This document discusses the benefits of schools adopting a strategic planning process focused on just one clear and measurable student achievement goal. The author argues that setting overly broad goals that try to improve everything for everyone will inevitably lead plans to collapse. Instead, schools should pick one core competency like comprehension, writing or problem solving and dedicate all resources and conversations to improving student performance in that area. The document provides examples of districts that saw significant gains by taking this focused approach. It also notes that properly measuring the goal is essential for accountability and continuous improvement.

1. By Jonathan P. Costa, Sr.
Step up to the podium at a staff meeting and announce that the Board of
Education and the Superintendent have decided that the district should embark
on a comprehensive strategic planning and goal setting process. Watch carefully
as most teacher eyes roll toward the ceiling and listen for the collective
exasperate groan. While understandable given the effort needed to embark on
such a process, this perspective is problematic because if done properly, strategic
planning and effective goal setting really can change the course of your
educational institution for the better.
In the business world, where the singularity of the profit imperative helps
provide a guiding focus, strategic planning is a proven strategy for getting ahead
of the curve and repositioning the organization to ensure future competitiveness.
This focus and realignment, the most important byproducts of good planning,
are the critical foundational ingredients for any successful improvement process.
So, if good planning is such a well recognized platform for positive
change, why is success in this endeavor so rare in schools? For educators, I
believe the problem begins with purpose setting. Because educational
institutions have seen their roles in society expand so dramatically over the last
100 years, when we write missions and visions, the end product is often a
generic, wide-open “do everything for everyone” statement. While befitting an
organization that values inclusion, these statements unfortunately then lead to
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2. goals that are similarly inclusive and can be summarized as “it is our goal to
improve everything for everyone all of the time.”
When a staff tries to implement such overwhelming goals, they usually
give a valiant effort in the plan’s enthusiastic aftermath, but they are soon
consumed with coping with the complexity of trying to accomplish impossible
tasks (Harvard Business Review, 1998). These well intentioned but wholly
unrealistic plans soon collapse under their own weight. They are abandoned
because everyone understands they cannot be accomplished even with double
the available resources.
Additionally, when an organization tries to do everything better, it
usually ends up doing nothing as well as it would like. Universal plans with
broadly stated goals designed to keep everyone happy are politically expedient
but inevitably lead the planning process to an inglorious end. My experience
with school planning suggests that it truly is as Peter Drucker famously stated it;
“One goal is a goal, two goals are half a goal, and three goals are no goals at all.”
This is far from a new idea. In the early 1900’s Wilfred Pareto wrote about
his 20/80 rule. Pareto observed that in almost every system he tracked, a few
vital causes (20%) drove most of the results (80%) in that system. In other words,
in a list of 5 potential planning goals, there is just one key goal would achieve
80% of the total available improvements.
In a school setting, Mike Schmoker, completed an excellent synthesis of
the educational applications of this issue in his book Results, presenting 5 major
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3. studies that all reached the same conclusion (page 61). As Schmoker sums it up,
“our zeal to improve may lead to one of the gravest mistakes we can make:
taking on more than we can manage.” Certainly, as the focus is divided, the
inertia for change dissipates with the focus.
To avoid this downfall, several area school districts have successfully been
able to base their planning processes on just one clear and measurable goal
aligned with a core student achievement competency. By anchoring the process
to one specific student learning indicator the organization has a framework to
unite all of the various competing interests that exist in the public school
environment.
This is admittedly an act of planning courage that requires a steadfast
belief in the wisdom of “less is more.” Fortunately, there are enough examples of
success using this approach to demonstrate its incontrovertible success. The
previously mentioned Results from Mike Schmoker tells the story of dozens of
districts that created enormous gains in student performance by focusing their
efforts on a single critical area of measurable and observable skill achievement.
In his book Making the Grade, Harvard’s Tony Wagner profiles the
astonishing improvements made by PS 198 in New York City’s 2nd District. Led
by Anthony Alverado, inner-city PS 198 moved from 13th in the region for
literacy achievement to 2nd, trailing only a suburban community for the highest
ranking. The change came as a result of a five year commitment to one literacy
goal. Essentially every improvement resource, every piece of data, all
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4. professional development and teacher conversations for that entire time period
were focused on that one topic (Wanger, pg. 142).
Many in the business world have shown similar results in their fields with
identical approaches. Two of the best selling management books of the last 25
years, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and From Good to Great by Jim Collins, both
spend chapters exploring the phenomenon of increased performance based on a
laser like focus on a single area of measurable improvement. As Collins
observed; “The good-to-great companies understood that doing what you are
good at will only make you good; focusing on what you can [one thing]
potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.”
(Collins, pg. 100).
Even in the face of this overwhelming evidence from both the business
and education communities that this strategy works, picking just one
achievement goal can seem like jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
And truthfully, there is some risk. If the wrong goal is chosen, one without the
necessary importance, the one goal experiment will certainly end badly.
But if the selection is an area of such weight that no teacher can plausibly
believe that they are exempt from applying the selected skill in their own
classrooms, than this strategy will work. There are not many skills that rise to
this level of importance. Comprehension, written expression, critical thinking,
and problem solving are all examples of key skill sets that fit this description and
that should be present in all content areas. With skills like these, if districts can
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5. help their students master and apply them, they will, and can, be successful in
most any endeavor.
The importance of measurement of student achievement being the
centerpiece of the “one goal strategy” cannot be overstated. The research by
those who have written about this topic, Schmoker, Wagner, and others all agree
that if the goal that is selected cannot be measured, it will not drive
improvement. Anytime a school allows success to be determined by what adults
do and not by observable student achievement, there simply is not the needed
leverage to push the change process along. It is the data representing student
performance that allows for the accountability and continuous improvement of
learning that is the point of the process to begin with.
This does present a unique data challenge. While external assessments
like state tests are reliable, they often are not completely aligned with the stated
goal and are never timely enough to help districts with strategic decision
making. Using only state test data is like driving through the rear-view mirror.
However, because comprehensive and reliable local skill assessment data is a
new challenge for many, much of the early work in an effort like this needs to be
dedicated to collecting or creating the assessment data base needed upon which
to make good systemic improvement decisions.
In Avon, Connecticut where the goal is critical thinking, the district has
embarked on an effort to build an evidence profile or “dashboard” so that staff
and the Board of Education have a common performance language to discuss the
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6. success of their improvement efforts. In Regional District #10, the focus is
analysis, evaluation and taking a critical stance a similar assessment project is
underway. In my own district of Litchfield, Connecticut we have committed to
one district-wide comprehension goal and have started the process of aligning
our K-12 assessment standards and practices so we all have a common
understanding of what student success will look like throughout our system.
Focusing in this manner does not mean that all the other work of the
district stops. The point is that the improvement energy and resources are
exclusively focused on the goal while the day to day operations and functions
continue. People throughout the system still have their jobs and their individual
responsibilities to program specific outcomes, but when it comes to a district
focus, they all have contributions and accountability for results in this one area in
common. They are not all doing everything the same, but they are having at
least one similar conversation.
This unified, one results-oriented goal approach leads to an important
long-term organizational benefit; the creation of a more stable system of school
improvement. When plans for improvement are based on adult focused
strategies, they are almost always transitory. Remember Madeline Hunter, MBO,
or any number of other “next great things?” Schools have long suffered from a
“flavor of the month” strategy approach. The improvement cynicism it creates
(“just wait long-enough, and we will outlast it”) is the driving factor behind the
eye roll I mentioned at the start of this article.
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7. Basing long-term planning on strategies is like having a comet at the
center of your school improvement universe. It shines brightly and gets
everyone excited for a few weeks but then the comet is off to other parts of the
galaxy and everyone is left behind, waiting for the next fast-moving school-improvement
satellite.
Critical skill goals are different because they have mass and staying
power. Can anyone imagine a time when the ability to make good decisions
based on provided information will not have relevance to a student’s future
success? Goals with mass have the ability to hold the various objects in the
school universe in their orbit (teacher evaluation, curriculum, professional
development), in essence keeping them stable and working together for years so
that the improvement efforts can have an impact over time. Schools here in the
region that have committed are already seeing organizational benefits that they
are sure will translate into improved student performance.
In Hampden-Wilbraham Massachusetts, former Connecticut
superintendent Dr. Paul Gagliarducci spoke of his district’s singular writing goal
in his opening remarks to the staff this year. “This is an exciting time for us
because we have the opportunity to work together as a PreK-12 unit toward this
very important [writing] goal. As we go through this process we continue to
improve the overall culture of HWRSD. Our collegiality, support, and
understanding of one another are critical to our writing success and beyond.”
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8. Superintendent of the Avon Public Schools in Avon, Connecticut, Dr.
Richard Kisiel, sees his district’s commitment to a higher-order thinking goal in a
similar light. “A single achievement goal keeps the organization focused on
priorities. A clear and singular focus will keep all members of the organizations
energized and working toward one common purpose.”
The question is not whether or not focus on a single goal will help to
anchor a successful performance improvement and planning process. It will.
The real issue is whether or not your district has the wherewithal to actually
commit to it and to carry it through to its logical conclusion. Doing so will take
constancy of purpose, dedication to the goal over the long-term, and the ability
to focus the conversation indefinitely on one improvement topic.
Leaders who have done it speak of the difficulty of the task and the huge
collective effort required to maintain the momentum of the change process.
There is no doubt, that the one goal approach has great potential for improving
student learning but is also tremendously hard work that must be attended to for
an extended period of time. This relationship between effort and success should
not come as a surprise. Have you ever known anything of value that did not
require a similar commitment?
Jonathan P. Costa, Sr. is the former Vice Chair of the Litchfield Board of Education in
Litchfield, Connecticut and was a self-employed education consultant for 10 years. He
currently is the Director of School/Program Services for the EDUCATION
CONNECTION, the regional educational service center of northwestern Connecticut.
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9. Resources:
Collins, Jim, (2001). Good to Great. New York, New York; HarperCollins
Publishers Inc..
Cox, Jeff and Goldgratt, Eliyahu M., (1984) The Goal. Great Barrington,
Massachusetts; North River Press.
Hall, Gene E. and Hord, Shirley M. (2001) Implementing Change. Needham
Heights, Massachusetts; Allyn and Bacon,.
Harvard Business Review on Change. (July, 1998) Boston, MA: Harvard Business
School Press.
Schmoker, Mike, (1996) Results. Alexandria, Virginia; ASCD.
Wagner, Tony, (2002). Making the Grade. New York, New York;
RoutledgeFalmer.
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10. Resources:
Collins, Jim, (2001). Good to Great. New York, New York; HarperCollins
Publishers Inc..
Cox, Jeff and Goldgratt, Eliyahu M., (1984) The Goal. Great Barrington,
Massachusetts; North River Press.
Hall, Gene E. and Hord, Shirley M. (2001) Implementing Change. Needham
Heights, Massachusetts; Allyn and Bacon,.
Harvard Business Review on Change. (July, 1998) Boston, MA: Harvard Business
School Press.
Schmoker, Mike, (1996) Results. Alexandria, Virginia; ASCD.
Wagner, Tony, (2002). Making the Grade. New York, New York;
RoutledgeFalmer.
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