1110 - ASSESSMENT OF DISTRICT GOALS

West Clermont Local School District

Administrative Guidelines

1110 - ASSESSMENT OF DISTRICT GOALS

The District has invested a great deal of time and effort to develop and implement a strategic plan.

In order to better ensure that the goals are being achieved as intended, each goal should be assessed on a periodic basis using the following six-step strategy. The strategy also will help determine what needs to be done as a follow-up to the assessment.

STEP ONE

DEFINE THE INTENDED RESULT OF THE GOAL

	A.	Describe the situation that should exist in the District if the goal has been accomplished. List each key factor or condition in the Desired Situation as these will be the focus of the assessment for which data will be needed. Be sure the description is a statement(s) of results and not tasks or actions involved in achieving the results.
	B.	To ensure that no important factors or conditions in the Desired Situation have been omitted from the description, ask, "what should not be true of the situation when this goal has been achieved?" or "what would we not want to find is true when we're done with this task?" For each answer, convert that negative factor or condition into a desired characteristic.
		For example, "we wouldn't want to find that the performance assessments of the curriculum goals did not provide standards to determine different levels of achievement. Therefore, one important factor in the assessment of curriculum goals would be that for each goal the assessment has standards that define at least excellent, good, fair, and poor performance."
		Repeat the question, as needed, to flush out other factors and/or conditions that may have been overlooked the first time around.
	C.	Describe each factor as it would be if the goal is accomplished at the Desired Level of Quality. (This is called the DLQ standard.)
	D.	Describe each factor as it would be if the goal is accomplished at just a Minimum Acceptable Level of Quality. (This is called the MALQ standard.)
	E.	When the description is completed, there should be a summary statement of the Desired Situation followed by a listing of the criteria that will be used to judge the extent to which that Situation exists, and a description of the DLQ and MALQ standards.
	F.	Determine whether goal assessment will be done periodically during the action stage or only after all actions have been completed. Establish a time-line for assessment activities.
	G.	Develop a plan for gathering the data needed to assess each criterion. (See AG 2252 - Planning Strategy)

STEP TWO

REVIEW THE ACTION PLAN AND ROLES OF THE KEY PARTICIPANTS

	A.	Review what the plan describes as the role of the:
		Board,
		Superintendent or Treasurer,
		Central Office Administrators,
		Building Administrators,
		Building and/or Department Staff.
	B.	Identify what has been done to date to accomplish the goal.
	C.	Obtain the schedule for performance evaluations of the key participants. Review the evaluation criteria to determine if they include those related to the tasks involved in accomplishing the goal.

STEP THREE

OBTAIN THE DATA ON THE RESULTS

	A.	Implement the plan for gathering the data. (Step One)
	B.	Check to make sure the information is complete, accurate, relevant, and clear.
	C.	Organize the data in ways that make it easy to compare the results with the standards.

STEP FOUR

COMPARE THE DATA WITH THE STANDARDS

	A.	Compare the criteria one at a time.
	B.	List whether a factor is at DLQ, between DLQ and MALQ, at MALQ, or not acceptable (below MALQ).
	C.	Review all of the comparisons and make a judgement (evaluation) as to whether current progress or the Desired Situation is Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor.

STEP FIVE

DIAGNOSE THE MAIN CAUSES FOR THE RESULT

	A.	List the factors that are satisfactory (+) and place in order of significance in the Desired Situation.
	B.	List the factors that are not satisfactory (-) and place in order of significance in the Desired Situation.
	C.	Select the most significant (-) factors, one at a time, and decide what the reasons were that the desired factor was not produced. Refer to performance-evaluations and other data on actions, conditions, influences that could be causes. List in order of importance.
	D.	Select the most important (+) factors, one at a time, and decide what the reasons were that the desired factor was produced. Refer to performance-evaluations and other data on actions, conditions, influences that could be causes. List in order of importance.
	E.	Determine which of the (+) and (-) actions, conditions, and/or influences the District has the power to deal with and which are beyond its control.

STEP SIX

DEVELOP PLANS TO REMEDIATE AND REINFORCE

	A.	For the (-) actions, conditions, and/or influences the District can act upon, ask, what can be done differently that will be effective in eliminating or reducing the impact of these causes? Do this in order of importance determined in Step 5C.
		Use planning strategy AG 2252 and/or the strategic planning process to prepare a remedial-action plan.
	B.	For the (+) actions, conditions, and/or influences the District has control over, ask, what can be done to make sure these causative factors don't disappear or are forgotten as we work on the (-) causes? Do this in order of importance determined at Step 5D.
		Use planning strategy AG 2252 and/or the strategic planning process to prepare a reinforcement-action plan.

Recycle the strategy as appropriate to achieving the goal (Desired Situation) and maintaining it on a continuous basis.