Organizational Goals
Organizational goals help us focus and filter our learning on the system’s highest priorities. In this way, professional development and organizational improvement are integrally related. The growth of professionals can contribute to the organization as a whole, but individual growth without the organizational context is insufficient and inefficient in helping the organization to achieve its strategic goals. In the abnce of organizational direction (vision and goals), the impact of professional development becomes a matter of luck rather than the result of a deliberate allocation of resources.
When we view this relationship from the opposite perspec-tive, we e an equally strong ca for linking the two. Imagine a district or school strategy for improvement that ignores the need to develop the people who will be responsible for implementing the improvements. It is hard to divorce the two, to imagine one without the other—especially in an educational environment where the organization is almost synonymous with its people.
The Kimberly Area School District in Kimberly, Wisconsin, provides a dramatic example of how a district-wide vision, accom-panied by a clear t of SMART goals, not only shaped profes-sional development practices, but ultimately redefined the role of professional development as the key strateg
ic process for improv-ing student results. In Kimberly, every decision is bad on the pursuit of goals; everything they do to achieve their goals is con-sidered professional development.
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In the mid 1990s, the board, central administration, and prin-cipals published a strategic plan for the district that they called “Mission Possible: Rai Student Achievement.” The plan includ-ed a goal that by the 2002–2003 school year at least90% of stu-dents would be proficient or advanced readers as assd by the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension T est (WRCT). The leaders believed strongly that if children could read and read well, the scores on other measures of achievement in other areas of learn-ing would also dramatically improve.
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At the time that the plan was created, the average proficien-cy rate for young readers in Kimberly was at 61%—below the state average—on the WRCT and between 40% and 50% on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exams (WKCE). The dis-trict’s goal of 90% emed unattainable and unrealistic to tho deep inside the organization. In fact, there were accusations that it would “hurt kids”; many felt that becoming so narrowly focud on reading meant that the social, emotional, artistic, physical, and broader knowledge-bad needs of students would be ignored. Furthermore, it
was feared that such dramatic gains could only be accomplished if teachers did nothing but teach to the test.
Indeed, this goal would be impossible if the district had not supported a fundamental change in how teachers taught and how students learned. In particular, the plan for achieving this lofty goal needed to include a change in how professional development was delivered, how classrooms were resourced, what content was taught, and ultimately, what got removed from the already over-filled plates of the staff.
创新思维方法The graph in figure 5.1 illustrates Kimberly’s 7-year journey. Bad on the reading performance of third graders as measured by the WCRT, Mission Possible was indeed possible! Kimberly was the only district to improve its rank on all three subtests in every year at every grade level tested. As a result, bad on a for-mula that included a variety of criteria, Kimberly ranked first among all Wisconsin districts as the most “improving” school dis-trict. It moved from the bottom half of the districts in 1998–1999 to the top 20% in the state in 2003–2004.
Recall that one of the fears of staff was that if the district were to take such a narrow approach in targeting resources and staff development on literacy, other areas of learning would be com-promi
d. In direct opposition, the district’s leadership believed that by focusing on reading, other areas would benefit. A look at a recent study conducted by the Wisconsin T axpayer’s Alliance (2004) shows how Kimberly fared across the board (figure 5.2, page 124).
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i g u r e 5.1: K i m b e r l y , W i s c o n s i n , R e a d i n g C o m p r e h e n s i o n T e s t —7-Y e a r C o m p a r i s o n .P e r c e n t p r o f i c i e n t a n d a d v a n c e d
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关于晚霞的唯美句子>鸭翅根Figure 5.3:Kimberly, Wisconsin, WKCE 7-Year Comparisons
for Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Grades.
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