When Education Goals Aren't

Since I have a daughter approaching the age of going to school, I have, understandably, become much more invovled and informed with the state of the education system in Maryland. I live in Frederick County Maryland which has a pretty good school system, not great but pretty good.

This year the School Board saw fit to hire a new Superintendent who was put through Q&A by a local reporter. When asked what her goals were for this year, the new Super said:

Continue to build a positive and collaborative relationship with our stakeholders -- parents, families, business community, elected officials

Focus on providing the necessary support and interventions needed to eliminate achievement gaps between subgroups of students

Refine our parent and family involvement initiative, focusing on two-way communication

Implement software that provides students and parents with Internet access to individual student grades

Continue to seek ways to recruit and retain outstanding employees

Continue to build our school system through a systemic leadership development program

.


Now I am just a middle manager in a software company with a law degree and I have been routinely tasked with setting goals and fulfilling goals. If I turned this kind of a list in to my bosses I would be laughed out of the office if not relieved of my duties.

None of these goals contains any hint of measurement, definitiveness or deadline. Goals need to have some sort of concreteness to them that is lacking in this list. The one goal that seems to deal with performance, related to closing the achievement gap is a federally mandated one and a state mandated one. This Super cannot claim as her goal something she is required to do.

Next, what makes these goals any different than any other wishy-washy goals. Year after year, we hear all kinds of "goals" being offered to the community and parents. But none of these goals actually talk about educating kids. I love this one "Refine our parent and family involvement initiative, focusing on two-way communication." It is both your duty as Super and the duty of all teachers and administrators in the schools sytem to talk to parents. True parents need to be involved, but teachers sometimes need to talk first. Why is this a goal? What about parent communication is so difficult that a school system needs to "refine" an "initiative" that should have been ongoing from day one.

I want a real goal, like "Prepare our elementary age school kids to be ready for pre-algebra clases by teh 5th grade." Or expand our school library holdings by 20% or something that I can put numbers to, analyze and determine if the schools were sucessful or not.