The American public and press are constantly bemoaning the state of the public education system. The common outcry is that test scores are low, discipline problems are increasing, and that students are not learning. William Glasser, founder and president of the Institute for Reality Therapy, has developed a model of a quality school which deserves to be studied. He has proposed a new method of managing school systems which he claims will correct the complaints made by the public and will result in students gaining a quality education. His basic premise is that schools and corporations can and should be managed to produce a product which the public will accept as a quality product (Glasser, 1990, p. 426). In the case of schools, the quality product produced should be educated students. Glasser defines education as "the process through which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives" (Glasser, 1992, p. 38). Therefore, educated students will be students who have learned that learning improves the quality of their lives. This premise would be accepted by most people including students, although most students do not want to expend effort becoming educated (Glasser, 1990, p. 434).
A corporation fails when consumers reject the product or service it offers for sale by refusing to purchase the product. Most often the product is rejected because it lacks the quality of a similar product in the market. A quality product can only be produced when workers in the organization do high-quality work. It is the job of the managers to ensure that the workers are generating high-quality work (Glasser, 1990, p. 426).
In the school system, students are both the product and the workers in the school. The teachers and administration function as the managers do in a corporation. The teachers operate as the front line managers and have the job of motivating the students (workers) to produce high-quality school work. Quality s...