"Standardization is the standard" at BCPS

That's what Superintendent Joe Hairston said on Tuesday. It struck me at the time as an oddball line from The Office. I'm having more and more moments like that when I listen to Dr. Hairston.

He made the comment at a BCPS school board meeting while he was singing the praises of the ISO 9000 program at BCPS.

I've been involved in a few corporate efforts similar to ISO 9000. There can be advantages for sure, but adopting such a program is no guarantee of success. It's a lot of work and there are plenty of pitfalls:

The standard is seen as especially prone to failure when a company is interested in certification before quality.^[7]

UPDATE: More thoughts on problems that can come with standardization. As Ken Robinson puts it, schools can kill creativity:



And there are situations where looking for a single standard means you are asking the wrong question. Malcolm Gladwell on What we can learn from spaghetti sauce: