For your information, the following is a brief summary of the Bush
Administration's draft strategic plan for education.  The full draft is
available online at www.ed.gov/ .



"This is not just another strategic plan. Education is not just another
policy area. 2002 is not just another year."

This is part of a statement released late last week, when Secretary of
Education Rod Paige unveiled a draft of the strategic plan he intends will
govern the Department of Education's activities during the next five years.
The plan, says Paige, has been in the works since 1999, just before George
W. Bush hit the presidential campaign trail. But it was the events of
September 11, 2001, that gave the administration's education agenda new
gravity. The plan is meant to serve as the roadmap for the department in
its efforts to keep Paige's "personal promise" to "make [education] a
source of national pride."

President Bush's major education reform effort, the No Child Left Behind
Act of January 8, 2002, serves as the basis for the department's strategic
plan, which is built on a framework of six goals:

• To create a culture of achievement;
• To improve student achievement;
• To develop safe schools and strong character;
• To transform education into an evidence-based field;
• To enhance the quality of and access to postsecondary and adult
education; and
• To establish management excellence.

Under each of these goals fall several objectives, of varying degrees of
specificity. For instance, increases in things like "information and
options for parents" and "local control" are expected to work together to
create a culture of achievement, while the improved student achievement
will be marked by more measurable factors such as the ability of "all
students [to] read on grade level by the third grade." The plan also
commingles standard education refrains like calls for increased literacy
and the elimination of drugs in schools with business-driven goals such as
earning the President's Quality Award by transforming the department into
"a high performance, customer-focused organization."

These goals and objectives are expected to work together in support of the
No Child Left Behind mantra: accountability for results, flexibility and
local control, expanded parental options, and doing what works. More
ambitiously, though, the strategic plan seeks to overhaul nearly every
aspect of teaching and learning in the nation, from the way children learn
to read to the people hired to teach them math and science, from the way
students are granted access to higher education to the administration of
the Department of Education itself.

The full text of the department's February 7, 2002 draft is available
online. Those with a stake in the nation's education system are strongly
encouraged to read the strategic plan and submit comments regarding it to
the department by February 21, 2002.

Diane Miller
Director
Office of Grants and Program Review/Dept 4905
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN  37403
TELEPHONE:  423-755-4431
FAX:  423-755-4052
EMAIL:  [log in to unmask]
WEBSITE:  http://www.utc.edu/Grants-and-Research/