William Ouchi

Prof. Ouchi gives advice for becoming successful in high school, college and the workplace view the video at Kidz Online (22:26)

Making Schools Work

Introducing a bold, persuasive new argument into the national debate over public education, William Ouchi describes a revolutionary approach to creating successful public schools. It is a program that has produced significant, lasting improvements in the school districts where it has already been implemented. Drawing on the results of a landmark study of 223 schools in six cities that Dr. Ouchi supervised, which was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Making Schools Work shows that a school’s educational performance may be most directly affected by how the school is managed.

Dr. Ouchi’s 2001-2002 study examined innovative school systems in Edmonton, Canada; Seattle, and Houston, and compared them with the three largest traditional school systems: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Researchers discovered that the schools that consistently performed best also had the most decentralized management systems – individual principals, not administrators in a central office, controlled school budgets and personnel. They were fully responsible and fully accountable for the performance of their schools. With greater freedom and flexibility to shape their educational programs, hire specialists as needed, and generally determine the direction of their school, the best principals will act as entrepreneurs, says Ouchi. >>more

“UCLA management professor William G. Ouchi has written an important book. Though dressed up as a ‘how to do it’ handbook, it's the result of a careful study of six big-city school districts (five U.S., one Canadian) to determine which ones work best and why ...” —Chester E. Finn, Jr., Editor, The Education Gadfly and Former Assistant Secretary of Education

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“Making Schools Work is the most important book on education in a half century. Bill Ouchi is a meticulous researcher, a brilliant thinker and a superb writer. We simply must listen to and take his advice.” —Tom Peters, Co-author, In Search of Excellence

“Our education system needs to be shaken apart. No one can
lead this effort like Bill Ouchi. His ability to think 'outside the box' is phenomenal.” — Richard Riordan, Mayor, City of Los Angeles, 1993-2001

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Professor Ouchi currently does not have any public speaking engagements scheduled.

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