Getting Ready for the New Year

Today I met with the administrative team to discuss where we are heading.  One of the items that we discussed was whether we felt we could continue to improve or whether we had accomplished all that we needed to accomplish.  In other words, we talked about goals.  

The Michigan Department of Education has two data files, one for high school and one for elementary and middle school, that allow a parent or interested party to see how a specific school district performs or to compare how several school districts perform.  The files that are located at the links above are significantly better than files we have had in the past but they still take awhile to get used to using.

What the results show is that Grand Ledge performs better than any district in Eaton County and better than most districts in Ingham and Clinton counties.  We are a solid district.  Yet we could do better.  There are districts near use that outperform us.

So today the administrative team talked about what we could do to get better.  I talked about not setting arbitrary improvement goals - increase performance on the MEAP by 5% for example - but identifying how the school will be different next year.

There is an old saying that says if you always do what you've always done you will always get what you've always got.  If we are not satisfied with our performance we cannot continue to do things like we have done them in the past.  Working harder won't necessarily produce better results if we continue to do things that have not produced results in the past. 

Today our administrative team talked about what we would do differently next year.  If we want to improve our math performance, for example, what will we do differently.  What actions will we take to make sure that student performance improves?

I believe that we need to hold ourselves accountable.  Thinking through how we will do things differently I believe will help us continue to get better.