Dr. JoAnn Sternke, Superintendent of Pewaukee School District, shared at What’s Right in Education – Atlanta that her district’s commitment to quality and continuous improvement includes being “hungry to achieve quality and systematic in its pursuit” and being “passionate about improving our processes to achieve that quality.” The Pewaukee School District earned the 2013 Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award and in a Baldrige blog post highlighting the district and other Baldrige winners, Dr. Sternke added:
… At the heart there’s a culture around continuous improvement [and] also around a passion for core values. And at the heart of the Pewaukee School District’s journey are incredibly passionate people … and they come to work each and every day wanting to do a great job serving kids and families.
Leaders gain a roadmap to develop and achieve an excellence-based culture by living and doing the Nine Principles®. These principles are truths which ground the framework for evidence-based leadership and continuous improvement in school systems. They help leaders hardwire or establish processes by which they or their district, department, team, or individuals integrate behaviors or actions. It starts with a commitment to excellence.
1. Commit to Excellence
2. Measure the Important Things
3. Build a Culture around Service
4. Create and Develop Leaders
5. Focus on Employee Satisfaction
6. Build Individual Accountability
7. Align Behavior with Goals and Values
8. Communicate at all Levels
9. Recognize and Reward Success
When school systems commit to excellence, leaders consistently and coherently move toward their goals and measures. They create a results-driven and performance-driven culture that produces improved student engagement, improved employee engagement, and a great place for faculty to teach and staff to work, and for children to receive an excellent education.
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Maximize Performance: Creating a Culture for Educational Excellence by Quint Studer and Janet Pilcher will help education leaders engage in systematic reviews to diagnose, apply, assess, and validate the execution of strategies across school, department, and school system levels. Learn more about Maximize Performance at
http://www.firestarterpublishing.com/MaximizePerformance. Connect with authors @JanetPilcher and @Quint_Studer on Twitter and learn more using hashtag #MaximizePerformance.
Our mission at Studer Education is to help education systems achieve measurable results that produce positive outcomes in student achievement, employee engagement, support services, and financial efficiencies and productivity. Our goal is to help school systems provide students with a great place to learn, teachers with a great place to teach, and parents with confidence that their children are getting a great education. Follow us on Twitter at @StuderEducation and visit us online at http://studereducation.com. Studer Education is a division of Studer Group, ranked for the seventh straight year on the Best Small and Medium Workplaces by Great Place to Work® and a recipient of the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Filed under: How to Lead…, Who’s Engaged? Tagged: #EdLeader, #MaximizePerformance, @jsternke, @PewaukeeSD, Baldrige, EBLK12, Excellence, Janet Pilcher, Leadership, performance excellence, Pilcher, Quality, Quint, Quint Studer 
