If you check out the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 website, you will find a reference to the District’s August 2009 “update” of its efforts to recruit members of five “Action Teams” to devise ways to implement the District’s “Strategic Plan,” which is currently still in draft form [pdf].
We have to confess we find that most “strategic plans” – especially those devised by governmental bodies – come off like a collection of stereotypes, riddled with clichés and salted with aphorisms. And District 64’s seems to fit that bill, starting with a “Mission” statement that reads like it was the blue-light special in the “educational” section of Mission Statements R Us.
Instead of the gobbledy-gook that jams “inspire,” “embrace,” “discover,” “achieve, “thrive,” “providing,” “integrating” and “fostering” into one quasi-Faulknerian sentence, why not simply adopt as its mission the definition of the “supreme end of education” often attributed (some say, incorrectly) to Samuel Johnson:
Expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
But since most people pay little attention to mission statements after they’re drafted, we’re going to focus on a few of the draft plan’s “Parameters” and a couple of its “Beliefs.”
Parameter (No. 1) says that “[n]o new program or service will be accepted unless…it[s] benefits clearly justify the costs….” We can’t wait to see the District implement this one, maybe because in more than a decade we have yet to see or hear about anything coming out of the ESC that comes anywhere close to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis…about anything.
Parameter (No. 2) insists that “[n]o program or service will be retained unless it provides an optimal contribution to the mission and [the] benefits continue to justify the cost.” So not only does this Parameter reiterate cost-benefit analysis, but it also moves into the realm of that superlative known as “optimal.” Can anybody remember the last time the District achieved anything that fit the “optimal” description?
Parameter (No. 3) promises that performance on the ISAT standardized tests “will always compare favorably with other high-achieving districts.” Depending on how the District defines “other high-achieving districts,” the next time this happens will be the first – as evidenced by the fact that no District 64 elementary or middle school has ranked among the Top 50 in ISAT scoring since those rankings began several years ago.
Parameter (No. 4) promises that “[a]bsent dire unforeseen financial circumstances, the District will honor its commitment to not seek a referendum before 2017.” We realize this reflects the “deal with the devil” the District made with the voters in order to garner enough support to pass the big tax increase referendum in 2007, but it’s this kind of foolish promise, also mentioned during the 1997 “new Emerson” referendum campaign, that pushed the District’s finances perilously close to a State Board of Education takeover during the period of 2003-2005.
But if you don’t get the warm-and-fuzzies from those Parameters, maybe you can try some of the “Beliefs.” The two we like best are:
Belief (No. 5), which states that “[h]igh expectations and a positive attitude result in higher performance.” Okay, but that must mean it’s time to jack up those expectations, or get a lot more positive with the attitude – in view of the District’s lackluster performance when compared to those “other high-achieving districts.”
Finally, Belief (No. 6) makes “[e]veryone within our community…responsible for the education and development of our children.” Hey, we can buy into that “it takes a village” business from Park Ridge’s own Hillary Clinton, but putting responsibility on “everyone” usually results in responsibility being taken by no one. And that’s the kind of government plan we’ve come to know and pay for, handsomely, on a regular basis.
We just never realized it was “strategic.”