[ Music and Effects ]
[Narrator:] Every year since its inception in 1987,
the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has
identified organizations that have demonstrated quality
and performance excellence and recognized them
with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
The 2010 recipients join 84 previous honorees as the best
of America's best in Manufacturing, Service,
Small Business, Education, Health Care, and Non-Profit.
Montgomery County Public Schools is a Baldrige recipient.
[ Music ]
[ A cappella singing ]
[Weast:] People don't move to Montgomery County
for big buildings or cheap taxes.
They move here for the quality of education.
[ A cappella singing ]
[Weast:] And now everybody here believes,
believes in their heart,
that they actually can make a difference.
From the bus driver to the cook to the person
who sweeps the floors to the teacher, the para-educator,
all the way up to the Central Office.
Everybody believes there are no other kids.
They're all our kids and all
of them can be college ready when they graduate.
Now we're keeping track of our kids all the way through college
and we now know the juice is worth the squeeze
because we're getting them out of college
at twice the rate that America is.
Sixty percent almost of our kids out of every class
that graduates, and we're graduating more
than 10,000 kids, a very diverse group, get a bachelor's degree
within six years-- a bachelor's degree
or an associate arts degree.
What we've done is put together a string of wins based
on a continuous improvement, based on all of us feeling
that we could get better.
And it's changed the way we look at children,
changed our expectations, changed the way that we look
at outcomes, helped us look higher.
What engages children is a commitment kind of organization
that is always getting better,
enabling them to stretch and grow.
[Teacher:] You want to be pushing the sound forward
so it's a richer, clearer sound,
and so it carries to the audience.
Okay.
[Weast:] We've actually increased market share
of our total enrollment from private schools
in the last decade and we hold
on to our employees four times better
than the national average.
We have 25 high schools.
I make 22 graduations on the average every year
and I shake their hands I know it's more
than just a graduation ceremony.
It's a chain that goes all the way from birth all the way
through college and into the workplace
and we have prepared them because we have set outcomes
that we want every child to hit.
We'll just keep progressing.
We're not going to slowdown.
The people who run this system, work in this system,
and go to this system and support this system.
This is a continuous, ongoing process."
[ Music ]
[Narrator:] Congratulations
to Montgomery County Public Schools.
It has taken its place on the honor roll
of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients--
taken its place among the best organizations the United States
has to offer.
[ Music ]