One of the reason Honda and Toyota ate General Motors’s lunch is that the Japanese car companies adopted statistical quality assurance while Detroit was still inspecting every part coming off the assembly line to see whether it was within tolerance. Why are we using those same outdated principles to manage the much more complicated problem of teaching children to read, write, and reckon?

From Reality-Based Community’s “Edward Deming meets No Child Left Behind.” (Deming is credited with transforming the Japanese auto industry through the application of statistical methods.)