A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

U.S. Department of Education Strategic Plan, 1998-2002 - September 1997

Development of the Plan

Drafting the Plan

The Department of Education first developed a strategic plan in 1994. That plan started the transformation of the Department into a high performance organization, and gave us experience at both developing plans and in using a plan to track implementation of key priorities. This new strategic plan builds on our first plan, incorporating new policy directions from the Department's leadership and findings from a variety of supporting documents, including:

President Clinton's Call to Action for American Education
Secretary Riley's Seven Priorities for the Department of Education
An update to the Department's first plan prepared by Department assistant secretaries
Program indicator plans developed by most major programs in the Department
Several reports by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on further management reforms needed
FY 1993 and 1996 employee surveys
A variety of program evaluations, assessments, and statistical reports

During the spring and summer of 1997, drafts of this plan were prepared and circulated within the Department widely. Meetings were held with the Labor-Management Partnership to receive feedback on the plan. Assistant secretaries were asked to meet with their staffs to discuss the plan, obtain ideas for changes, and also begin to discuss how the plan would be implemented by their offices. The Deputy Secretary personally reviewed the plan in detail and approved substantive changes. At no time was any contractor involved in the drafting or other development of this plan.

Consultations

The Department consulted extensively with outside interested parties on this strategic plan, and made changes as a result of those consultations. Even where we did not make changes, we distributed the comments to appropriate offices to take into account when administering programs and new initiatives.

Congress. The Department provided copies of the draft strategic plan to Congressional authorizing, appropriations, budget, and government operations committees--House and Senate, majority and minority staffs. We met with staff from the House appropriations, authorizing, budget, and government operations committees, as well as Senate authorizing and budget committee staff.
In addition to comments received during the meetings, House Congressional staff provided us their "Interim Evaluation" of the Department's draft strategic plans (the "Scorecard"). We also received letters with helpful comments from senior members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce--from Committee Chairman Bill Goodling and ranking minority member William Clay and from Peter Hoekstra, subcommittee chairman for Oversight and Investigations.
General Accounting Office (GAO). A letter report reviewing the strategic plan provided valuable insight and helped to identify major areas for improvement.
Stakeholders. The Department's stakeholders include all members of the education community--state and local governments, school districts, and postsecondary institutions. Requesting comments and suggestions for improvement, the Department mailed the draft strategic plan to more than 100 key stakeholder organizations, including education, community, civil rights, general government, and business organizations interested in education.
In addition, many assistant secretaries and heads of major program offices discussed draft program-level performance indicator plans with their grantees and stakeholder groups. A few examples include:
- The assistant secretary for vocational and adult education shared the vocational education and adult education plans with state directors to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
- The director for bilingual education and minority language affairs presented the draft bilingual education performance indicator plan to the annual conference of the National Association for Bilingual Education. There was a standing-room-only turnout--the field was very interested in the indicator plan--and a positive response overall.
- The assistant secretary for postsecondary education has shared and discussed the set of postsecondary student financial aid indicator plans at regular meetings with key stakeholders.
ED Internet home page. The Department's world wide web pages provide the entire strategic plan in HTML and .PDF formats (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/StratPln/) and offer the opportunity to comment electronically to strategic_plan@ ed.gov or by letter or fax. The Department received several comments from members of the public.
Other federal agencies. The Department consulted with relevant federal agencies on our respective strategic plans, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury; the National Science Foundation; the Social Security Administration; and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Office of Management and Budget. The Department held meetings and discussions with OMB staff and provided drafts for OMB review, receiving helpful written comments.
Council for Excellence in Government. The Department of Education was one of several agencies selected by the Council for review, receiving helpful written comments.

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[Program Evaluations and Other Studies]

[Acronyms Used in Appendices A and B]