Can corporations learn from the NCLB Act?

Dr. Adam F. Brennan is Director of Bands and Professor of Percussion Studies at  Mansfield University (Pennsylvania). He was a guest conductor last week for the Tri-band Festival at my child’s Junior High School. The children were very lucky to have had an opportunity to work with him. He was exciting, the children loved him, and he was obviously passionate in his work. Prior to the last performance of the night, a super rendition of The Magnificent Seven, Dr. Brennan spoke to the audience about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and what he is seeing as he travels to various schools.

He had stories about two problems – the measurement of music programs and the importance of playing as an ensemble. I won’t write this as well as he spoke about it but here goes. His analogy for measurement was a story about the number of notes musicians can get wrong. I don’t know where the example he gave came from, but he said music was presented with 65% of the notes correct and school administrators could not identify the song being played. It wasn’t until 90% of notes were correct could administrators recognize Happy Birthday to You. We all laughed.

Dr. Brennan story about the need to play as an ensemble was disturbing to me. Apparently at some schools he is seeing a trend associated with the NCLB Act and its impact on music education. He has seen music education scheduled with violinists at 10:00, cellists at 11:00, etc. It saves time (music education time) so that more time can be spent elsewhere. Can you imagine if they did this with the football team? No practicing together!

The NCLB Act is a polarizing, controversial topic in the United States. I recall the K-12 teachers in my Masters classes getting quite vocal about it. I see its effect everyday with my own children and make an effort to keep them involved in creative and artistic endeavors. Teaching to the test is a big criticism of standardized testing.

Do we have something similar going on in corporations, especially those industries that are compliance-driven? Do we set pass rates that potentially result in an outcome that is unrecognizable (undesirable)? Which test questions are OK to get wrong and which are not? Do we train groups within a company separately rather than as an ensemble?

Michelle Page-Rivera, Ph.D. wrote an excellent article in CLO Magazine about building partnerships among business units, and avoiding pitfalls within the common models we use for structuring learning. Key takeaways from Dr. Page-Riveras article:

• If your organizational learning is centralized you can avoid being perceived as an inflexible monolith out of touch with the day-to-day needs of the business unit or viewed as a cost center that is transactional rather than a partnership by

1. Focusing on your core competencies (not all things to all people)
2. Internally market and brand (build value proposition around business case, maintain strong physical and virtual presence, integrate metrics)
3. Remember internal clients choices

• If your organizational learning is decentralized you can avoid delivering learning as crisis management to become business advisers and innovators by

1. Understanding strategic objectives
2. Build learning plans aligned with strategy (not just checklist requirements)
3. Individuals within the learning function focused on learning (professional development)
4. Educate executives on value of learning and future or learning

• If your organizational learning is hub-and-spoke (consolidated vendor and expense management and multiple business units involved in learning solutions) you can avoid silos and order taking by

1. Manage training requests (is it strategic?)
2. Get to the root of the problem (proper diagnosis) training is not the solution to all problems

You can see similarities here when analyzing some criticisms of the NCLB Act (excluded here are some other big criticisms  punishment, funding, state rights)

• Lack of focus on other causes of poor performance (social)
• Focus on one problem area may improve learning in that area but result in a decline in another area
• Lack of sound strategy for improving performance
• Narrow curriculum vs. change in performance across many areas
• Mandate-driven

Dr. Adam F. Brennan’s main message to the audience that night was to continue to support music education in schools. He spoke of the direct link between improved performance and participation in music and art programs. In corporations, we can view this as the need to generate support and funding for a comprehensive curriculum that includes proper diagnosis of problems, big-picture strategics, emphasizing value, individualized learning plans, focusing on all core-competencies, etc.

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Tagged as: Best Practices, Culture, Learning, research