The development and implementation of a strategic plan for increased middle school mathematics achievement

The alignment of a strategic plan and the implementation of that plan have been found to be key features of the success of efforts to reform or change a system in need of improvement. The quality of teaching and learning that takes place in a classroom is bounded by a construct known as the instructional core. The instructional core encapsulates the critical elements of what occurs in a classroom, setting the standard for the quality of the teaching, learning, and instructional tasks students undertake. This qualitative study used a hybridized theoretical framework to analyze the design and implementation of a grant project that was part of a mid-size urban school system's strategy to improve academic achievement in mathematics. It built on the findings of my qualifying paper research, which identified the alignment of strategy and implementation as a critical component of a successful school improvement initiative. Through careful analysis of documents and through interviews of teachers, school-based administrators, central office administrators, and other grant personnel, I explored the relationship between the strategic plan for mathematics improvement and the plan's implementation. To answer my research questions, I conducted textual analyses of project documents, semistructured interviews of key central office and school-level personnel, and used a hybridized tool developed from the Public Education Leadership Project Coherence Framework and the Delta Model to make meaning of participants' perceptions, actions, and experiences. While alignment and implementation emerged as key features of the successful enactment of a reform plan, the findings suggest that to improve outcomes, intentional focus must be placed on increasing knowledge and awareness of specific plan features among stakeholders, increasing understanding of the rationale behind the strategies developed for use in the plan, and on the instructional core. This research has wider policy and practice implications for urban school systems and broader theoretical relevance to the extant literature on educational reform. While the project did much to promote teachers' professional development, the processes adopted to increase their capacity to teach mathematics were often operationally and logistically driven rather than guided by the content knowledge or pedagogical needs of teachers at each school.