What should you do when you reach a decision and the decision stinks?
You’ve done it and so have I. We know how it feels and as uncomfortable as it is, we usually understand that we have few options for going forward yet forward we must go. The “it” is living out a decision that was fouled from the get go. Usually we think that we exercise sound planning in considering the parameters of a decision, previewing of what a successful decision should look like, and setting the plan in motion. Usually, the plan takes a trajectory looking like what we projected. Sometimes, it does not. In our experience, when the outcome we anticipated and the outcome we achieve do not jibe, we either accept the outcome with the errors in thinking that caused it, do not accept the outcome because the errors in thinking are not acceptable, or dump the outcome and the precipitating errors and start over again. But, that is us. What happens when it is not us who have a plan that is in the dumper, but a much larger entity like a state agency? Can the big boys face the music and correct a plan that was headed wrong from the beginning? Or, like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, do they ride the misguided mission right into the ground?
Public education in Wisconsin is undergoing many significant reforms. One major component of reform is the creation of a statewide student information system. The new SIS connects all elements of an individual child’s school life, including the child’s ID number and enrollments, the child’s SES information, grades earned, school attendance, all significant test scores, and the names of teachers who provided the child’s instruction, into one data base.
In the planning phase, it was clear that the state of student information was all over the place. Three vendors, Skyward, Infinite Campus and PowerSchool, were the major players in educational software. Some districts used locally developed software. Some data still resided in teacher grade books and reams of printed records stored in a central closet. Decision makers looked at the state of data affairs and, not liking its disorganization, drafted criteria for contracting with a single software vendor for organization and management of the new SIS. State decision making took its time, in fact, it let the process dawdle for almost two years. Now, the state has a winner! Or, do they? As soon as the plan was launched several years ago, the current stink about the selected SIS vendor was preordained by fundamental thinking that was very suspect.
Fundamentally, why do Wisconsin schools need a single SIS vendor? One vendor can create singular simplicity because all data will be defined, collected, managed, and reported using one vendor’s software. However, when there are multiple component vendors, why just one? What drove this parameter? Even though many inputs advised the benefits of a multiple vendor contract, state decision makers insisted on a single vendor contract.
Fundamentally, when three vendors provided the majority of SIS service for Wisconsin schools, why not set the contract criteria for meeting the design parameters of SIS service and if one or all of the major vendors can meet those parameters, contract with each of those vendors? SIS services in other states use parameters that allow multiple vendors to comply with the state requirements and share in the contract. What is wrong with a preferred vendor contract?
Fundamentally, if the state contract pays the winning vendor $15,000,000 for providing SIS services, what will be the cost of conversion for school districts that currently use non-selected SIS software to convert to the selected software? The greatest SIS cost is not in linking districts to the state, but in organizing and managing all of the initial data at the school and district level. What should a local district do if it has created local effectiveness and cost efficiency by unifying its administrative software for financial management, classroom grading, transportation, building management, student discipline, and special education with a single vendor, but that vendor is not the state’s winner? There always are winners and losers, but why create a system that requires extensive costs in order for the losers to align with the winner? Those districts face very large financial burdens, probably in the $100s of thousands even for small districts, in converting to the SIS vendor’s software and in training all of its personnel to use that software. This is more problematic given that the state reduced the mandated amounts of per pupil allocations for each year of the current biennial budget in order to move Wisconsin from a deficit to a surplus state budget.
Fundamentally, what if the state’s selected vendor does not reside in Wisconsin and the non-selected vendors are Wisconsin residents? And, what if the losers move their operations from Wisconsin to another state where they also do major educational business as a result of losing all of their Wisconsin school contracts? Yes, there always are losers, but can the current state of Wisconsin’s economy lose hundreds of highly paid, technical jobs and believe that the parameters of selecting a statewide SIS vendor were properly thought out?
Fundamentally, what does this model for decision making tell us about future bidding for large state contracts? Will the fundamentals of future plans result in sweet outcomes or stink like the selection of the SIS contract?
What would you or I do?