At tomorrow's (Monday) 2pm School Board Workshop, the agenda item #2 HERE is a request for the Board to approve $275,000 for a grant to provide "Mentoring and Student Assistance Initiatives" services to poor performing elementary students over a 9-month period.
But, like similar programs in the past, there are no required performance metrics that are measurable. There are no before and after stated goals that are measurable.
Instead, there are vague "goals" like these:
Goal #1 - Provide mentoring that will impact social development and reading and math achievement for
3rd, 4th and 5th grade most at-risk students.
Goal #2 - Provide mentoring that will impact social development and reading and math achievement for
6th to 8th grade students who have been retained one or more years.
Goal #3 - Provide mentoring that ensures middle-performing 6-12 students will succeed in rigorous
curriculum, participate in school activities, enroll in advanced courses, graduate and be college-ready.
Goal #4 - Create a collaborative vision of a community school framework that supports the social
emotional development and academic achievement of children from the cradle to career.
Goal #5 - Evaluate Mentoring for Success project to inform current and future practice.
None of the above goals state a measurable objective, such as "Current 6th graders in the program rank at 55% of expected achievement levels based upon THIS _____ methodology, and this program is expected to improve reading achievement to the 75% ranking level." That is a deliverable and a performance metric.
Here are the "expected results" of the grant:
Expected Results:
• 29,950 hours of mentoring time with elementary and middle school at-risk students
• 8,280 hours of community college student mentoring for AVID students
• Focus on reading and math achievement and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens
• Formalizing policies and procedures for mentoring
• County-wide mentoring awareness and sponsorship focus
• Long-range planning for nurturing students through coordination of community resources
• Evaluation results to inform future mentoring plans
Notice that they only expect TIME to be spent, but do not define any measurable results. Counting hours is not a "result", but an activity. Sitting under a tree is an activity, not a result. A result would be increasing a score measured at the beginning of the reporting period, adjusting for normal teaching efforts, then comparing it to the end to get an improvement of 20% over what would be achieved through normal teaching.
The School District has quite a few staff with masters and doctorate degrees, and surely some of them were exposed to using measurable achievements and metrics, and understand what I mean.
If you don't have such metrics defined at the beginning of a program, with a measured starting point, it is only a "feel good" program without any performance expectations, and is probably a waste of taxpayer money.
Now, it is possible a program manager will say some measurable examples verbally at the Board meeting, but if they are not provided in writing for evaluation at the end of the program, then it is wishful thinking that performance will improve. You can't wait until the end of a program to then decide what your starting point would be for "results" because it is too easy to then pick a score that makes you look good.
In order to be paid as "managers", the Administration staff needs to start measuring before and after metrics that are credible and valid to be considered effective. If they don't have such metrics for such programs, they are a waste of taxpayer funds, and "managers" should not be paid as "managers".
Vance Jochim
