economy.
And we can wrap up this little data tour with a look at the September 2005 OECD report, which shows our 15-year olds coming in 24th of 29 countries in both math performance and cross-curricular problem-solving ability.
I put all this on the table to answer your call for evidence of a problem; but what I really wanted to do, to further the discussion, is to try once again to steer the conversation back to the need for a fresh look at desired outcomes and structure of our education system.
Narrowing the debate to teaching style forces us to assume that everything else remains constant: content to be covered, desired outcomes, classroom structure, and so on. But what I’m saying is that those things should not be constant: what was structurally appropriate 150 years ago, and the content that we decided 50-100 years ago should be taught, reflected society at a certain point, and it’s time to revisit that discussion.
150 years ago we wanted to instill basic knowledge and skills into future factory workers, and mission accomplished: we created the right system, fueled the workforce, and built an economic superpower based on these and other factors. Well done! But now the economy, and the knowledge and skills required to thrive in that economy, are different. It’s time to re-imagine education, and to limit that discussion to teaching methods prevents us from looking at the larger picture.
I’m going to ignore, for the moment, your assertion that our schools are fine and that it’s the children (and their parents) who are to blame for any failures, except to say that it’s as illogical as opening a restaurant and then blaming your customers for hating the food you served them.
I would also ask you this, Mike – if there are large groups of children who the public schools consider to be unteachable, would you be opposed to opening up school choice to allow others to try? I believe it’s possible to teach those children, based on the successes reported by KIPP and Big Picture schools, and imagine there are lots of people who would like to test that assumption if given the chance.
1. Schools could learn a lot from business — but I wish the administrators would do the learning. For example, by law, in business we have to provide breaks to employees — at least 15 minutes morning and afternoon, plus lunch. Teachers don’t get breaks, and often have duties during lunch. Any industrial psychologist will note that performance lags when necessary breaks are not provided. Why can’t we treat teachers as well as migrant fruit pickers in this regard?
Provocative post. No, students aren’t blueberries. Some principles of handling blueberries apply, some don’t. The art is in telling the difference, and working the appropriate action.
2. At companies where I’ve worked and consulted, photocopiers are kept in good repair. Paper is in constant supply. Often there is a resident “technician” or other procedure by which one can drop off what is to be copied, and the copies will be done for you. At school, the photocopier is often broken. The stapler hasn’t worked for eight months. Toner is down. Paper is in short supply, so frequently we have to substitute 8.5 x 14 paper, or already-punched paper. Of course, this increases costs. The photocopier is on the opposite side of the school from my classroom. If anything happens so that I run out of copies, I have to wait until after school to run new ones, so we must delay the exercise a day. If I run extras so I can be sure there are no delays, I get a letter from the principal about wasting paper.
No one seems to consider that the paper is used to teach children, and teaching the children should be the chief objective in the process of photocopying.
3. Kids may not be equivalent to ingredients, but that’s no excuse for our not having enough books, the right books, maps, globes, projectors, screens, appropriate videos, flip charts, markers, etc., etc., etc. The IRS figures most teachers spend about $2,000 a year on their classrooms. If we figured a salary of $50,000, that’s 4%. What other jobs do you know where 4% of pay must be spent on buying tools for other people to use to do the job?
4. Yes, the U.S. education system is still the model the world tries to follow, and next year it will most likely be true (again) that products of the U.S. public schools will win more Nobel prizes than any other group. Does the principal know that? According to many of my colleagues, their principals seem to think that teachers are all screw-ups. State championships are won, but no recognition goes to the coaches; our kids score top in the district on the standardized tests, but we have a two-hour meeting on “how to improve” the district’s dismal performance.
5. Each kid is an individual, with an individual learning style, individual abilities, and individual problems. The teacher has (if he’s lucky) 20 of these individuals each hour (more if he’s unlucky). That’s three minutes each. If I tailor a lesson plan for the dyslexic kid, the principal wants to know why he’s not participating with the other kids. Do administrators give any heed to the training teachers get? Are they lobotomized upon entering administration?
6. At SuperMega Corp., my boss stuck up for every one of us on the team. If someone complained about one of us, the boss called us in to the meeting to hear the complaint and defended us as the best in the business. At school, if there is the faintest complaint about anything I do, I’m guilty unless proven innocent by a letter from the Pope. We made sure the boss at SuperMega Corp. looked good. How can we give a clue to the bosses at school about how to make a team work well?
Dear Mr. Pawlowski:
Thanks for your reponse, but I suspect we continue to differ in several fundamental ways. The education system need not be reconstructed. Why not? Again, it’s fairly simple: times change, but human beings don’t.
If we read the writings of the ancient Greeks, we discover that while they did not have iPods, disco, TV and a variety of other conveniences (distractions?), they had the same emotions, motivations, fears, concerns and behaviors that we continue to have. And more to the point for our discussion, their teaching methods (such as the Socratic method, which is still in use today), with certain refinements, were as valid then as they are now. This is so because human beings, and the way that they learn most effectively, has changed little if at all in thousands of years. Yes, we have potentially more effective means of delivering information, and the body of human knowledge is vastly greater than it was even 50 years ago, but people are people, 3000 years ago and now. We don’t need to fix what isn’t broken.
This brings us to the other issue. I could care less whether a 15 year old finds what I’m teaching relevant. Yes, I do all that I can to make my discipline interesting and I do relate it–daily–to reality outside the classroom, but the simple fact is that kids just don’t have a clue what they need to learn and how that will make them better people a year down the line, to say nothing of 10 years hence. Again, read the Greeks and you’ll discover that students then felt that their educations lacked relevance to their unique and wondrous teeneaged lives.
That children make extremely stupid choices–such as dropping out of school, failing to learn anything, etc.–should surprise no one. Anyone who is genuinely surprised that teenagers behave as teenagers deserves the Captain Louis Renault award. No, the problem here is parenting, and that is something no school and no revamping of the educational structured can address.
It is the role of parents to be parents, to accept and discharge the awesome responsibility of parenting and to make parental choices. Yet how many parents allow their children to engage in extraordinarily self destructive, stupid behaviors because they’re afraid their child won’t like them, or because it might lower their self esteem, or because they believe that the role of a parent is to be a friend to their offspring? How many raise selfish, superficial children because they are themselves selfish and superficial? How many parents pay virtually no attention at all to their children, let alone the progress of their educations? How many parents are steeped in the victim culture and are raising a generation of junior victims, parthetic creatures who know no personal responsibility and who are therefore, utterly blameless for any of their failings?
I won’t go more deeply as many volumes have been written on both issues. Suffice it to say that each and every day, millions of American students learn, grow and excell in American schools. They do so because they are focused and hard working, and because their parents–recognizing that they are in fact parents and living up to the responsibilities of that role–give them proper guidance (including the occasional motivational impact directly and forcefully applied to the nether region).
The students who fail, for the most part, lack effective parenting. No amount of educational restructuring will change that. Those losses are not in any way the fault or responsibility of teachers or schools, though every day, teachers fight the battle to bring some of those kids back, and occasionally, win a few.
Yes, you’re right in saying that teachers have very little power within the educational system. These days, virtually no one listens to teachers, certainly not about issues as important as teaching! But if you’re correct and the system requires a complete revamping, where are the tens of millions of complete illiterates, drooling morons and miscreants one would expect to be turned out by our defective schools? Shouldn’t there be generations of Deliverance-like banjo pickers on every street corner in America? If things were as bad as you, and others, claim, wouldn’t it be a bit more obvious?
Yes, we can always do better and improve. But overall, our system is extraordinarily effective when compared to any other.
Many good comments here, but I feel particularly compelled to respond to Mike, who says:
Our student’s needs (and the needs of their families) are met when fully qualified, competent and dedicated teachers are given all of the resources necessary to provide the best possible educational opportunity (within each of their disciplines)–without unnecessary interference–on a daily basis. That being provided, the responsibility of the teacher and school is fulfilled and accomplished.
I agree that strong teachers are a critical component of a good education, and I’m all for giving them the resources they need (as long as they are accountable for the use of those resources). But I’m afraid you may have missed my larger point.
The reason we have a 30% dropout rate and a majority of students who see school as irrelevant is not due to the personal or professional qualities of teachers. I tend to agree with people like Paul Houston who believe that teachers are doing a better job than ever – the problem is that they’re doing the same job. We’re making incremental improvements at a time of quantum change, and that’s not the teacher’s fault – it’s the fault of anyone who has a say in the outcomes, processes, and structures of our system of education, and that includes not only education insiders (policymakers and administrators) but also the stakeholders (parents, higher ed, community leaders, businesses, etc.) who should be revisiting these questions regularly.
No matter how well-resourced or qualified a teacher may be, he (and I’ll use ‘he’ as a stand-in for he/she) does not have the power to change the underlying assumptions of our current education system. He cannot change how time is broken up during the school day, he cannot fundamentally change his access to technology (types of tech, removing filters, etc.), and he cannot change what is expected to be taught within the class he teaches. We can debate endlessly about how those things can be transformed to engage and meet the needs of today’s learners (and my personal vote is for school choice, so learners can select the best option for themselves), but I doubt you would debate whether teachers have the authority to make those changes themselves.
What I’m arguing for is a need to reconstruct the education process, and of course there’s a vital role within any educational structure for a qualified and dedicated teacher. But to me, at least, it seems that our schools are so far off the mark in terms of relevancy in the eyes of students, in terms of outcomes, processes, and tools, that we’re going to continue to lose students just as we’ve been losing them, regardless of what individual teachers can do.
Found my way here through the Carnival of Education–interesting post, but I think the commenters have some good points too. If students are just “customers” in what’s sold as “education”, then they’re not at all responsible for the finished product, only for making the decision whether to purchase.
I’ve linked to this.
“It’s time we take the critical first step of viewing families and children as our customers. Once we do that, we can respond to the questions that inevitably follow – what those customers need, and how best to serve them – and begin to revolutionize American education.” Thus spake Mr. Pawlowski.
Families and children as customers? Serving their needs will revolutionize American education? Does any of this sort of vague happy talk sound familiar to American teachers who presumably, do not see children and family as customers?
Sorry Mr. Pawlowski, but trying to apply the business model to education has been one of the most destructive concepts ever to happen to our “customers.” I’ll explain–and I’ll keep it short, because the best solutions are usually simple and short (Occam’s Razor, remember?).
Our student’s needs (and the needs of their families) are met when fully qualified, competent and dedicated teachers are given all of the resources necessary to provide the best possible educational opportunity (within each of their disciplines)–without unnecessary interference–on a daily basis. That being provided, the responsibility of the teacher and school is fulfilled and accomplished.
Now please keep in mind that qualified, competent and dedicated teachers are those folks who arrive early, leave late, struggle tirelessly to encourage and cajole each student, make phone calls, write letters, and never, ever give up on any student. Yes, I know that this isn’t the case in every school in America. But if that is so, the means to make necessary changes are in place and have been for centuries. If, that is, the parents actually care and use those means.
For you see, Mr. Pawlowski, if the student and their parents are not fully involved, the efforts of the most wonderful teacher in the world will matter not. If little Johnny has simply decided that he’s not going to do any of the work, even if he doesn’t disrupt the class, he’ll learn little or nothing. If little Johnny’s parents allow this behavior, how will a school respond? Threats? Strongly worded letters? Crying fits? Appeals to self esteem?
It is simplicity itself. So long as the school is providing the best possible educational opportunity that their public support will allow, the absolute, complete, undeniable and final responsibility for the growth, learning and progress of each student belongs…to the student and their parents! Deny this simple bit of reality, and every scheme intended to “…revolutionize American education.” isn’t worth a boatload of dead rats.
They’re also easier to pick than huckleberries, which is a good thing.
I think the blueberry story originated with Jamie Vollmer, a motivational speaker. It’s linked to off of his website, here.
Blueberries are rich in antioxidants.
I get really tired of people constantly reidentifying the problem without ever giving a concrete and workable solution. Come back when you have one and we’ll talk then.
Things have changed dramatically since the creation of the school system, but our schools have unfortunately not kept up. We can no longer allow the dichotomy between an interconnected, all-at-once world and schools that parcel out knowledge in discrete and sequential chunks that lack context.
But what if the customer wants the information parceled out in discrete and sequential chunks, removed from the larger context? For instance, one of my children is at soccer camp this week, and I am fully expecting that the cost of this camp will include passing, dribbling, and shooting drills removed from the context of a soccer game. I’d be really upset if the camp was all games from beginning to end. Another child takes piano lessons, and I am fully expecting that the cost of the lessons will include his instructor asking him to isolate and practice every measure in a piece of music that causes him trouble. I’d be really upset if he was told to only play pieces from beginning to end, no matter how many notes he dropped or where the rhythm went. How can we expect him to know the joy of playing in time with a group of fellow musicians? Yet another child of mine just got a skateboard, and he is happily practicing over and over again how to balance going forward on the level, before he tries turning left or right or going uphill or downhill. It’s only natural for him to start out that way.
What schools have you been in lately? I find that teachers in the public schools do not parcel out knowledge. Sequential teaching has been set aside in favor of immersing children in thematic projects without appropriate instruction in any of the component skills. In the end, children are scored on a continuum that lacks references to usefully discrete markers of academic progress.
Public school teachers are working hard to provide “contexts” all day long, but they don’t teach a lot of the content that I would like to see taught and measured.
In short, today’s public schools may provide exactly the kind of “interconnected, all-at-once” learning experience you want for your child. Good luck with it!