Quality is Free

Quality is Free is the name of a famous book by Phillip Crosby. His definition of
cost of quality is that it is the cost of doing things wrong. His quality insight was
based on working in the manufacturing industry. The manufacturing entities have
understood for a long time that the cost of quality is a competitive/survival issue.
American auto companies became renewed advocates of quality as a competitive
necessity because the Japanese auto companies that had valued Deming’s quality
teachings were eating their lunch. Something in that reminds you of the old truth
of a “prophet in his own land” not being listened to. Thus, along with other quality
gurus like Demming and Juran, Crosby’s core principle was “do it right the first
time.” And of course, the cost of finding and correcting mistakes is not there if
you always do it right once.

Crosby found that in organizations that didn’t actively track cost of quality that it
was very high, 20% or even more. The thesis of his book was that spending effort
and money to minimize the cost of doing things wrong was well worth it and less
costly by far than continuing in a quality ignorant mode. In the industrial cases
Crosby was talking about there were specifications that had to be met to ship a
product out the door. This was done using a “final inspection” process. In
addition there were inspection processes along the way in the manufacturing cycle
so that they could avoid “adding value” to bad parts which might only be
discovered at the final inspection phase when they would be the most costly to
repair.

Some realities that Crosby pointed out included the fact that inspecting the quality
into the product at the end (sorting good from bad sending the bad back for repair)
was an imperfect and costly process. The shipments which only included “passed”
product still had defects in them. While the world has never seen perfection in the
output of human activity there are noticeable differences that define the quality
reputations of organizations. This became apparent in the auto context where
Japanese cars weren’t perfect, they were just better than American cars because
they had a lower defect rate as seen in the real world. Thus, the total cost of
turning out products with a higher defect rate was not only the added cost of
finding and fixing defects before shipments, it also included the cost of losing
market share because your product had a higher defect rate than the competition.

With that background let’s take a look at our education system. While there has
been much talk about improving quality through the use of “data” nothing has
really changed on a macro scale for decades. The system is basically an open loop
“maw” into which children are inserted at age 5 and 13 years later the survivors
exit the process. In education only a few states have “exit exams” for high school
graduation which is the “final inspection” for the education process. Even those
who do set the rigor of those tests at relatively lower levels than what our best
foreign competitors are requiring from their education processes.

There are de facto final inspections for the portion of the K-12 output who aspire to
further schooling whether associate or bachelors degree programs. For that
fraction of the K-12 output the remediation rates show that the high school diploma
is not a reliable measure of the output quality. In Colorado the remediation rate
(students who have to take added class work to be able to be admitted to college
level work is running at approximately 30%. This is an added cost of quality for
our society. The costs of quality also include hobbled prospects for life for many.
This is especially true for the “Gap” students (poor and minority students) who are
especially not served well by our schools. That fact, too, has not changed except
for being slightly worse over decades in spite of the billions we have thrown at the
problem.

Like the auto industry experience with foreign competition our schools are turning
out low quality results that are not competitive with the best foreign competition.
But our schools are basically monopolies with an iron grip on the vast majority of
students. They work hardest at preventing any competition from charters or other
private alternatives. They haven’t had to face the need to improve their product
and hence have only talked the talk. Improvement will not happen until they are
forced to do it by outside pressure. Because of this monopoly they have built a
fortress with moats, high walls and cannon to protect themselves. I call this the
education fiefdom; defensive, delusional, insular and inbred. In this environment
the truth is suppressed and denied. Outside ideas are “embraced” in talk but not in
their guts. And our kids continue to be harmed greatly because no one is willing to
go to war to overcome their depredations. Of course, their fortifications could be
overcome easily if we had generals (politicians) who cared about the kids and our
nation’s future enough to engage. As Patton said, “Fixed fortifications are a
monument to the stupidity of those who build them.” We will not have those
political leaders needed until the public demands change because they faced reality
and see through the false claims of the educators.

Education Cost of Quality—the costs of doing things wrong

 Using an education process that limits student learning. Our competitor

nations use a “knowledge” approach. We use a “skills” approach that is
worthless without the knowledge base to make it work. Our approach is like
creating an expensive computer program (process) but forgetting that it is
worthless without the data (knowledge) needed to make it work. This is an
example of ideology trumping reality. Cost: greater than the entire budget of
K-12 education because it has lifelong negative impacts on millions of
people’s lives after leaving school.
 Education schools teach the technically wrong ideological “catechism style”
so that educators are strongly programmed to resist the truth. The whole
cost of education schools is a cost of quality.
 Costs of remediation—tuition, books and perhaps most expensive the lost
income of entering the job market a year or more later or in some cases
being discouraged from their first choice so that a sub-optimum choice of
study is forced on them.
 Researchers spend huge amounts of money to find better ways to educate
our students. But they are bound by the same ed school brainwashing and
thus only research ways to “improve” the technically wrong approaches.
Therefore, their efforts are all added to the cost of quality because they are
only polishing the rotten apple. Thus, special education, best practices, and
response to intervention are all enormously expensive and ineffective
bandaids on a failed process.

This list could go on and on. I hope you are beginning to realize that our current
approach to education is a ridiculously expensive and ineffective boondoggle that
enriches educators and their ancillary service providers but does not provide a
quality result. There is no real quality requirement in education. A recent
example involved Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, testifying to a congressional
committee about the need to “modify” No Child Left Behind requirements because
the politicians wouldn’t want the public outcry associated with a huge percentage
of schools not meeting the annual yearly progress requirements of that law. This
would be hugely funny as a morality play if it didn’t point out the ubiquitous lack
of integrity in our education system. The prescription is to shorten the yardstick
when faced with bad news. Who could expect the education “experts” to actually
change their performance to meet the real yardstick (world-class) that should be
the aim of a world-leading country?

Paul Richardson 2011