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Strategic goals are school-wide in scope and have student
learning as their focus. Strategic goals must be further defined
as Action goals. Once defined, these goals provide guidelines
for data collection. This process should be dynamic and iterative.
Dynamic in that the monitoring of progress must have built-in
timeframes and corresponding benchmarks that attest to the
achievement of individual Action Goals. Iterative in that
the Learning Team can alter, amend, or adapt resources that
can re-align resources to accelerate goal attainment.
- Forming Goals—A
Two-part Process
- The first part of the process involves careful crafting
of a few Strategic Goals by the Leadership Team.
These are goals that focus on desired achievement in
overarching, school-wide areas of student learning.
They do not involve setting goals to increase community
partnerships or the number of computers or funds for
staff development. While these are all worthwhile goals,
they are not Strategic Goals focused on student learning.
The following are key points related to forming measurable,
strategic and action goals:
- Based on the Leadership Team study of the data and
areas of student need, school-wide overarching goals
should be crafted that may involve numeracy, literacy,
or perhaps critical thinking.
- They should also be measurable; stating who is to
achieve what and what measure will indicate achievement.
- Important too, is the need to impose a timeline
for measuring the achievement of goals.
- This timeline should have benchmarks that enable
the intermittent review of goals progress. These progress
reports facilitate discussions about what is working
and enable concurrent adjustment to assure results.
- Each of these Strategic Goals should lend themselves
well to construction of specific goals from each subject
area and course—these are the Action Goals.
- Part two of the process of forming goals
occurs when Learning Teams are then asked to write an
Action Goal for one of the Strategic Goals. Action Goals
represent the specific resource allocations, whether
time, personnel, or money, that will in time, contribute
to the attainment of the Strategic Goals.
The next step, then, is for members of the Leadership
Team to meet with their Learning Teams. At this meeting,
the data profile and analysis are presented and discussed.
The Strategic Goals, based on the data profile, are
presented. This Action Goal focuses on student learning
within a specific subject, and its attainment will contribute
to achievement of a Strategic Goal. As the team crafts
the Action Goal, they must continually ask, "Who
is to achieve what and how will achievement be measured?"
The same criteria for applies to both Action and Strategic
Goals—that includes:
- the need for measurements.
- the imposed time frame.
- the intermittent review process to assess results
and adapt if necessary.
All team goals should now be posted in the teacher
congregation area so that each has a small area to provide
monthly updates on data gathered, discussions, research
and resources, findings and breakthroughs.
- Using Information
All teams, armed with their subject specific Action Goal(s),
will now begin to gather and interpret their own classroom
data on student performance. Current results vs. desired
results are defined and agreed upon within each team, and
methods or approaches are shared for consideration. The
team researches one approach and agrees to implement that
strategy for a period of time and collect data on their
results.
Next: 3:
Post and Publish Results Monthly
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