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ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized standard
that provides a guide for establishing, improving and maintaining an effective
management system for any organization. Founded as a non governmental
organization, ISO 9001 was initially aimed at manufacturing but now is
recognized as an excellent management system for service organizations, medicine
and education. School districts who have adopted ISO 9001 report dramatic
improvements in cost reductions, public confidence and services to students.
WHY USE ISO
9001 AS A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS?
For many years, school districts, researchers, state departments, and federal
agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research
and Improvement, have studied and supported a variety of school improvement
efforts designed to improve student performance. Most of those efforts focused
on schools and on teaching and learning. Great progress has been made in
instructional approaches that increase student achievement. However, public
confidence in school districts' management of resources and their services to
schools remains low. Schools complain that district resources are often minimal
and less than highly effective. ISO 9001 is a respected and tested system for
managing organization resources.
KEY ELEMENTS
Although there are eight elements in the ISO 9001 system, of particular
value to school districts are the elements of:
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management responsibility
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document and data control
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corrective and preventive action
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internal auditing
Management Responsibility is a major key to a successful and effective
quality system. ISO 9001 requires that Executive Management make a commitment to
establish a quality policy and objectives, to communicate these objectives to
the organization, to implement a quality management system and to perform
reviews on that system to determine its level of effectiveness. The management
group should react to the results of the reviews to ensure that system
objectives are viable and that business processes are continuously improving.
The Quality System element requires that a quality management
system be documented and effectively implemented. Quality planning, or a defined
methodology for meeting requirements for quality, should also be documented. The
quality system should meet and serve the needs of the district personnel and
culture. It should be user friendly, easy to control, non bureaucratic and
complementary to the organization.
The Corrective and Preventive Action System is the foundation
for continuous improvement. The system must allow for the identification of
actual or potential product and process deficiencies and require root cause
analysis, action to correct the problem, action to prevent the deficiency from
recurring, and follow up to verify effectiveness of the action. Trending data
should be submitted to management for input into their review process.
Internal Quality Audits are a requirement of the ISO 9001
standard and should be scheduled and performed to verify quality activities and
determine the effectiveness of the quality system. It is an opportunity for
district personnel, independent of the activity being audited, to evaluate
system effectiveness. The corrective action system is then utilized to perform
root cause analysis and to provide appropriate corrective actions to improve the
process. Audits should be scheduled based on the status and importance of the
activity, but at a minimum annually. Once again, trending data should be
submitted to management for input into their review process.
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