Process Control in a Fourth Grade Science Class

Process improvement often sounds like something reserved for factories, consultants, or large companies with specialised teams. But process improvement can work at any scale.  In 2022, a fourth grade teacher by the name of Jessica Cutler was running a process improvement project in her class. She was not fixing a supply chain or redesigning an operating model. She was trying to improve a system that had quietly gone wrong: her students were no longer enjoying science.

Before we look at what Jessica did, we must understand how she got there. Her school was no ordinary school. It was part of the United Schools Network (USN),  a small, non-profit charter management organisation in Columbus, Ohio. It served as the district office for four public charter schools in the city.

USN began with a single school, Columbus Collegiate Academy-Main Street, which opened in fall 2008. It started with 57 sixth-grade students and six staff members operating out of the basement of a church in Columbus’s Weinland Park neighbourhood.

The early days were hard. The school bus service was inconsistent. Parents who enrolled their children were taking a chance on a school that had no track record. Teachers accepted pay cuts on salaries that were already lower than those in nearby districts, and lived with those cuts for the first two years. Every Monday, staff had to reset classrooms because the church used the basement for Sunday services.

As of 2022, USN served around 1,000 students, all of whom were economically disadvantaged.  Of those students, 86% were students of colour, and 19% had identified disabilities. Founder and CEO Andy Boy wrote many years later, “we were united around a simple belief: every chi ...

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