Friday, August 31, 2001
www.FloridaTrend.com
Consulting
The Road to Quality
Brenda
Clark
Senior consultant / Jim Shipley and Associates, Seminole
How she spent her summer vacation: A few days in Maine on the back end of a
business trip.
On Florida teacher pay: Too low for the good of the state.
On school spending: “I don’t think it’s so much that we underfund. The way we’ve
allocated the funding is wrong.”
Malcolm Baldrige would have doted on Brenda Clark. In 1993, Clark, then principal of Azalea Elementary School in St. Petersburg, adopted the quality-improvement approach named for the late Commerce secretary. In the Baldrige view Clark implemented, Azalea students were workers and teachers were managers of learning. Kids became responsible for charting their own progress toward clear goals.
Clark continuously examined data to see what enhanced learning. For example, she had an annual $21,000 discretionary budget — a sum that seems too small to do much with. Many principals simply divvy up the money among teachers, who then scan catalogs for something to buy. Instead, Clark required teachers to submit proposals for the money and then examined how the proposals fit with five-year goals for improving Azalea. Spending was approved only if it advanced the school toward a goal.
Scores improved. People noticed. Redbook featured the school as one of the nation’s 18 best. In 2000, Azalea won the Baldrige-based Governor’s Sterling Award.
Outspoken and controversial — Azalea led Pinellas in suspensions — Clark retired last year to become a “road warrior at 54.” Now with Jim Shipley and Associates, she advises districts and schools in North Carolina, New Mexico and Detroit on implementing Baldrige.
The list notably doesn’t include Florida. “You can’t be a prophet in your own land,” Clark says. But, she adds, “I think keeping things as they are would be a death sentence in public education.”