Much fanfare has been associated with I-SS winning the 2008 Baldrige Award and much has been said about the costs associated with the process of implementing the Baldrige award and the costs of applying for the award. Now let’s talk about the award itself. I will describe some of what I have been able to learn about those processes by examining the feedback reports that I-SS received from the Baldrige Program.
The Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) uses a given set of criteria to evaluate those institutions that apply for the award. That set of criteria is available to institutions before they prepare their materials to submit to the BNQP. Apparently the bulk of the application is a narrative in which the institution itemizes its achievements related to each criteria item. In 2007, I-SS submitted a 58-page narrative and in 2008, I-SS submitted a 51-page narrative.
Each member of the BNQP Board of Examiners evaluates the narrative and assigns a percentage score to each category. The examiners then perform what is called a Consensus Review during which the team reaches a consensus on the score for the applicant. That review and score is then used to determine if the applicant warrants a site visit.
Site visits are conducted for the highest-scoring applicants to clarify any uncertainty or confusion the Examiners may have regarding the written application and to verify that the information in the application is correct. Based on the site visit the percentage scores for each criteria item may change. The final individual item scores, along with a weighted value for each category item, are used to determine overall score called the Band Score. The Band Score ranges from 1 to 8 with 8 being the best score.
Listed below are the I-SS scores for each category in 2007 and 2008. The scores are given as a percentage range rather than a specific percentage value. The percentage range is based on the Scoring Guidelines, which describe the characteristics typically associated with specific percentage ranges. The given scores are the final scores after any adjustments based on the site visits.
Baldrige Education Criteria
| Category | Value | I-SS Score ‘07 | I-SS Score ‘08 |
| 1 Leadership | | | |
| 1.1Senior Leadership: How do your senior leaders lead? | 70 Points | 70 – 85% | 70 – 85% |
| 1.2Governance and Social Responsibilities: How do you govern and address your social responsibilities? | 50 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
| 2 Strategic Planning | | | |
| 2.1Strategy Development: How do you develop your strategy? | 40 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
| 2.2 Strategy Deployment: How do you deploy your strategy? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
| 3 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Focus | | | |
| 3.1 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Knowledge: How do you obtain and use student, stakeholder, and market knowledge? | 40 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
| 3.2 Student and Stakeholder Relationships and Satisfaction: How do you build relationships and grow student and stakeholder satisfaction and loyalty? | 45 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
| 4 Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management | | | |
| 4.1 Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement of Organizational Performance: How do you measure, analyze, and then improve organizational performance? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
| 4.2 Management of Information, Information Technology, and Knowledge: How do you manage your information, information technology, and organizational knowledge? | 45 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
| 5 Workforce Focus | | | |
| 5.1 Workforce Engagement: How do you engage your workforce to achieve organizational and personal success? | 45 Points | 70 – 85% | 50 – 65% |
| 5.2 Workforce Environment: How do you build an effective and supportive workforce environment? | 40 Points | 50 – 65% | 70 – 85% |
| 6 Process Management | | | |
| 6.1 Work Systems Design: How do you design your work systems? | 35 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
| 6.2 Work Process Management and Improvement: How do you manage and improve your key organizational work processes? | 50 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
| 7 Results | | | |
| 7.1 Student Learning Outcomes: What are your student learning results? | 100 Points | 30 – 45% | 50 – 65% |
| 7.2 Student- and Stakeholder-Focused Outcomes: What are your student- and stakeholder-focused performance results? | 70 Points | 30 – 45% | 30 – 45% |
| 7.3 Budgetary, Financial, and Market Outcomes: What are your budgetary, financial, and market performance results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
| 7.4 Workforce-Focused Outcomes: What are your workforce-focused performance results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 50 – 65% |
| 7.5 Process Effectiveness Outcomes: What are your process effectiveness results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
| 7.6 Leadership Outcomes: What are your leadership results? | 70 Points | 50 – 65% | 30 – 45% |
As mentioned before, these scores are used to determine an overall score called the Band Score. In 2007, I-SS received a Band Score of 5 out of a possible 8. The descriptors for the 2007 Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8 are given below.
2007 Scoring Band Descriptors
| Band Number | Descriptor |
| 1 | The organization demonstrates the early stages of developing and implementing approaches to Item requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts focus on problem solving. A few important results are reported, but they generally lack trend and comparative data. |
| 5 I-SS Score
| The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of the Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes. Results address most key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate areas of strength against relevant comparisons and/or benchmarks. Improvement trends and/or good performance are reported for most areas of importance to the organization’s key requirements. |
| 8 | The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation, full deployment, and excellent, sustained performance results. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning, and sharing of best practices are pervasive. National and world leadership is demonstrated in results that fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements. |
In 2008, the BNQP used a system of two Band Scores one for Processes and the other for Results. I-SS received a Band Score of 5 for Processes and a Band Score of 4 for Results. Again, that is out of a possible 8. That yields an overall percentage score of 62.5% for processes and 50% for results. The descriptors for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8, and for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 4, and 8 are given below.
2008 Scoring Band Descriptors
| Band Number | Process Descriptor |
| 1
| The organization demonstrates early stages of developing and implementing approaches to the basic Criteria requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts are a combination of problem solving and an early general improvement orientation. |
| 5 I-SS Score | The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of most Criteria Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning, including innovation, that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes. |
| 8 | The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation. Approaches are fully deployed and demonstrate excellent, sustained use of measures. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning through innovation, and sharing of best practices are pervasive. |
| Band Number | Results Descriptor |
| 1
| Results are reported for a few areas of importance to the accomplishment of the organization’s mission, but they generally lack trend and comparative data. |
| 4 I-SS Score | Results address some key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate good relative performance against relevant comparisons. There are no patterns of adverse trends or poor performance in areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission. |
| 8 | Results fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements and include projections of future performance. Results demonstrate excellent organizational performance levels, as well as national and world leadership. Results demonstrate sustained beneficial trends in all areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission. |
The BNQP does not give a percentage based on the Band Score but the I-SS score of 5 out of 8 yields an overall percentage score for 2007 of 62.5%. And for 2008, I-SS received a Process Band Score of 5 out of 8, which is another 62.5% and a Results Band Score of 4 out of 8, which yields a percentage score of 50%. Weighting these scores equally, I-SS received an overall score of 56.25% for 2008 and that is the year they received the Baldrige Award. The scores for the individual categories verify this lower score for 2008. I-SS scores went down in 10 categories from ’07 to ’08 and only went up in 2 categories from ’07 to ’08.
What does all of this prove? It proves that, as many have thought, the whole Baldrige Award is a sham. How is it that I-SS had such terrible scores and still received the award? Did the BNQP committee just figure that it was I-SS’s turn to get the award? What would I-SS administrators say if they found out that students in a given class were receiving A’s while averaging 50% to 62.5%? Do you think that a high school student would be selected valedictorian or salutatorian with these averages? I don’t think so. It would be interesting to know how many man-hours and how much money was wasted pursuing this award.
Click on the link below to access the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Application, the I-SS 2007 Feedback Report and the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Feedback Report. I-SS provided me with a digital copy of the 2007 Baldrige Application, as it is not available on the school web site. I recommend that you look at these documents. They certainly provide some interesting reading material.
I-SS Baldrige Information
