BACK IN JANUARY incoming Cobb School Board Chairman Dr. John Abraham, a reformer who had paid his dues and waited patiently for his term as chair, entered office full of fire: ready to shake the bag, think outside the box, challenge the superintendent and his central office staff to get out of their "comfort zone" and move the Cobb school system to next level. His target, he said, was what some said was the malaise that permeates the 106,000 student system, the 30th-largest in the nation.

In short, Abraham was ready to rock and roll on behalf of Cobb's students and their parents, many of whom think the Cobb School system had seen its better days.

Abraham's allies included holdover board member the Rev. Dr. John Crooks and several new like-minded board members who promised change. Abraham's vehicle for change was to be a strategic plan - something new for the district - that focused on results for student achievement at all levels, for all schools and all subgroups. It was an ambitious but commendable objective for a board that in recent years defined its job not as setting policy, but acting as handmaidens for Superintendent Fred Sanderson.

According to Abraham, the strategic plan would challenge the super and staff to improve student achievement, set realistic, measurable goals and hold the super and his staff responsible for meeting the goals.

The plan for action was to gather past data, SAT scores, Iowa Test of Basic Skills scores, CRCT scores, graduation rates, absenteeism rates, etc., and then the elected board as policy makers would set realistic but challenging goals and hold the superintendent and staff accountable for meeting them.

So far so good. But on the way to a first-rate accountability system, the plan unfortunately got hijacked by the central office during the past 10 months without a peep from Abraham, the "reformer."

Apparently trying to cover up the hijacking, Abraham unveiled the finished plan via a sketchy presentation by staff at the tail end of a board meeting after the public had gone home, and after the TV lights in the board's meeting room had been turned off (hence, no TV coverage) and without any advance notice on the school district's Web site.

Instead of the board at a public session as promised hashing out and setting the targets or goals for the next five years, Sanderson and Associate Superintendent Dr. Steve Constantino set the goals without any explanation and, of course, no questions from the tongue-tied school board that had called for the plan. There was no way to determine how the numbers were arrived at, or whether Sanderson, Constantino et al had just plucked them out of the air.

Sanderson even downplayed the importance of SAT scores, saying that his system has "always taken SAT scores kind of with a grain of salt ... because you're always comparing the senior class with someone who's already left."

Well, we can guarantee that the Admissions Officers at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech and other top schools - to say nothing of Cobb parents - don't take such a blase approach to SAT scores.

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THE BOTTOM LINE: After 10 months the mountain labored and gave forth a mouse. Unlike a typical strategic plan, this one outlines no strategies to follow going forward. No strategies on how to achieve the goals it outlines. No discussion of the merits of block schedules, which many school critics contend lead to less academic rigor and less instructional time. No discussion of strategies for improvements at the middle school level, which is often seen as the weak link in the K-12 chain, as even Abraham has noted.

And now we learn that the strategic plan is not an accountability plan, no one is to be held accountable and the goals are so modest that some are describing the strategic plan as the "status quo plan." Abraham had said the plan would be ready by May or June in time for the new school year. Instead it has yet to be approved, and at best won't be in place before the middle of the school year.

The most you can say for the 28-page plan, which has way too many targets that have nothing to do with student achievement, is that it is a database for a lot of information that most good systems track already.

For example, the plan supposedly tracks the number of press releases sent out, the number of veggies served in lunch rooms, teacher applicants, family volunteerism, community participation, increased memberships in local diverse business organizations, etc., etc., etc.

When the MDJ's Jon Gillooly asked about the modest student achievement targets, Abraham and Sanderson were already making excuses, blaming a cutback in funding (never mind that other schools systems faced the same cuts). Gillooly also learned that no one was accountable for anything. In fact, the district doesn't even measure or know how many third-graders aren't reading at grade level. Incredible!

Also, each high school principal sets his or her own goals for things like SAT scores. That's not exactly the way it's done in corporate America. Don't you imagine each manager of an IBM or AT&T office would like to set their own sales objectives?

While any good board would certainly consult with the super before setting challenging but realistic targets, it is discouraging the board would promise one thing and deliver another. It is also discouraging that Sanderson and his staff don't have higher goals for themselves and the district.

An analysis of the key targets set by Sanderson and Constantino strongly suggests they don't think they can take the district much further. It also suggests that leading the pack - even just the Georgia pack, much less the nation - doesn't seem to be the goal.

Just one example, Sanderson's SAT target for 2014 - five years from now - is 1548, which is considerably lower than last year's scores for four surrounding districts: Fulton, Decatur, Cherokee and Forsyth. Also, Sanderson's Cobb target for next year is 1538, which is the same score that district received in 2006. Like Monopoly players, Sanderson's game plan is to get the system back to "Go" as far as the SAT is concerned.

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THE PRIMARY JOB and the promise of this school board is to raise the bar academically. A genuine strategic plan is where you start. But this board has offered us shameless scheming and double talk instead of a real plan.

If Fred Sanderson and the central office staff truly wanted a strategic plan that held the system and those who run it accountable and set higher sights for student achievement, they could have done it before now on their own and without board approval.

As board member Alison Bartlett noted at the presentation, the plan doesn't do enough to spur improvement.

"The goals need to push us out of our comfort zone and look for ways to get a larger gain in our student testing scores," she said.

Exactly.

We hope that before the board puts its final stamp of approval on the strategic plan, that it will send it back to the kitchen in hopes that what emerges displays more vision and higher, more challenging goals for students, teachers and those who run the system.