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It would be interesting to "benchmark" New Mexico's schools against those of
the other states and selected other countries (e.g., Singapore, S. Korea,
Taiwan) to determine what factors most affect performance, and how New
Mexico compares with the best areas. We can do this for the individual
school districts in NM to highlight the problem areas.
This is routinely done by many of the better performing corporations to
identify strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategies. It often is the
core assessment for the management consulting "strategy boutiques" like the
Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co., McKinsey, etc. Quantitative factors on
the educational systems (current and historical) should be available.
Qualitative factors are more difficult, but I'm sure we can creatively
develop some analogs.
We certainly have the ability to do the statistical modeling. Possibly, we
could approach the company that did the comparison and offer this assessment
as a product they could sell to individual states and districts, and we
could divide the proceeds. Likely they would want us to provide a "sweat
equity" investment.
The big payoff here would be the ability to put together a strategy to
improve education at a minimum cost by identifying areas that could provide
the most improvement per dollar, or where money is being wasted. There are
several issues, however.
1) Where do we get the data. If we can get a partnership with the group that
did the original assessment, they should have most of it.
2) Can we find an educational system expert to work with (possibly at a
university?). While we can do the statistical part there is likely a lot of
"domain knowledge" that we don't have and that would greatly increase the
value of what we do.
3) Do we need to develop ahead of time strategies to defuse the political
pressure such a study will likely generate? For example, I can see one
finding being that the educational system is being used for patronage, and
lots of politicos will have to lose their no-show jobs.
4) Where do we get the resources to develop and market this.
Any thoughts are welcome.
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