Response to "What's Missing from the 'Strategic Plan' for Madison Schools?"

Ruth Robarts raises very valid issues about the goals of the MMSD.

As we all know, goals are supposed to be measurable and time specific, among other things. Not even the "goals" for academic achievement meet those criteria, let alone the other goals.

Each goal for academic achievement should be written something like this one on reading (with the added italics giving them more specificity) and they might have intermediate goals/steps leading to the final goal:

All students complete 3rd grade reading at grade level or beyond by the end of the school year in 2007;
a. Scores for reading at grade level will increase by a minimum of 5 percentage points a year until all students read at grade level.

Without putting numbers and timelines on the goals, they aren't very useful. For instance, the MMSD can claim that it's closing the achievement gap in reading between white and minority students, but it's closing at a fraction of a percentage point a year. At the current rate, it will take decades before "all students complete 3rd grade reading at grade level or beyond."

Ed Blume

Posted by Ed Blume at September 29, 2004 1:34 PM
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