Mary Gardner

Former superintendent of the Los Gatos/Saratoga Unified School District

Author of The Constructivist Leader and Women’s Ways of Leading

Educators are struggling to address the problems of schooling in the United States. Robert Caveney’s book SCHOOLING For Readiness and Drive has an answer. His step-by-step instructions for transforming the school system leading to a new cultural institution and a “Readiness Festival” has a lot of merit.

We have known for some time that the current management system for running schools is not the right system for knowledge work. Peter Drucker, Daniel H. Pink and W. Edwards Deming have suggested a new approach of modern management to knowledge work and now Robert Caveney has applied that thinking to the school system. In fact, the overwhelming sense one gets from this book is that schooling is not an intractable problem. Robert Caveney shows us how we can systematically get students ready to learn and create the kind of environment which releases the natural motivation to create and learn. It is constructivist and proscriptive. Using this approach to learning and the system of schooling, teachers, superintendents and boards can transform school districts.

Gary Ravani

Former VP of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and former president of CFT’s Early Childhood/K-12 Council

The premise of Schooling for Readiness and Drive is that for over a hundred years management of schools in the United States has followed an archaic industrial model of system management. Though this system is labeled “modern and scientific,” it is aligned with tenets first developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 1890s for factory production work. Today production work is rapidly being replaced by knowledge work. Taylor’s system not only does not apply to the contemporary work-place and it certainly does not apply to contemporary schools.

The author proposes a dramatic change in education management systems by breaking away from the obsolete “scientific management” of Taylor and embracing modern management, including aspects developed by W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Michael Hammer and concepts introduced to us by Daniel H. Pink.

Although classroom educators might be hesitant to accept any “industrial model” as an appropriate analogy for schools and teaching children the reality is: schools are managed and generally not managed well. If the fundamental problem is an inferior set of management guidelines then perhaps it is time to work toward a more appropriate model.

Certain aspects of the quality management should resonate with educators: 1) control of the system needs to be at the “lowest” (classroom) level; and, 2) when there are problems in the system the problem is at the system management level. The book makes the point that when Toyota was alleged to have massive quality and safety issues it was the CEO, and not union production line workers, that were dragged before Congress to testify. Education is the only sector where, when there is a perceived problem, it is the “workers” (union teachers) who are identified as responsible.

Schooling for Readiness and Drive is dedicated “…with gratitude to all people at all levels in the education system.” Indeed all the people at all levels in the education system, and including politicians, pundit, policy maker, et al, should read this book with close attention to its analysis of and proposals for change in the education system.

Sanford Forte

Founder of first open source textbook project, long career in publishing, including Flat World Knowledge

Robert Caveney has given us a set of tools, and a good start at a promising road map in his book “SCHOOLING For Readiness And Drive”. Mr. Caveney is an inventor, innovator and experimenter in the best American tradition of “building a better mousetrap”, and then suggesting powerful new means to “getting the job done”. What Mr. Caveney proposes at first hand, seems almost improbable, until one begins to putting in the time to understand the insights that he has gained from educational experimentation, combined with the best new insights and research about motivation and mastery in education.

SCHOOLING For Readiness And Drive is a book that everyone interested in serious, functional, effective change in education should spend time with. It’s a book that is devoid of platitudes; it’s a book about “what works”, and how “what works” can be made even better by proven cognitive research, and finally applied to reform our educational systems in a way that serves our children’s (and our collective) future, rather than hindering it.

If there was ever a time for a book to help guide us in making that change; to help seed the dormant potential that lies within every school system, every teacher, and every student, this is that time. Read Mr. Caveney’s book; read it slowly; savor it. Think hard about what Robert Caveney has discovered. Then, put it to work. We owe ourselves, our children; our nation; and, our world no less. Education is supposed to enable; Robert Caveney has given us a gift to help with that enabling.

Neeru Khosla

Founder of CK12

While fast developing nations like China and India move more towards creative, student-centric education, the US continues to move in retrograde – fast and furiously towards old systems of education that China and India are leaving behind. Robert Caveney’s SCHOOLING For Readiness And Drive empowers those most impacted by our failing K-12 system – students, teachers, and principals – to positions where they can create educational change that works. SCHOOLING For Readiness And Drive enables preparing students for their future, and for students to become invested in their own future. It costs too much not to do this. We need to change this now.

Mary Walton

Author of The Deming Management Method, Forward by W. Edwards Deming

Schools terrible? Blame bad teachers! But Robert Caveney argues persuasively that the real culprit is an antiquated management structure long ago jettisoned by the private sector. Followers of total quality management will recognize his contention that the system is what requires fundamental change. SCHOOLING for Readiness and Drive outlines a dramatically different approach in satisfying detail.