Frequently Asked Questions

This page includes answers to many frequently asked questions listed below:

How was the Strategic Plan developed?

How does student assignment fit into the Strategic Plan?

What is an "aligned curriculum"?

Why do you need additional assessments?

What is the focus of the Strategic Plan?

What is a school performance framework?

What is a dashboard?

How is this work proceeding?

What are the costs associated with this Strategic Plan?

What impact will the Strategic Plan have?

How was the Strategic Plan developed?
Beginning in 2007, the District commissioned a series of reviews of both academic and operations departments. These reviews, and the work done in years past, such as the Moss Adams and Community Advisory Committee on Investing in Educational Excellence (CACIEE) reports all fed into this proposed plan.

In addition to the reviews and historical reports, we surveyed school leaders and instructional staff; held multiple meetings with key stakeholders including School Board members and union partners, reviewed our data and compared our practices against nationally high-performing districts.
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How does student assignment fit into the Strategic Plan?
The Strategic Plan includes a number of foundational strategies that will better enable us to make changes to our student assignment plan. The primary strategy in this area is the adoption of new technologies — currently student assignment is on technology from the 1970s. Modifying this out-of-date technology is so difficult that we are not able to quickly reflect population or policy changes.

Work is under way to model the impact of various assignment changes and to develop the policies necessary to change the assignment plan; we will continue community engagement over the next year and anticipate implementing any Board-approved changes for the fall of 2010. Visit the New Student Assignment Plan page for additional information.
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What is an "aligned curriculum"?
An aligned curriculum is one that reflects the state content standards and expectations for each grade level. It includes developing curriculum guides that offer instructional staff content information as well as tools for teaching diverse learners and adopting textbooks and other materials.

Having an aligned curriculum does not mean that every student will be learning the same thing at the same time on the same day — but it does set clear expectations for what we expect students to learn and on what timeline. In addition, an aligned curriculum allows the district to provide targeted supports for teachers and schools, and a common set of expectations across the District will allow us to better focus our professional development offerings.

This work is not yet done, and teachers and other instructional staff will have an opportunity to be involved in developing the aligned math and science curriculum.
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Why do you need additional assessments?
Teachers and other instructional staff need real-time, student-level data to be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their students and to be able to modify their instructional techniques to better serve their students. We will be working with teachers and principals to develop and pilot common assessments that will be short, easy to administer, and will provide teachers and instructional staff with real-time feedback on student progress.
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What is the focus of the Strategic Plan?
Students are at the center of everything the District does. The Strategic Plan is focused on dramatically improving student performance from elementary school through high school. We have set clear, measurable goals and identified five key strategies to help us meet those goals.
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GOALS

STRATEGIES DESIGNED TO HELP MEET THE ABOVE GOALS

• Ensure excellence in every classroom – Strengthen the curriculum, assessment and performance management in schools.
• Strengthen leaders systemwide – Hire and retain the best educators; provide targeted support and effective evaluations.
• Build an infrastructure that works well – Adapt and adopt technologies to support streamlined hiring process and efficient student assignment; develop spending protocols and program evaluation tools.
• Monitor progress at all levels – Develop systemwide performance management approach starting at central office.
• Engage stakeholders – Work with key constituencies to help District improve its ongoing outreach and engagement efforts.
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What is a school performance framework?
A school performance framework is a way to group schools according to a set of academic and nonacademic performance targets (looking at growth as well as absolute performance) and outline interventions, assistance, and autonomies/flexibilities for schools depending on their performance. With this tool, we will be better able to hold ourselves accountable for performance and target our assistance to schools in a more coherent and consistent way. Developing this framework will be a collaborative process with key internal stakeholders playing a crucial role. The framework will be developed by fall 2008 and initial baseline data will be collected during that school year. We anticipate having it operational by the 2009-10 school year.
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What is a dashboard?
Dashboards are high-level charts that track progress on work and show at a glance how that work is moving forward. This is a way to gauge progress towards goals. Are we doing what we said we’d do and is it having the effect we intended? We will focus initial work on two dashboards:

• Central office dashboard – How is the central office executing the strategies outlined in the Strategic Plan and addressing the issues raised in the external reviews? To start with this, we will cover three core functions in operations (IT, HR, Finance) in addition to academic work.
• Superintendent dashboard – What are the superintendent’s priorities that will ensure successful implementation of the D istrict’s priorities and how are we tracking progress against those?
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How is this work proceeding?
This plan is a framework that sets very clear goals and strategies for the District. Since the plan was approved by the School Board, we have identified the projects that will take place to implement each strategy. Each project has an identified project manager, and each project team is going through project manager training. This training helps the team identify the scope of work required to meet their project’s goal, and helps identify costs and interdependencies. In addition, each project team will be developing a communication plan for their project. The project teams are cross-functional and are collaborative with partners, as appropriate to the project. Beginning in the fall, when all the workplans are complete, we will be providing the School Board with quarterly updates on the status of the projects.
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What are the costs associated with this Strategic Plan?
There are two broad types of costs associated with this plan.

• Ongoing costs – Ongoing costs are costs for work that we are already doing or that will be redirected but are budgeted for. Many of the proposed strategies are ongoing costs that are fully accounted for.
• Transitional costs – Transitional costs are one-time costs (that could be six-month or 36-month costs) that help change how the District does work. These are often development, training, and consultant costs that also aim to build internal capacity to carry the work forward. The funding gaps in this plan are largely transitional costs for which the District will seek outside funds.
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What impact will the Strategic Plan have?
The Strategic Plan sets clear student performance goals and outlines core strategies the District will undertake to help meet those goals. Each year, we will track our progress toward these goals and against those things we had said we would do. Ultimately, our success will be judged by student performance and community satisfaction. Are we providing excellence for all and is that adequately reflected in how our students perform? We are committed to creating a school system that supports every student in meeting high expectations and prepares every student to graduate from high school ready for college, career and life.
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Last Updated: March 24, 2009