Quality Education: Why It Matters, and How to Structure the System to Sustain It - Tapa blanda

Updated and completely restructured edition! Originally one of the first book-length treatments of continual improvement principles applied to organizing and operating the educational system. With special emphasis on the quality philosophy of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the text adapts Deming's systems flowchart, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, and "14 Points" to the problems and processes of education. Presents education as a transformative process and covers expectations, roles, and inhibiting factors for parents, students, teachers, and administrators. Examines education's customers, differing definitions of quality with respect to education, and the failure of well-intentioned reform efforts such as the "National Education Goals" (also known as "Goals 2000") of the late 1980s. Includes chapters on programs for gifted and talented students, values education, and curriculum and other standards. Presents strategy ideas and discusses leadership required to develop and sustain quality education.

Gray Rinehart retired from the U.S. Air Force after a rather odd career. “Eclectic,” he likes to call it. During his first and second assignments, he researched and wrote the first edition of Quality Education. He is the only person to command an Air Force tracking station, write speeches for Presidential appointees, and have his music played on The Dr. Demento Show. After retiring from active duty, Gray became a Contributing Editor for Baen Books, and also spent several years on the staff of the Industrial Extension Service at North Carolina State University. His fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, several anthologies, and elsewhere. His first novel is slated to be published by WordFire Press. He is also a singer/songwriter with two albums of mostly science-fiction-and-fantasy-inspired songs—two of which have been featured on The Dr. Demento Show.