The new one-page LPS Strategic Plan 2006-2011 [PDF 19KB] consists of a Vision Statement (Littleton Public Schools ♦ Extraordinary learning, exceptional community, expanded opportunity and success for all students), a Mission Statement (To educate all students for the future by challenging every individual to continuously learn, achieve, and act with purpose and compassion), eleven Core Beliefs, and nine Focus Areas.  That plan was approved unanimously by the Board of Education on September 28, 2006.  All five Board members had been actively engaged in its development during the previous February Board retreat and subsequent meetings. 

The new plan, which replaced the one-page LPS Strategic Plan 2001 [PDF 17KB], reflects the priorities of the current Board and aligns with the district’s directions in all areas.  The LPS Strategic Plan 2006-2011 is much better than the LPS Strategic Plan 2001, which had less focus upon improvement of academic achievement for all students.

At the September 14, 2006 workshop the Board also received and discussed an "Improving Student Achievement" presentation [PDF 452KB], which featured this District Achievement Goal: "90% of all students will be on or above grade level in reading, math, writing, and science by 2011.  The achievement gap in student performance will be cut in half by 2009."

With regard to student academic achievement, the revised LPS strategic plan can lead to more-effective administrative work plans and school improvement plans.  However, previous results are not encouraging.  ICAN remains concerned about "less-is-more" concepts and "transparency" of LPS goals and plans, as outlined in the "LPS Goals and Plans" presentation [PDF 14KB] by Sam Drury to the LPS Board of Education on April 26, 2007:

• Documentation of Board of Education (BoE) commitment to the District Achievement Goal is limited.
   

• The District Achievement Goal has very little visibility on district and school websites.
   

• The literal sum of all School Improvement Plan (SIP) goals is far below the District Achievement Goal.  Accomplishment of just the current SIP goals will not accomplish the District Achievement Goal.
   

• The current LPS administrative work plan is not published on the LPS district website.
   

• The LPS district website has not published current SIPs.  Only the 11/1/05 SIP updates of the 2002-2005 SIPs for each school are on the LPS district website.
   

• Few schools have published any SIPs (not even obsolete SIPs or their updates) on school websites.
   

• All 24 (except Twain ES) of the complete 2006-2009 SIPs were reviewed by the LPS Learning Support Team and by the District Accountability Committee in November, 2006.  BoE members then received excerpts (Executive Summary and Cornerstone Goal charts) of the 2006-2009 SIPs in November but have made no SIP critique public.
   

• Refer to the ICAN 12/30/06 LPS SIPs Critique website page for more information.

District officials emphasize the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) initiative as the principal process to address the District Achievement Goal.  The September 14, 2006 "Improving Student Achievement" presentation [PDF 452KB] to the BoE included this PLC definition: "It is an ongoing process that involves the collaborative, cyclical analysis of data to develop, implement, and evaluate goals and strategies to improve student achievement."  The PLC set-aside of 10 two-hour, late-start periods (only 2% of teacher time) during each school year will begin next August.  At the April 26, 2007 BoE meeting Sam Drury criticized the LPS 4/26/07 "Accountability" website page [PDF 25KB], which includes this incredulous LPS statement: "Measurable results are anticipated by the 2011-2012 school year."  Sam also stated that BoE commitment to the PLC process is not an acceptable substitute for BoE public commitment to District Achievement Goal results.

During the past four years (2002-2006) the total changes in LPS CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program) performance (percent proficient plus advanced) have amounted to only 0.7% improvement (an average of less than 0.2% per year) for the same 23 tests as shown by a one-page tabulation [PDF 10KB].  That "stagnation" in student academic achievement is damning indication of the ineffectiveness of the original 2002-2005 School Improvement Plans (SIPs) and their annual updates to improve the performance of most LPS students.

In October, 2002 ICAN reviewed drafts of the 2002-2005 School Improvement Plans for all LPS schools.  The ICAN critique of LPS SIPs pages showed that there was much room for significant improvement in the plans to increase student learning:

• The obvious primary purpose of most of those plans was mere compliance for most accreditation requirements rather than commitment to challenging objectives to improve academic achievement.
   

• Many of the plans (accreditation compliance documents) showed cursory analysis of data, unclear problem statements, and little identification of probable (or even possible) causes that would provide confidence in the likely (corrective-action) effectiveness of planned activities.
   

• If the focus was upon just enough CSAP proficiency to retain accreditation for the district and schools, then separate “academic achievement plans” should have been developed to get better results for all students without jeopardizing accreditation.
   

• Many drafts needed clean-up for language mechanics and other careless errors.

Observations by ICAN during school year 2002-03 regarding LPS School Improvement Plans (SIPs):

• We noted agreement by the Board of Education (BoE) and Superintendent that SIPs were adequate for accreditation purposes.

• BoE showed interest in annual progress reports rather than just seeing SIPs three years later.

• Superintendent responded favorably and assured BoE that he got the message "loud and clear".

• We believe that LPS central administration should focus on student performance needs, including possible reallocation of resources and modification of plans for some buildings.

ICAN then suggested that LPS officials adopt school goals that will reduce below-grade-level (BGL) performance by half each year.

• ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills) BGL students have double the negative GEobtained-predicted scores as others:
  G3 43% for BGL, 22% for others
  G5 49% for BGL, 29% for others
  G7 58% for BGL, 28% for others

• Reallocate resources (especially for schools with large numbers of BGL students)

ICAN also suggested strategies for improving student performance:

• The strategies should be based upon clear statements of the problems, identification of causes, and implementation of effective corrective actions.

• Some of the buildings will not be able to produce better results without some reallocation of resources that are not yet available from the district.

• Goals and objectives should reflect the best use of available data from the ITBS and CSAP assessments.  That requires substantial improvement in the data analysis process, with some help from central administration. 

• Measurements of student achievement should emphasize continual annual reduction of the percentage of students who are below grade level.  Those students clearly have been left behind compared to state and national standards. 

• We have the opportunity to have a district where ALL of our students are truly above average (not the false “Lake Wobegon” claim). 

All LPS schools have been issuing annual updates to the original 2002-2005 School Improvement Plans.  The schools entered a new three-year cycle in August, 2006 (rather than at the end of the previous SIPs in June, 2005).  On April 27, 2006 the Board received a presentation on the proposed SIP template revision and supported the continued development of an SIP template for distribution to the schools.  The training sessions with building principals were completed in August.  The latest template version was made available for public review on September 11.  The SIP Template [PDF 93KB] and associated 2006 SIP Goal Chart [PDF 25KB] can be excellent tools for school improvement.  ICAN believes that effects of the Board-approved strategic plan (core beliefs and focus areas) upon the buildings-implemented school improvement plans (using the districtwide SIP template) are uncertain.

The current overall LPS academic achievement per school depends more upon the cognitive abilities of the students than upon all other variations among the schools.  However, the January, 2003 LPS Early Literacy Intervention Report stated: "...The focus on teachers learning how to collect comprehensive diagnostic data and applying that data to instruction continue to be key factors to the increase in student achievement….”

There has been an overall decline in district enrollment for several years.  The February, 2003 report on district demographics recommended: (a) that the district establish parameters for school facility utilization at the elementary level; and (b) that options for action be identified if utilization is less than established parameters.  A proposed five-page action plan [PDF 72KB] was favorably reviewed by the LPS Board of Education at the August 28, 2003 regular meeting.

The one-page LPS Change Process Protocol [PDF 32KB] was introduced at that time to encourage building principals and their school communities to explore preliminary ideas for what may turn out to have major impact (such as forming a K-8 school) after appropriate higher-level reviews.  The four stages (explore, study, plan, and propose) of the change process would apply to ideas for school program, structures, and organization.  However, there have been few significant results to date.

A four-page September, 2006 executive summary [PDF 59KB] of the recent LPS demographics study is available.  The demographics study was discussed during the September 14 Board meeting and is scheduled for Board follow-up discussion on October 26.

The original 29-page LPS Administrative Work Plan 2002-2003 [PDF 353KB] is based upon the previous LPS Strategic Plan 2001 [PDF 17KB] and uses a format of goals, objectives, action plan, and timeline for five goal areas: student performance, personnel, capital improvement, finance, and community.  ICAN recognizes that the Administrative Work Plan (AWP) format could be an excellent structure for LPS administrators to manage the work of this large school district with its many levels of command (board of education, superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, building principals, etc.).  However, ICAN has been particularly concerned about several of the AWP objectives within the Student Performance section of the 11/20/03 original draft and the 43-page 2/20/04 draft [PDF 533 KB] of the AWP for 2003-2004 and the 30-page 03/22/05 draft [PDF 484KB] of the AWP for 2004-2005.

At the August 12, 2004 regular meeting of the LPS Board of Education the superintendent announced plans for improving student learning, including these key elements:

• School CSAP data notebooks using standardized TetraData reports.
• Extensive training and other help from Learning Support Team.
• Superintendent school visits to focus upon at-risk students.

At the September 1, 2004 LPS BoE workshop the superintendent presented "... a list of the Board of Education's strategic directions and many of the important related activities that staff members have engaged in over the past year...."  The seven-page document [PDF 95KB] consists of a one-page cover memorandum, the one-page LPS Strategic Plan 2001, and a five-page "Strategic Directions Update" in a useful two-column format of "Activity" and "Evidence of Impact" grouped under each strategic direction heading.  ICAN noted that many of the "Activity" statements are not readily correlated with the AWP for 2003-2004, and some of the "Evidence of Impact" statements related to student learning are questionable.

The ICAN review of the 30-page 03/22/05 draft [PDF 484KB] of the AWP for 2004-2005 began on March 28, the date that the AWP was finally released after repeated requests for earlier drafts during the school year.  Of course, by then the "plan" (who does what by when) had evolved into a "progress report" as time went by.  Refer to the LPS Administrative Work Plan page for the ICAN critique of LPS AWP documents.

The seven-page 12/02/05 draft [PDF 82KB] of the AWP for 2005-2006 is an outline of major initiatives rather than detailed statements of objectives in terms of measurable results.  There is another format of this "plan" that includes room for the staff and Board to write comments regarding "evidence" that they met the expectations of the stated item.  However, the "evidence" section was not completed for 2005-06, so no documentation exists for results.  Therefore, that AWP is not even a progress report available for accountability review by the public.

Last modified: 04/29/2007

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