Use the attached S.M.A.R.T. Schools Self-assessment with your colleagues to reflect on where your school stands.

We await the final rules and application for the i3 (Investing in Innovation Fund) grant program. According to the newsletter of the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the Department of Education, an "exciting new addition" to the fund will be announced on January 28th and the application may be available before then.

When Mike Schmoker's Results was published, we were impressed by his 33 Minute Meeting Agenda. We were looking for a way to extend S.M.A.R.T. Goals into a deeper learning process that would bring together instructional best practices with job-embedded staff development and collaborative inquiry. This is the results-driven school improvement process we've been teaching, coaching and refining ever since.

The "SMART" acronym was originally coined 30 years ago by Peter Drucker in his classic work, Management by Results. It has since been used everywhere from strategic planning to weight loss programs to self help resources. SMART is defined a little bit differently by each industry, but having used SMART for many years in the corporate sector, Anne and Jan defined it for educators as: S=Specific and Strategic, M=Measurable, A=Attainable, R=Results-based, T=Timebound.