Lessons from COMPSTAT for our schools

I'm convinced that there's a tremendous amount that can be learned from the COMPSTAT approach to crime fighting that was pioneered in NYC (with astonishing success; murders, for example fell 76.3% from 1990-2010 and serious crimes fell 80.0%; see http://nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cscity.pdf) and then spread elsewhere.  The description on Wikepedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat) says, "CompStat is a management philosophy or organizational management tool for police departments, roughly equivalent to Six Sigma or TQM, and is not a computer system or software package."  COMPSTAT has six core elements according to this 99-page report by the Police Foundation (www.policefoundation.org/pdf/compstatinpractice.pdf):

 

1.      Mission clarification: Top management is responsible for clarifying and exalting the core features of the department's mission that serve as the overarching reason for the organization's existence. Mission clarification includes a demonstration of management's commitment and states its goals in specific terms for which the organization and its leaders can be held accountable—such as reducing crime by 10 percent in a year (Bratton 1998, 252).

2.      Internal accountability: Operational commanders are held accountable for knowing their commands, being well acquainted with the problems in the command, and accomplishing measurable results in reducing those problems—or at least demonstrating a diligent effort to learn from that experience.

3.      Geographic organization of operational command: Operational command is focused on the policing of territories, so central decision-making authority over police operations is delegated to commanders with territorial responsibility for districts. Functionally differentiated units and specialists—patrol, community-policing officers, detectives, narcotics, vice, juvenile, and traffic—are either placed under the command of the district commander, or arrangements are made to facilitate their responsiveness to the commander's needs.

4.      Organizational flexibility: The organization develops the capacity and habit of changing established routines as needed to mobilize resources when and where they are needed for strategic application.

5.      Data-driven analysis of problems and assessment of department's problem-solving efforts: Data are made available to identify and analyze problems and to track and assess the department's response. Data are made accessible to all relevant personnel on a timely basis and in a readily usable format.

6.      Innovative problem-solving tactics: Police responses are selected because they offer the best prospects of success, not because they are "what we have always done." Innovation and experimentation are encouraged and use of the best available knowledge about practices is expected.

 

Let's substitute the words "below-basic readers" for "crime" and see what COMPSTAT would look like as implemented in our schools – I barely had to change a thing:

 

1.      Mission clarification: Top management (the superintendent, mayor, school board, city council) is responsible for clarifying and exalting the core features of the department's mission that serve as the overarching reason for the organization's existence. Mission clarification includes a demonstration of management's commitment and states its goals in specific terms for which the organization and its leaders can be held accountable—such as reducing the number of below-basic readers by 10 percent per year.

2.      Internal accountability: Operational commanders (principals) are held accountable for knowing their schools, being well acquainted with the problems in their schools, and accomplishing measurable results in reducing those problems—or at least demonstrating a diligent effort to learn from that experience.

3.      Geographic organization of operational command: Operational command is focused on the running of high-quality, so central decision-making authority over school operations is delegated to principals with responsibility for their schools. Functionally differentiated units and specialists—assistant principals, regular teachers, reading specialists, social workers—are placed under the command of the principal.

4.      Organizational flexibility: The organization develops the capacity and habit of changing established routines as needed to mobilize resources when and where they are needed for strategic application.

5.      Data-driven analysis of problems and assessment of department's problem-solving efforts: Data are made available to identify and analyze problems and to track and assess the school's response. Data are made accessible to all relevant personnel on a timely basis and in a readily usable format.

6.      Innovative problem-solving tactics: Educators' responses are selected because they offer the best prospects of success, not because they are "what we have always done." Innovation and experimentation are encouraged and use of the best available knowledge about practices is expected.

 

This reinforces to me that the basics of reforming our schools aren't rocket science – it's Management 101 – but the devil is in the details.  It's really hard to come up with a fair evaluation system for teachers and principals, for example.  But I don't think that one of the key elements of COMPSTAT would be so hard to replicate: imagine in every city in this country that every week the superintendent would meet with all of the principals in the city (or a particular district).  As part of these meetings, a few principals would present the data for their schools – put up on a screen behind them – and would not be allowed to say, "Hey, the fact that half of the children in my school can't read isn't my fault.  They're poor kids from broken families, so how can we be expected to educate them?" 

 

No, they would be expected to have a plan to reduce illiteracy (or violence, or whatever particularly acute problem the school faced) and EXECUTE on it!  They key is that this isn't punitive and meant to embarrass anyone, but rather to create accountability, stimulate thinking and, importantly, share best practices.  But let's be clear, there's a very punitive element of this: if a principal's school doesn't show progress after a reasonable amount of time, then a new principal is brought in (in the first two years of COMPSTAT, TWO-THIRDS of precinct commanders in NYC were replaced).