The goal of every school district is to help students succeed academically and personally. But does every district leverage its most valuable resource, its teachers, to meet that goal? At the Valley Stream Central High School District in Nassau County, New York, these authors know how important teacher commitment is to student success, so they launched a goal-directed schools initiative that taps into every teacher's distinctive personality, experience, intellect, interest, training, and talent to improve the lives of all of its 4,600 students. The four general goal levels involved in this initiative are: (1) District instructional goals developed in collaboration with the school board, with parents and with teachers; (2) School goals (instructional and cultural) initially identified by the principals and their cabinets, and then discussed and modified at faculty meetings; (3) Departmental academic goals for each subject area proposed by department chairs and discussed and modified at department meetings; and (4) Individual teacher goals traditionally based on outcomes of annual evaluations, but now directly linked to one or more district, building, or departmental goal.