District/School Resources Administration
Office of Strategic Planning, Research, and Evaluation

Strategic Planning

In fall 2006, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education set forth a Framework for Leadership and Action: a statement of what the Department aims to accomplish and what a successful public education system will look like. The Framework introduced a specific vision and goals for the agency, as well as a visual image of a multi-layered triangle to communicate how each piece builds on and relates to the next.

Framework for Leadership and Action

This year, the Department has taken this effort a step further, working with our senior leaders and our Board to define more clearly the priority areas for our work that support achieving these goals, along with identifying the existing work and new initiatives we will employ to accomplish these objectives. This will allow us to frame our agency's work in the context of our goals and help us begin to identify which programs and activities are most critical to our making progress in these areas. Our draft priority areas are as follows:

1. Support for students
   Identify and implement the supports students need to reach proficiency and beyond.
   
   

   • Supports for academic excellence: Provide students with academic supports and incentives to close the achievement gap and reach proficiency and beyond.

   • Supports for the whole child: Provide students and families with access to the school- and community-based social, health, nutrition, and other supports they need to reduce barriers to learning.

2. Support for educators
   Prepare and support educators to achieve and sustain instructional excellence.
   
   

   • Standards: Enhance the standards for the professional skills educators should demonstrate at each stage of their career and develop means for assessing performance on those standards.

   • Career pathways: Redesign the state educator licensure and professional development system into one that is standards-based, results-oriented, coordinated, and differentiated by career stage. Provide supports to novice teachers to encourage more people to choose and stay in teaching as a profession.

   • Leadership: Prepare, support, and sustain leadership that can provide instructional leadership and transform schools and school systems to produce improved academic performance.

3. Support for schools and districts
   Provide schools and districts with the structures, systems, and resources essential for effective educational practice.
   
   

   • Systems of support: Identify the structures, systems, and resources schools and districts require for effective educational practice. Align state aid and grant programs to those requirements. Provide high-priority districts with additional services structured to reflect the differing challenges districts face in improving educational outcomes.

   • School and district redesign: Support alternative administrative and governance structures that hold promise for improving educational outcomes.

   • Data collection and use: Determine the design features for the next generation of the state's student assessment system. Refine the state's school and district accountability system. Provide more timely and more useful information to teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders.

4. State leadership
   Strengthen the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's ability to provide effective, efficient support to students, educators, schools, and districts.
   
   

   • Innovation: Promote innovation in Department practices and procedures to increase efficiency and minimize administrative burden on students, educators, schools, and districts.

   • Effectiveness: Strengthen staff skills, organizational structures, technical resources, and communication vehicles to enable the Department to work more efficiently and effectively towards achieving its goals.

   • Research and planning: Evaluate Department and program performance through research and data and build the Department's capacity to use evidence to improve educational outcomes.

We expect to finalize the plan and add specific activities supporting each initiative by spring. Our goal is to capture baseline data for every priority area by the end of FY08, so that we can begin to monitor our progress towards our goals.