08/16/2025
Hi everyone. Took a little Facebook break. Let’s get back into the swing of our conversations.
First, I urge you to watch the last two recorded School Board sessions, the July meeting (specifically around the budget) and then the Work study that just occurred this past week. Both will come up over the next several weeks and months.
Ok…let’s talk goal setting. I’m referring to numeric, improvement goals. I want to frame it with one of the employee survey results that was presented at the August work study. See image 1. Look at the 2025 lowest scoring question: “I have an opportunity to provide input on decisions that affect my job.” Remember when I mentioned teachers and para’s telling me they didn’t feel like they had a voice or couldn’t openly express their thoughts? Remember that many raked me over the coals for that? Yes. Guess it’s more of a reality than folks want to think. So, what does this have to do with goals? It has to do with a unified buy-in to goals that get set.
I’ve attached the slide for next years goals. The last one was tabled (more on that in the future). Let’s focus on the two goals around literacy. After about an hour or so of discussion (kudos to Susan for questioning the goal process here), the board settled on the 1% increase as an overall district goal. Matt raised the point that there needs to be a district level goal to drive the behavior the board wants to see. Fair point. The question we return to is how to set that goal. Where did the 1% come from? Is it some arbitrary number? Likely as both Jennifer and Nina seemed to be ok with that shifting to 0.5% or 1.5%.
Now, let’s connect two thoughts: the lack of input the teachers and staff feel like is happening and the method to construct performance-based goals. To me, I would have taken Susan’s input much more seriously. She does work at Microsoft in their research division and likely deals with numbers and statistics more than most. That said, this was a real missed opportunity. Here’s how the goals for literacy should be structured.
1) Each school looks at their past performance and that of the students that will be in the school next year (no need to include the 5th graders at the elem school now that they’re in middle for instance). The school administrators would hopefully work with the teachers and para’s to construct what that school feels they can improve to in the next year.
2) The principals submit that up for review and approval. This would likely be with the Directors of Teaching and Learning. At this stage, the Directors would roll this up into an overall school-level goal (elementary, middle, high school) based on the aggregate of each school’s goal. If there are any issues with a school’s goal, then the Director would work with the school administrators to resolve.
3) Both sets of goals (school-level and individual schools) then gets submitted to the Superintendent for review and approval. Similarly, any issues with any of these goals would then go back to the Directors to resolve. The Superintendent would then aggregate these data points into a district-wide goal.
4) ALL data points (district aggregate on down to schools) would then get proposed to the school board for review and approval.
This is a STANDARD method for setting improvement goals in a tiered or matrixed organization. It helps get buy in on all levels since all levels have a part in the process and a voice. It has that top level goal to drive improvement that Matt mentioned. That top level goal is no longer arbitrary and is now a construct of each school’s goal so it has some meaning to it.
Now, if these goals are just to be a show piece that is easily obtainable so the district can say “look how great we are”, then pick whatever. If the goal is to drive actual progress, then this was a fail.
As a side note, while it seems like saying things like “all students” and having only a district wide goal would be more inclusive, it’s actually not. By only having that top level goal, you are setting up a situation where top performing schools can balance out or hide lower performing schools. If the lower performing schools get effectively masked, then those students will not get the resources or attention they deserve to have an equitable academic experience. What got approved will actually exclude groups of students (not even mentioning special education here).
Those are some initial thoughts. There’s a lot of work to do still, regardless of the election. It’s going to take some serious people to do the work.
I’ve had some great conversations with parents that want to organize more tightly amongst themselves to help drive change in the district. I’m excited that I am able to have even a small part in sparking that fuse. Inspiring advocacy, driving change, empowering all members of the community…THAT is what it means to be “Tahoma Together” and “Tahoma Strong”.
Get ready…levy talks are around the corner!
Please leave me comments with questions or send me a message if you prefer. Lot to unpack these last few meeting.
Have a great weekend,
Devin
