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The school board and superintendent set up the groundwork for instructional reforms. They turned to the Council of the Great City Schools to look at how well the district's instructional program was meeting the academic needs of these English-language learners and newcomers. The study shows how a program considered excellent that performs very well, can still miss students with limited English speaking skills. The report shows how the school district missed the fact that many of these folks even existed, let alone began building programming to meet their needs. Most important are the strategies that offer the students a chance to join mainstream and improve their achievement. 

On-line tool providing lagging indicator education results.

In corporate strategy we said that our dashboards provided business intelligence for real-time decision-making. I commend this effort but I do not think that the metrics are granular enough or that the data are available quickly enough. While an interesting attempt/first step, I see this as an on-line collection of "rear view mirror" performance. We have not really captured leading indicators. Rather, this tool makes it easier for us to review our lagging indicators. We can get a clearer picture of our deficiencies/gaps, but I'm not sure how this will help inform timely and effective decision-making.

The school board and superintendent set up the groundwork for instructional reforms. They turned to the Council of the Great City Schools to look at how well the district's instructional program was meeting the academic needs of these English-language learners and newcomers. The study shows how a program considered excellent that performs very well, can still miss students with limited English speaking skills. The report shows how the school district missed the fact that many of these folks even existed, let alone began building programming to meet their needs. Most important are the strategies that offer the students a chance to join mainstream and improve their achievement. 

Interesting comparison between schools in US and Singapore. Singapore built a well-functioning society because top officials "applied ... lessons [learned at the Kennedy School at Harvard] vigorously."