The Five Year Plan: They want your feedback!

[Jamey Dobbs]

FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT
Dear Board Members and KCS Stakeholders:

The attached strategic plan is the culmination of a year-long effort to identify and assess the strengths and the needs of the Knox County Schools. The plan builds on the vision for the future, Building on Strength: Excellence for All Children, that I presented to the Board of Education and the community in December 2008.

Just as we did with the development of the vision, we have had broad stakeholder participation and comment as we have developed this strategic plan. We have collected insights at multiple community forums and meetings with school leaders. The Knox County Council PTA, the Knox County Education Association, the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce and our school principals were also represented on the strategic plan advisory group.

This proposal provides a blueprint for our actions, and defines our success for the next five years. There are areas in this strategic plan that are very specific in nature, elements that are more general, and some components that will require additional research and analysis. We have clearly established goals and initiatives that will be regularly measured using a variety of methods and metrics.

This strategic plan provides for the productive development of our instructional practices, processes, and systems, as well as an educational culture that will enable us to realize higher levels of academic success for all students, and achieve our vision of Excellence for All Children.

I welcome your feedback on this proposed five-year strategic plan.

Sincerely,

James P. McIntyre, Jr. Superintendent

[Jamey Dobbs]

I attended the school board meeting last night and saw the plan for the first time. I was encouraged to see KCS focus on aligning goals and resources, concern for equity, and measurable targets. We did get a commitment to more community partnership, a community schools pilot, and a streamlined system for bringing in community volunteers. More later...

[Lisa Starbuck]

Finally got around to reading this more carefully and I am impressed. I am delighted to see support for the community schools concepts and to see measurable goals and data-driven decision making, among other things. Looking forward to seeing the implementation!

[Vic Spencer]

Lisa, look at my article about this subject at knoxfocus.com. Unfortunately the plan is missing quite a few areas to make it a strategic plan. When you add up his numbers as he forecasts out to 2020, they are very easy numbers showing virtually no growth. With us lagging many other nations now, as well as production of scientists and engineers compared to what we were able to do, hopefully the Board will see the light and set us on a more competitive plan.
The Board needs to appreciate that Jim M wants to protect his incentive comp for future years by getting the Board to agree to low risk performance targets. HOWEVER, what the Board needs to remember is that we have become 34th as a country, within that TN is 40th, and Knox County is average in TN. The college readiness of our high school grads is only 18%, extremely poor. Our ability to recapture our technological leadership that will be key to future success, we have maybe five years to get our high schools from the current 21.9 average ACT to about 25 ACT. The Diploma project increases grad requirements only to 22 credits from the previous 20 credits. The school system needs to encourage and actively promote our kids to go one more advanced math and one more science course beyond the new requirements.
Delivering a $375 million expense budget for Board approval without any academic achievement targets by school and for the district, as well as the quality of this new five-year plan and the important elements it is missing, I am very concerned whether or not Jim McIntyre could put an effective plan and its successful execution together. A good plan is vital. If you execute a good plan well, you get good results. But if you execute a poor plan well, you will only get poor results.
I am very worried about how low our children's education has sunk, and the performance I see so far. Maybe we need to put a greater effort into Charter Schools taking over much more schools, because it is doubtful that the the public school system can put its act together. He should be adding to schools and cutting an already too large Central operation, but he is building up Central instead.
I would keep it simple. Jim McIntyre, if you deliver a 22.4 Consolidated ACT this year, only 0.5 points higher than last year, then you bought more time. We want results, not platitudes and BS.

[Cathy McCaughan]

• 1. Having ALL juniors take the ACT is going to result in a significantly lower ACT.
• 2. With block scheduling, there is no time to fit in more classes. Unless the Plato classes are offered outside of regular school hours, this is not going to change. Summer school? Athletes and musicians already spend much of the summer practicing for no class credit. In two weeks, my daughter will be at the school every day before 8 a.m. and stay past 5 p.m. There is no time for a summer math class. She already has a major summer art portfolio to complete. For no additional class credit.
• 3. I have several concerns about the PLAN, but the graduation goal is NOT too low.
• 4. The MANY extremely high achievers are not showing up in your numbers because of the severely disabled students who are being included as required by NCLB. NCLB's requirement that all numbers be combined instead of looked at separately and with emphasis on portfolio performance instead of standardized tests is a disservice to ALL students.

[Debi]

And not permitting portfolio performance as a means to general ed diploma if their portfolio proves competency in academic areas.

[Vic Spencer]

Cathy, can you explain the reasons for your number 1 and 3 points above? I see things a bit differently but want to see what I may have missed. Remember that I am a pain in the ass guy who loves specifics.

[Cathy McCaughan]

You are not a PITA. You just have bifocals focused on one thing. My first point is common sense. The students who took the ACT before last year, were the students interested in attending college. Those students wanted further education and they considered it a real possibility in their lives. They may have been stunned and shocked by their scores, but they were trying. Now, students who would not be in school if it wasn't legally required are spending a day with a test that they have no reason to take seriously. Students who do not have the ability to do well are taking the test. Adding unwilling test takers is not going to raise the cumulative average.

My third point refers to the goal of 100% of all students graduating after four years of high school. It should always be our goal, but it is never going to happen. Going from 36% of students scoring a 19 or higher on PLAN to 80% scoring 19 or higher is a very high bar. Going from 37% of students scoring a 17 or higher on EXPLORE to 75% scoring 17 or higher is an admirable gain as well. Our schools are simultaneously asking students to do more, to perform better with the additional load and to do it without any increase in time. Again, I repeat that we are not talking about the fact that none of these changes will mean anything to the MANY students who are already exceeding these goals.

I'm not saying we can't do better and I'm not giving up on all students reaching their highest potential. I want students with disabilities to have the option of a portfolio instead of all this testing and I want a Special Ed diploma to have much more value than a certificate of attendance. I'm not going anywhere. The PLAN needs to be a work in progress. At the end of this PLAN, I will still be advocating for students and schools. I have a child who won't even begin kindergarten until 2010.

[Vic Spencer]

Cathy the only PITA I know of is a bread and it is very good. What is the percentage of kids who have not been taking the ACT? If we did nothing to anticipate the necessity of 100% would have to take the ACT, then obviously the average would have to go down. The American Diploma Project is not new and was known to be coming for about 3 yrs. I found that we do not have a regular motivational program conducted for every class, where the teacher could interact with the kids to have a 30-60 minute discussion every week about what education is about, why it is important, the technological changes that are coming that will change future jobs, and the many really exciting job opportunities that will be coming with those changes for those who do well in school. I firmly believe that we could reduce the number of disinterested students if we had such a program. Perhaps in a big way. I agree with you that all things staying the same, including disinterested students in having to take the ACT would reduce the average somewhat. However, with a motivation program along the lines of what I suggested, the school system could have eliminated the possibility of a lower ACT score. Furthermore, the American Diploma Project, and more rigorous curriculum with its 10% increase, may lower TN state tests, but the not the ACT or SAT, because such a program will increase knowledge. If the education system thought about this in advance, which they may have, the ACT did not have to go down, and they could have initiated programs to make it so.

Having all kids graduating from HS in 4 years is not so important as having them graduate maybe in one more year, and graduate with a higher job or college readiness. So I would be more generous with the time as you seem to feel than with the necessity of achieving a a higher ACT level.

A plan is dynamic, that is why you need quarterly check points that have measurable targets to an ultimate goal. Things happen that you did not count on and you would want the ability to re-forecast your plan in order to stay on course to reach annual targets. It is impossible to get good results with a plan that has holes in it. Planning is a very serious thing, and may be changed at specific points, but all the time, any time someone thinks about something new. That is where professional management knowhow comes in play.

[Debi]

My very first thought in reading the plan is, "How do I make sure my kids are in the 90% general education diploma group & not the 10%?"

The plan states there is intensive reading interventions in place for grades 6-12. I applaud that but ask why there is not intensive reading interventions in place for grades 2-5? Every year a child slips behind it becomes more difficult to catch up. I know parents of older students in reading interventions, they do not feel their child is catching up and have test scores from KCS to support their feelings.

Why are we implementing ILPs only for high schoolers? If people learn differently, why assume we will lump them together their first 9 years and only then split them up for individualized instruction? Does it not make more sense to do it earlier rather than later? If it is to map out important courses to take for middle/high school, why are we waiting until high school to implement, per the plan? (page 5)

Parents should NOT BE SUPPORTED, we should BE THE SUPPORT! I'm so tired of KCS acting as if it is the ruler and I am to be the follower. Yes schools have supported my family at times through provision of education. But I don't want to be supported, I want to offer the support. Don't look down on me, look up to me!!! If you want family friendly schools, stop looking down on the family!

I celebrate KCS's claim to broaden least restrictive environment and inclusive settings. I would like to see the plan in place to make this a reality. Teachers not being supported when they have students with challenging behaviors will not further this objective. A parent of a general education student complaining about disruptive behavior and being told by a teacher, "There's nothing I can do, he/she's special ed," does NOT further an inclusive setting. A teacher knowing that with the first outburst he/she can turn to her special education staff, principal, and other administrators and get HELP and support, not hostility or apathy WILL promote an inclusive environment. If there is not a plan in place to make this objective happen, it's not an objective it's a pipe dream.

[ChangeAgent]

This "strategic plan" is little more than a series of platitudes, buzzwords, and smoke-and-mirror sales tactics craftily strung together by so much flowery prose. A classic example of "If you can't wow them with results, baffle them with BS."

As William Shakespeare would say: "Sound and fury, signifying nothing."

As one of the taxpayers who is - like it or not - on the hook for paying for all of this, here's what I was hoping to see:

*A BUDGET, including NUMBERS. NOT just a demand for over 1 million dollars a day (and increasing every year) from taxpayers.

*Measureable data backing up an honest assessment of where KCS is at the present, in terms of measureable student performance, to-the-dollar budget / expenditures information, function and responsibilities of all Central Office staff, etc.

*A MEASUREABLE series of short-term goals to be assessed at one-year, three-year-and five-year intervals, based upon the above-mentioned present-status assessments. I expect these goals to be ambitious, not dumbed-down walks in the park which do nothing more than maintain this unacceptable status-quo and generate nothing more than a series of talking points for the next trumped-up list of "successes".

*A "performance incentive" for the good Dr. McIntyre which will pay out ONLY upon the verification of the achievement of the above-mentioned short term-goals, and a REDUCTION of compensation by a percentage EQUAL TO his requested incentive for failure to meet these goals in their entirety. I expect him to EARN his bonus. You and I are paying it, after all. Would you pay your mechanic for a "vision" of a well-running vehicle? Or only for a car which actually works?

*A point-by-point plan for how KCS will recruit, train, support, compensate and RETAIN high-performing teachers. Too many dedicated professionals have been lost to neighboring counties due to poor salaries and exhorbitant insurance costs. We should take care of our teachers, so that they will be thinking of creative and effective ways of educating our children and preparing them to serve as productive adults - NOT thinking about making ends meet. Presently, our Central Office is one of the highest-paid and least effective beauracracies within any LEA in the state, while teaching staff rank, (I seem to remember) 49th in the state in pay. For a district of our size, this is INEXCUSEABLE.

*Following the above point, I would like to see a line-by-line plan for reduction of Central Office overhead. The Annenberg Report has been paid lipservice and nothing more. The data is already there. Dr. McIntyre has ADDED central office staff and overhead, while teachers and programming have been eliminated and students in our classrooms continue to make due with less every year.

This plan is meaningless. It is NOT strategic, unless the only "strategy" is for Dr. Mc to pad his resume and secure his incentive package. It is not data-based, so it does not have a legitimate starting point. It is only "measureable" in the vaguest of terms, and as such it can not definitively be evaluated as to success or failure. As a taxpayer, I am insulted. As a parent of children who attend Knox County schools, I am appalled. And as an American citizen counting on the next generation to be competetive enough to secure our country's future, I am very worried.

[Bob Hunter]

Change Agent,
Come on....you can't really expect this of a government entiety can you? It makes too much sense!
Seriously though, you have some great points. One of them - setting high goals - is a key element along with establishing those check points for progress. A lot of people would say keep the goal setting in lower steps so we don't get discouraged - I say set them for where you want to be and then work hard and quite making excuses about why you can't get there! I set goals for my business every month - I often do not achieve them because of the level they are at but I often exceed the goals that were set for me by others because they were so much lower. I would rather have a high goal and miss it than a mediocre goal and brag about hitting it.
Unfortunately I think your first paragraph described very accuarately what we are and will be getting - smoke and mirrors.

[Debi]

The primary part of a goal is implementation. I saw nothing about implementation in this plan. Based on KCS' planning I'm setting a personal goal. I will be a millionaire in a year. Since I said it, it will happen right? I don't have to do anything else right?