The Washington, DC school reform effort has been getting a lot of press recently. I think the teachers and administrators in Washington deserve a lot of credit for the advances they've made so far, but I think to really reform the district they have to start focusing more on strategy. My quick comment on a LinkedIn discussion turned out to be a little more lengthy, so I thought I'd share it here, too.

I've spent a little time working with people from the Washington, DC school system. Their core performance management system is called "SchoolStat," and is modeled after the "CompStat" program popularized by Bratton when he was appointed by Giuliani as commissioner. The core of the CompStat/SchoolStat process is a set of pre-meeting analytics to determine where issues are, and then a "hot seat" meeting where someone is called to account for the issues.

The SchoolStat meetings are characterized by rapid-fire questioning, a "no excuses" perspective, and the need to have closed out any action items since you were last on the hot seat. On the accountability side, it's like a good BSC strategy review meeting (everyone should have accountability and action items), but on the collaborative side, it's completely different (if you're in the hot seat, it's "your" problem to solve, not "our" problem to solve).

I've also had the privilege to work more closely with the Atlanta Public School system (in fact, an article I wrote with Bob Kaplan is coming out in "The School Administrator" next month.) Atlanta has adopted the Balanced Scorecard performance management system and is using the BSC to report results and manage strategy with a long-term view (as is appropriate for a district that's been on a 10+ journey of improvement so far).

To me, where DC is falling short is on the strategy side. SchoolStat can, and does, do a good job of addressing tactical and operational issues, but it does not allow the time for reflection and discussion about strategy, which, as everyone reading this knows, is critical for long-term, sustained success. Likewise, it's impossible to just manage strategy -- you need to keep your eye on the ball on operations, too, which is what SchoolStat does.

Of course, it's an evolution. In DC, they first need to put out the fire (operations). Then they can think about ways to make sure the risk of future fires is less (strategy). My hope is that as the DC school system begins to right itself, it will keep the accountability and tactical focus provided by SchoolStat and start to enhance it with a Balanced Scorecard that allows the district focus on more long-term strategy and performance.