Goal setting is a critical part of the strategic planning process for individual educators and teams at the school and system level. SMART goals are a well-known and often-used framework for ensuring that goals can lead to meaningful change. The letters of the SMART acronym indicate that goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound (Hirsh & Crow, 2017).

Learning Forward and other organizations have recently begun expanding the SMART goal framework to explicitly incorporate equity and inclusion, through what are known as SMARTIE goals (The Management Center, 2021). SMARTIE goals intentionally center two additional components with the original SMART components:

• Inclusivity: The extent to which a goal brings traditionally marginalized people into processes, activities, and decision-making; and
• Equity: The extent to which the goal includes an element of fairness or justice that seeks to address systemic injustice, inequity, or oppression.

Because creating SMARTIE goals can help create inclusive and equitable professional learning policies and practices that benefit and support all students and educators, we have begun to apply them in learning networks and tools, such as the Principal Induction and Mentoring Handbook, which was created in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (2021).

Click here to see the tool.