The American Productivity & Quality Center, a Houston nonprofit group that has begun teaching school districts how businesses learn from one another to boost their performance, has been tapped by Texas to train principals in struggling schools.
With a state grant of $3.3 million, the center is creating a school leadership pilot program that will provide mandatory training to all principals of Texas schools that have been identified as 鈥渁cademically unacceptable.鈥�
Details still are being worked out, but organizers said last week the program will be able to serve as many as 300 principals a year. They will be grouped into cohorts led over 12 months by about 60 mentors, including practicing and retired administrators.
鈥淎 mentor will be someone who has experienced the same challenges as the people they鈥檙e working with, but who also has experienced success,鈥� said Anne Miller, the director of strategic education initiatives at the APQC.
The training will draw on the APQC鈥檚 extensive experience in helping organizations compare their practices with those of better-performing ones, a process called 鈥渂enchmarking.鈥�
After working primarily with businesses, the 30-year-old group recently started working with school districts to benchmark such activities as transportation and staff training. (鈥淒istricts Compare Notes on Best Business Practices,鈥� Jan. 17, 2007.)
Similar to its benchmarking work with districts and businesses, the APQC鈥檚 principal-training program will have leaders learn together in a group that includes some who have gotten good results and some who haven鈥檛.
Key topics will be how to lead change and track progress. Much of the work will take place online, thanks to a partnership with the business school at the University of Houston, Victoria, seen as a leader in distance learning.
鈥淲e recognize that these principals are getting professional development now, so what we don鈥檛 want to be is one more layer of obfuscation,鈥� said C. Jackson Grayson, the founder and chief executive of the APQC. 鈥淲hat we really want to do is blend with what they are doing now.鈥�
See other stories on education issues in Texas. See data on Texas鈥� public school system.
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