Strategy: Direction

Getting Smart Resources

TownHall: Futures Thinking in Education

TownHall: Futures Thinking in Education is a resource from Getting Smart that introduces educators and school leaders to futures thinking as a strategic tool for navigating change and shaping long-term educational direction. It offers frameworks, conversations, and practical approaches for anticipating emerging trends, challenging assumptions about what schooling could become, and making proactive decisions rather than reactive ones. The resource is particularly relevant for leaders engaged in strategic planning, as it pushes beyond incremental improvement toward genuinely reimagining the purpose and design of education. By grounding futures thinking in real educational contexts, it equips practitioners with the mindset and methods needed to lead transformation with greater clarity and confidence.

Podcast: Adam Kulaas on Tacoma Public Schools Being a City-Connected, Career-Connected District

This Getting Smart podcast episode features Adam Kulaas discussing how Tacoma Public Schools has developed a strategic approach to becoming both city-connected and career-connected, embedding community and workforce partnerships into the district’s core direction. The conversation explores how district leadership has aligned institutional strategy with the economic and civic realities of Tacoma, moving beyond traditional school-community relationships toward deep, systemic integration with local employers, city agencies, and community organizations. For practitioners and school leaders, it offers a concrete case study in how a mid-sized urban district translates a bold strategic vision into operational practice, making it a valuable reference point for those working to anchor learning in real-world relevance. The episode matters because it addresses one of the most persistent challenges in education transformation: turning aspirational district strategy into coherent, place-based action that connects students to meaningful futures while strengthening the broader community.

Additional Resources

Transforming Strategic Plans into Results: K-12 Action Planning Toolkit

Hanover Research
Hanover Research’s *Transforming Strategic Plans into Results: K-12 Action Planning Toolkit* is a practical resource designed to help district leaders bridge the persistent gap between strategic planning documents and meaningful implementation. The toolkit provides structured frameworks, templates, and guidance for translating high-level goals into concrete, measurable action steps with clear accountability and timelines. It addresses one of the most common failure points in educational change efforts — the disconnect between vision and execution — by giving teams actionable tools to operationalize priorities rather than letting strategic plans gather dust. For school and district leaders serious about driving systemic improvement, this resource offers a disciplined approach to ensuring that planning efforts actually produce results in classrooms and communities.

El Paso Strategic Plan

El Paso SD (TX)
The El Paso Independent School District’s Strategic Plan is a foundational planning document that outlines the district’s long-term vision, priorities, and directional goals for improving student outcomes across its Texas schools. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a structured framework for aligning resources, instructional decisions, and organizational efforts toward shared educational objectives. Resources like this matter for education transformation because they demonstrate how a mid-to-large urban district translates community values and student needs into actionable strategic direction, offering a real-world model for coherent, system-wide planning. For innovators studying district strategy, El Paso’s plan serves as a practical reference point for understanding how intentional goal-setting and priority alignment can drive meaningful, sustained change at scale.

Digital Promise & Ed Elements Implementation Questions and Guides

Digital Promise
This resource from Digital Promise, developed in partnership with Ed Elements, provides structured implementation questions and practical guides designed to help school and district leaders navigate the strategic direction of learning innovation initiatives. It offers a framework of targeted questions and actionable guidance that supports educators in clarifying goals, aligning stakeholders, and making informed decisions as they plan and execute transformation efforts. The resource is particularly valuable for practitioners who need a structured thinking tool to move from broad vision to concrete strategy, reducing the ambiguity that often stalls school improvement work. By grounding strategic planning in reflective questioning, it helps leadership teams build coherent, sustainable direction rather than reactive or fragmented approaches to change.

UCBC School Design Rubric for Implementation

UCBC
The UCBC School Design Rubric for Implementation is a structured evaluation tool developed by UCBC to help schools assess and guide their progress in executing innovative school design. It provides practitioners and school leaders with clear criteria and benchmarks across key dimensions of school design, enabling teams to identify where they are in the implementation process and what steps are needed to move forward. The rubric functions as both a diagnostic and a planning instrument, making it particularly useful for schools in active transformation who need a shared language and framework for measuring fidelity to their design vision. For leaders navigating the complex work of systemic change, this resource offers a concrete way to align staff, track progress, and make strategic decisions grounded in evidence rather than intuition.

Portland Public Schools Strategic Plan

Portland Public Schools (OR)
The Portland Public Schools Strategic Plan is a district-level planning document that outlines the organizational priorities, goals, and directional commitments guiding one of Oregon’s largest urban school districts. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a concrete example of how a major public school system articulates its vision, aligns resources, and structures accountability around student outcomes and equity. For those exploring learning innovation, the plan offers insight into how systemic change is framed at the district level — including how priorities are sequenced, how stakeholders are engaged, and how improvement efforts are connected to broader community needs. It serves as a practical reference point for understanding the gap between aspirational strategy and operational reality, making it useful for leaders who are designing or refining their own transformation roadmaps.

Farmington Schools Strategic Goals and Dashboard

Farmington Public Schools (CT)
Farmington Public Schools in Connecticut publishes a strategic goals framework paired with a live dashboard that tracks district-wide progress across defined priority areas. The resource makes institutional strategy transparent by connecting high-level goals to measurable indicators, allowing administrators, educators, and community members to see how declared intentions translate into tracked outcomes over time. For practitioners and school leaders exploring learning innovation, it offers a concrete example of how a district can align strategic direction with accountability infrastructure — moving beyond static planning documents toward dynamic, data-informed governance. This matters for education transformation because it demonstrates how systemic change efforts can be made visible and navigable, providing a replicable model for districts seeking to build coherence between vision, implementation, and continuous improvement.

Holly Area Schools Strategic Plan 2030

Holly Area Schools (MI)
The Holly Area Schools Strategic Plan 2030 is a district-level planning document from Holly Area Schools in Michigan that outlines the district’s long-term vision, priorities, and directional goals through the year 2030. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a concrete example of how a public school district translates broad educational values into structured strategic commitments, likely encompassing areas such as student achievement, community engagement, operational sustainability, and instructional innovation. For those exploring learning innovation, this resource is valuable as a real-world model of how district leadership aligns institutional direction with evolving educational demands, demonstrating the planning frameworks and goal-setting approaches that can drive meaningful, system-wide transformation. Examining this plan offers insight into how strategic thinking at the district level can either enable or constrain school-level innovation, making it a practical reference for leaders designing or refining their own long-range strategies.

Frankenmuth Strategic Plan

Frankenmuth Public Schools (MI)
The Frankenmuth Public Schools Strategic Plan is a district-level planning document from Frankenmuth, Michigan, that outlines the organization’s priorities, goals, and directional commitments for guiding institutional decision-making and resource allocation. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a concrete example of how a public school district translates its vision and values into structured, actionable long-term goals across areas such as student achievement, community engagement, and operational effectiveness. For those exploring learning innovation, the plan offers insight into how district leadership frames strategic direction—what gets named as a priority, how goals are sequenced, and how accountability is built into planning structures. Studying this type of document helps innovators understand the governance and strategic architecture that either enables or constrains school transformation efforts, making it a practical reference point for anyone working to align innovation initiatives with district-wide strategy.

Goodrich Area Schools Strategic Plan

Goodrich Area Schools (MI)
The Goodrich Area Schools Strategic Plan is a district-level planning document from Goodrich Area Schools in Michigan that outlines the organization’s long-term vision, priorities, and directional goals for advancing student learning and institutional improvement. It provides practitioners and school leaders with a concrete example of how a public school district translates broad educational values into structured, actionable commitments across areas such as curriculum, community engagement, and operational excellence. For those exploring learning innovation, the plan offers insight into how district leadership frames transformation as a systemic effort rather than a collection of isolated initiatives. Examining this kind of strategic document helps school leaders understand how to align stakeholders, allocate resources, and create coherent conditions for sustainable change, making it a practical reference point for districts at any stage of strategic planning.