Performance Management Planning Considerations

You've been invited to write and submit a plan...

A number of charter school associations have been invited to submit a plan to the Walton Family Foundation for providing "Performance Management" solutions to their schools.

What does success look like?

The first big issue to figure out is what you are trying to accomplish with this plan. I've heard two different goals in association conversations. First, is it about getting enough data and research to show how charter schools are doing? Or, second, is it about performance improvement--helping charter schools improve? Which goal is primary and which goal is secondary makes a HUGE difference in how you approach implementation and measure success. They are complimentary goals but different in IMPLEMENTATION.

Considerations

The following is a list of considerations, issues, and pitfalls to grapple with when constructing your plan:

1. Medicine for the not sick. Are the schools who readily adopt your performance management process and systems the ones who really need it or ones that already "get" it and are just early adopters? My experience is that the schools who need it the most and have the most quality problems often are the ones who are the hardest to convince to use it--maybe that's their problem in the first place.

2. They are all volunteers. If you are like most associations, you can't force schools to adopt or use anything--you can only encourage. This presents a big problem if your primary goal is research! You cannot get a complete data picture if schools are self selected and it is only a fraction of all your schools. Most likely your volunteers are your more prepared and better schools.

3. I own a gas guzzling car. Using data to show a charter school who could probably use some improvement is like showing an owner of a gas guzzling car what gas mileage they are getting...and by-the-way the mileage number is really accurate! Who cares...the school probably is happy enough that they are not an SUV and already knows they could do a little better. They are not going to do much with that information unless you can give them specific help and options that are tangible---they didn't know they could trade in their car and monthly cost for a new hybrid would actually be less than what they are already paying now. Research and data is not enough to help schools improve. True improvement requires change in practice.

4. This is not perfection. Remember, there is no such thing as perfect data and its too expensive to create it! Data becomes more valuable the WIDER, LONGER, MORE CONSISTENT it is. If you can convince only a few schools capture really good data --that doesn't help you. Even if you capture great data, if regular public schools are not capturing that same data, it's still apples to oranges. All you can do at any given point in time is use the best information at the time to try to get what you need.

5. Why are we doing it in the first place? If the primary goal is to help schools improve quality, then we should not split hairs. There are great schools--those who shine so brightly that there is no question that these are great schools. Then there are the really bad ones with very little intention to get better--no question that these should go away. Then, there is everyone else--who have at least some intention of doing much better. Bad ones--we already have the data to know they are bad. Good ones--we already have data to know they are good. So everyone else in the middle---what can we do? Leverage their intention of wanting to do better. Use data to help them identify specific gaps (awareness of need and create thirst for help). They will begging you for help to fill their gaps--your opportunity for earned revenue service offerings to help them.

Back to the Basics

Unless you have been given the authority and power to boss your charter schools around, the following basic principles apply. First, you have to create awareness that there is a need or problem (gap analysis). Second, you have to create desire and thirst for the solution (consequence and opportunities--laying out the potential consequences and missed opportunities if the need or problem is not solved). Third, help them solve their problem (this is where your association builds value).

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