Keeping Tab on Progress

My 6-year-old daughter Morgan loves Angels baseball. She scans the sports page every morning to read the scores aloud: “Angels six, Mariners four; we win.” Or she’ll sadly say, “Angels three, Mariner five; we lose.”

Another local newspaper last week published scores ranking our four public high schools among the 63 in the county. The scores reflected state data on academics, college prep and cultural environment.

Our schools ranked as follows: Corona Del Mar High, 12th; Newport Harbor High, 37th; Estancia High, 51st; and Costa Mesa High, 58th. Ouch.

The most-cited reason for our schools’ rankings was that some students’ lower economic level lowered our scores. It is interesting to note, however, that La Quinta High in Garden Grove ranked seventh, yet has a higher percentage of low-income students (61%) than all but Estancia, where 63% of the students qualify as low-income.

If money were the only factor in scholastic success, Newport Harbor and Corona Del Mar should have ranked in the top five.

Recently, Newport Beach did a customer satisfaction survey to compare its services to those of other California cities and the nation. The respondents rated the “overall quality of services provided by the city,” at 87% satisfied or very satisfied, which ranks Newport Beach in the top 5% of cities surveyed.

On a not-so-good note, the development services division, which is primarily the planning and building departments, had more than 60% of the respondents dissatisfied with the actual process and 60% dissatisfied with the time it takes to get plans checked. The city staff had some explanations; but in the end, no matter how you spin it, the score was sub-par.

Whether it’s baseball, a high school or a city, it is of the utmost importance that we somehow keep score. I am not sure why the Angels win or lose, why some city services meet expectations or why some schools rank higher than others. The answer for those questions is for the people who manage those organizations to figure out. What I do know is that you cannot manage properly if you don’t measure first.

Newport Beach is going one step further and looking to set benchmarks. With these, they will be able to determine whether what they are doing is working.

I didn’t talk to any school district officials, but I think they also can use the newspaper’s ranking as a benchmark to see whether they’re taking the right steps toward improvement. The good news is that with rankings, at least we know where we stand.

Some people think scores and ranking are too judgmental. They are supposed to be. Someone is first and someone is last. Whenever you go to a school board or city council meeting, the elected officials always say how they have the best teachers, staff, city manager — just fill in the blank — than any other school or city around. The fact of the matter is they might, but they really have no way of knowing unless you measure.

By the way, the Angels are first in the American League, and Morgan is very happy. Go Halos!