When corporate America sets goals for the coming year or quarter, it typically gathers data from its subsidiaries and various divisions, then uses those to outline its plan and targets. But that's not how it's done in the Cobb school district, apparently.

If you're looking for a synonym for the words "meaningless fluff," look no further than the Cobb School District's Strategic Plan for 2009-14 approved by the board in December with no public discussion of the 300 or so target numbers it contains, or of the basis on which they had been set. Those numbers apparently were pulled out of thin air by administration staff, unless they were set by the board while meeting secretly (which it claims it does not do any more). So the best guess is that the plan, long in the making and much ballyhooed as the system's roadmap to the future, was essentially co-opted by the central office staff.

Superintendent Fred Sanderson was asked by the MDJ when the plan was unveiled whether its SAT targets had been set by the central office, based on a composite of the scores set for each high school. No, he answered. Each principal was allowed to set his or her own target, which was included in those schools' School Improvement Plans - obscure documents that most parents know nothing about and never see.

Neither Sanders, nor later Chairwoman Lynnda Crowder-Eagle, who was questioned about it during her editorial board meeting with the MDJ a few weeks ago, could offer detailed knowledge of the targets or claim "authorship" of any of them.

Apparently, the plan and its myriad targets are meant primarily as pabulum for parents, lulling them into thinking the system is headed in the right direction.

More evidence of that surfaced late last month via an MDJ review of the SAT targets set in the report for the system's high schools. They range from a proposed 160-point increase - in just one year - at Harrison High to a target score for Wheeler High that's 41 points less than the 2009 average. That's not all. Three schools didn't even bother setting target scores - and if the central office noticed those omissions, it didn't seem to care.

It has already been noted that overall target score for the system this year is 1538, the same as the score we achieved back in 2006. And that the target score for 2014, the culminating year of the plan, is just 1548, which is less than the current scores for nearby the Fulton, City of Decatur, Cherokee and Forsyth systems. Three Cobb schools (Wheeler, Pope and Kennesaw Mountain) are actually setting target scores for 2010 that are lower than their 2009 scores. And incredibly, that five years from now Cobb's target score would be what the Fulton system's score currently is. Talk about low expectations!

Then-board Chairman Dr. John Abraham was asked about that at the time that the draft of the Strategic Plan was made public, and answered that it was something the board might need to "revisit."

Well, the board not only did not revisit that aspect of the plan; it barely discussed the plan at all, at least not in open session, before voting to approve it. Apparently another case, you might say, of "promises made, promises broken."

The resulting goals are all over the map, so to speak, ranging from McEachern High's proposed 29-point gain for this year despite a four-year history of declines; to high-achieving Walton High's prediction that its already sky-high scores would not change; to Harrison High's jaw-dropping goal of having every student achieve a perfect 2400 score on the test by 2014.

We're all in favor of setting higher goals and holding students to higher standards, but such goals should be realistic - not pie in the sky. The chances of every Harrison student achieving a perfect score are about the same those that every driver on I-75 will adhere to the speed limit.

Just as troubling is the fact that there seems to be little in the way of a game plan for the system and the principals to help students reach those target goals. The Strategic Plan and School Improvement Plans seem to be just so much empty verbiage. Just so much empty calories. As board member Alison Bartlett said of the plan, "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."

Moreover, those plans offer the public little in the way of accountability. And the school board doesn't seem much interested in holding the superintendent, area superintendents, other top staffers or any members of the superintendent's "cabinet" accountable in any way, either.

All told, the Strategic Plan can be read as further evidence that the Cobb School District is at a standstill, and that the superintendent and most of the board are content with the status quo, and with the realization that we are lagging many of our peers.

Well, we have news for them. That's not what the taxpaying public expects from the system - or from the superintendent, or from the board.