Putting Iso 9000 Standards and Baldrige Quality Criteria to Work Now in Public Education

The National Association for Industry-Education Cooperation (NAIEC) creates an approach for school system improvement that combines the necessary standards for achieving mileposts of the Baldrige Quality Criteria and the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 9000 Standards for Education. Together, the Baldrige Criteria and ISO Standards meet the requirements for developing a high-performance educational system that successfully delivers students who have mastered state-mandated curriculum and student work standards. ISO 9000/Baldrige Criteria provides public education with a quality management system that achieves measurable quality and continuous improvement. A school system that undertakes ISO compliance gains many operational benefits plus improved efficiency and effectiveness through a bottoms-up planning and organizing system. With ISO/Baldrige, schools now have a single, cogent, understandable, and workable methodology to apprise them of their greatest opportunities for systemic reform. A decade-long effort of industry-education collaboration has succeeded in getting states to include two of three elements for school system accountability and a total quality assurance system: standards and assessment. Quality control, the keystone element, is missing. Quality assurance instills an attitude of disciplined caring toward poor results in education. NAIEC is uniquely suited to conduct the ISO 9000/Baldrige initiative as the nation's principal advocate and resource for fostering industry-education collaboration. (YLB) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************