Charting Your Course

Book excerpt: Charting Your Course is the story of 2003 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winner Community Consolidated School District 15 of Palatine, Illinois. The book shares the story of the school district’s journey toward continuous improvement as they followed the Baldrige Award Criteria. The authors share both the good and the bad results encountered along the way, allowing the reader to learn from his experiences. The book will help other schools answer the many questions that will inevitably come up as they begin to follow the Baldrige criteria, and will help them avoid making some of the same mistakes. PRAISE FOR CHARTING YOUR COURSE "A case study of the only school district in the state of Illinois to earn the top quality award from the Lincoln Foundation for Business Excellence. Charting Your Course is must reading for superintendents and principals who are serious about achieving organizational excellence. In this straightforward account of a school district seriously embracing the Malcolm Baldrige criteria, the authors detail what worked and what went awry, and offer concrete suggestions on avoiding some of their mistakes."- Dr. Paul D. Houston, Executive Director American Association of School Administrators