New ASD Superintendent Announces Ambitious Plan

ASD has new 90-90-90 plan to improve the district

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By Bill McAllister
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Story Created: Aug 1, 2012 at 6:45 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Aug 1, 2012 at 6:49 PM AKDT

ANCHORAGE - Former presidential candidate Herman Cain had his 9-9-9 plan. For the Anchorage school district, it's 90-90-90.

New Superintendent Jim Browder, Wednesday, announced an ambitious plan.

The school district is calling it “Destination 2020.”

Within eight years, Browder wants to see big improvements in test scores, school attendance and high school graduation.

By then, Browder wants student proficiency at 90 percent.

That would boost reading scores from last year by about nine percentage points, writing scores by about 13 percentage points, math scores by almost 19 percentage points and science scores by a whopping 30 percentage points.

Browder also wants to see 90 percent of students attending school at least 90 percent of the time, compared to just 74 percent showing up that often now.

And he wants to see a 90 percent graduation rate, up from 73 percent.

"There's no gimmicks. This is back to basics, quality science of instruction development. And the example is very simple: you figure out what every youngster needs to know when they exit a high school and you go backwards, and you build it."

Browder presented his goals to all of the district's principals and administrators Wednesday, and said he instilled in them a sense of urgency.

But he also said that he wants to light a fire under parents who aren't getting their children to school regularly enough.

"We’re working with the city prosecutor's office, we're going to work together to assure the parents understand the importance of that. We're going to develop a district-wide approach to it, where we'll be calling, writing letters notifying parents. We're going to develop a new attendance system. And I’m not really sure what that'll look like, but what it'll do is, we'll be consistent from school to school how we deal with our attendance."

Browder said it's a simple formula:

Better attendance means better performance which means higher graduation rates.
 

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