District goals get new, clear approach.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

As lofty as they sound, a school board's "annual goals" seldom make much of a ripple.

Typically compiled each summer or fall, using the previous year's as a template, such goals tend to be things most anyone would agree a school district should do, such as raising achievement among all students and ensuring graduates are well-prepared for college or careers. Often, a board will outline steps the district will take to reach them.

Hardly the stuff of heated debate.

This year, though, the Eugene School District has taken a notably different approach. For the first time, the 2008-09 goals - approved Wednesday - include some specific and ambitious "key results" for student achievement, high school graduation rates, the recruitment of minority teachers and even the passing rate of the local option levy on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The shift makes the goals less about activities than about outcomes, Superintendent George Russell explained.

Russell wants it to convey a sense of urgency, both to district employees and to the community.

"Really, it's about trying to be a little more aspirational in terms of the goals and what we'd like to see happen, to tell us whether we're successful in doing the things we want to do," he said.

Though he'd talked about the change with the board last spring, Russell made his formal pitch in mid-September, bringing forward a draft and slide presentation. Despite years of discussion, commitment and even targeted initiatives, he said, there's been scant progress in narrowing the achievement gap that separates students by race/ethnicity, English ability and socioeconomic status - and grows wider as students advance.

For instance, the one-year dropout rate in 2005-06 - the latest year for which data are available - was 1.8 percent for whites, 0.7 percent for Asians, 2.7 percent for blacks, 4.9 percent for American Indians and 5.5 percent for Hispanics.

Nor, Russell said, has the district come close to achieving proportionality between its increasingly diverse student body and its teaching force. Only 6 percent of licensed staff are nonwhite, but nearly 23 percent of students are. Many educators agree that, when students of color see teachers who look like them, it can convey a powerful message that helps them succeed.

"Now, all of these goals are probably stretching a bit, and probably there are folks who will say we can't do that, and they may be right," Russell told the board that night. "But I'd say if we don't try, there's no way we will."

Over the course of that and several more meetings, the board refined the goals. Several "key results" sparked discussion, including improving the graduation rate by 50 percent by 2013-14.

"Part of the balancing act is this direction is really different than where we've been before," board Chairman Charles Martinez said during Wednesday's discussion, noting that it's easier to point to incremental success when goals are less precise.

Concerns - some echoed by building principals - include new diploma requirements being phased in during the next six years and pending changes to the formula the state uses to calculate graduation rates, which are widely expected to reflect a more accurate and lower rate.

"I did raise some concerns," said Churchill High School Principal Dennis Biggerstaff, who represents high school principals at Russell's weekly cabinet meetings.

"The state has been instituting more challenging graduation requirements culminating in 2014, and the ones we're most concerned about right now are the `essential skills' requirements that start with this year's freshmen."

The various allowable means for demonstrating those skills - reading, math, writing and speaking - aren't yet completely clear, Biggerstaff said, although students will be able to meet most of them by passing the 10th-grade Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. That would be a tall order, though, given that two-thirds or fewer pass the OAKS exams now.

The board agreed to be clear that the district would apply the same graduation rate formula across the board when comparing rates, to ensure fair comparisons.

Despite some leeriness, Biggerstaff called the board's willingness to get specific "laudable."

"Sometimes I think these goals are so broad, it's hard for people to feel impacted by them or really get behind them," he said.

Russell said some of his motivation came from the Executive Education Leadership Program at Harvard University, which the district has participated in through a grant from the Wallace Foundation.

Shannon Priem, communications officer for the Oregon School Boards Association, said Eugene is following a national trend, with boards holding themselves and their superintendents more accountable for progress in their schools.

"It's getting more common for boards to ask for measurable outcomes, partly because more and more they have access to better data," she said. "Then it becomes the administrator's role to figure out how we're going to get there."

BOARD GOALS

Among the "key results" included in the Eugene School Board's 2008-09 goals:

By 2012-13, the overall percentage of students who meet state testing benchmarks in reading and math will increase to 90 percent and 85 percent, respectively (up from 80 percent and 76 percent currently), and gaps for racial/ethnic subgroups - blacks, Hispanics and American Indians - will be half of the current 10 percent to 20 percent

By 2013-14, the overall graduation rate will improve by 50 percent, based on the formula used for calculating the rate for the current year, with rates for black, Hispanic and American Indian students increasing at an accelerated rate to narrow the achievement gap

By 2012-13, the district will increase the representation of minority teachers to 10 percent of licensed staff, up from 6 percent

The district will renew the local option levy to maintain local support of district programs and services through 2015-16 with at least a 65 percent yes vote on Nov. 4