Measurement Matters

I've just finished reading another book by Pat Lencioni. I'm always curious about what his next book will focus upon-this time it has a somewhat misleading title of The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.  In it, Pat crafts a fable to tell a story about how the most effective managers...strike that...leaders ensure that results get done. Interesting to me is how he talks about measures that matter-he calls it "immeasurement".  Immeasurement is where LOTS of items get measured, but they are not the right ones.  Effective measures, from Lencioni's view, must be meaningful and within the control of the person-he discounts the longer term measures of success (his is a business book so profits are a key measure, but it happens LONG after the measures that effective leaders measure). 

In the fable, he talks about teachers who measure the percentage of students that master a quiz-this was interesting to me, because this is what I have been hearing for a while (going ALL the way back to Madeline Hunter and mastery learning) but it seems to be inconsistently applied. 

Good book by Pat-check out his other two keys of a miserable job-being anonymous and not knowing how you connect to the success of other people.

Question for the group-what measures do you have for teachers and, more importantly, what measures do you have for yourself as school executives?

Chris

Comments

[Charlie A. Roy]

I like to do a satisfaction survey and reason that the more people I've pissed off the better job I've done. Just kidding! We use a year end exit survey with our classes on survey monkey. The categories are keyed off of our mission statement. Do we do what we say we do? The kids are as expected brutally honest but love the chance to give feedback. Sharing that feedback privately with the teachers is a great way to let them see how they are perceived by the general public. I include myself in the mix and it is always entertaining.