Nancy Bresell, director of Department of Defense Dependent Schools-Pacific, will keep tabs on new programs being tried out this year to determine whether they should be implemented Pacific-wide. (Megan McCloskey / S&S)
TORII STATION, Okinawa — Improving test scores, spending money wisely, motivating teachers and achieving other education goals doesn’t happen by accident.
The Department of Defense Education Activity recently put out a new road map of sorts for teachers and administrators called the Community Strategic Plan. It has four goals:
The highest student achievement.Performance-driven, efficient management systems.A motivated, high-performing and diverse work force.Promoting student development through partnership and communication.The goals are sweeping, and at first glance they might not mean much to a parent or student.
But Nancy Bresell, director of Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Pacific, said the road map also lays out smaller, more tangible milestones to be achieved by certain times between now and 2011 — and those are what parents will notice.
The most readily apparent will be in the student achievement goal, which Bresell said will introduce developmentally appropriate early childhood assessments this year for pre-kindergartners through second-graders. DODDS used to test only third-graders and up.
Extracurricular activities also are considered a part of the student achievement goal, which specifies that students have opportunities to learn beyond the classroom. One part of the plan is to offer leadership opportunities in each school by 2011.
“Our goal is to have — at the high school and middle school level — every student engaged in at least one extracurricular activity each year,” Bresell said.
Management practices lay out mainly operational goals, but they also deal with discretionary spending — the roughly 20 percent of the budget that Bresell can decide how to use.
That comes into play on issues such as technology in the classroom, allowing DODDS to fulfill computer literacy goals, Bresell said. It also provides for pilot programs, such as one at Lester Middle School last year in which students were given notebook computers to use spreadsheets to track their progress.
Among work force-related goals, teacher training will be a focus, Bresell said.
For example, elementary school teachers who have been training in math learn not just how to teach it but also the concepts, she said. The training is in preparation for the new math materials that will be introduced this year.
Included in the partnership and communication goal involves student transition programs — such as the student-to-student program that started a couple of years ago and is essentially a welcoming committee for new high school students — at all levels by 2008.
“I don’t care what the schools do … as long as they address the needs of incoming students,” she said.
Overall, Bresell said, the strategic plan will inform and focus all her decisions over the next five years.
She said she asks each teacher or administrator who proposes a new program the same question: “How does this help us reach our goals?”
