Council Goal for number of Eagle Scouts for year

[Jameson76]

I was on the Council Advancement call, apparently the council has a stated goal for number of Eagle Scouts for the year.  I assume this is not new, but it is a little disheartening.  The goal of the BSA have never been to generate Eagle Scouts.  That is really a byproduct of a superior and engaged program.

Not sure if I really like that.  Do wonder if all the councils are pushing this "goal"?  As a side-note we seem to be about 31% of goal right now.  Guess districts are going to need to run second shifts on the EBOR's to meet goal.

If we exceed the number in December does the council plan to hold off on EBOR's to sandbag some for 2020?

Edited July 22, 2019 by Jameson76

[mrkstvns]

25 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

If we exceed the number in December does the council plan to hold off on EBOR's to sandbag some for 2020?

I think they should be able to save up "Eagle credits" for years they miss their targets.  They can also sell their "Eagle credits" to low-performing councils....kind of like companies trading carbon offsets.  Who knows, a whole new kind of futures market might be created!

[mds3d]

I would say that there might be some (although difficult to define) value in this goal.  

This is how I would pitch it.  If units in the council are providing a high quality program, a certain percentage of registered scouts should reach eagle every year.  Not reaching that number might mean that the provided program isn't as high quality as we want.  It might also mean a bunch of other things.  Metrics are useful for businesses and organizations when used correctly.  The questions that matter are how they arrived at that number, and what do they do when the number isn't met.  

 

It could be that National provides a historical rate from all councils.  It could also be that other metrics are used to determine which councils are doing the "best." This could be increasing registration or whatever.  Here is how I could see this going well - 

-Councils with consistent year over year growth of registered youth all have a similar rate of scouts reaching eagle. 
-This rate is seen as a marker of a program that provides scouts good opportunities. 
-Local Council adopts this as a goal for the next year
-Goal is not met
-Local Council now asks why that goal wasn't met. A recent influx of young or new scouts would be a reason that wouldn't be a worry, but they might also discover that units felt that there was poor support from the council regarding the trail from Life to Eagle or that Eagle forms were processed too slowly or that they had a high rate of Life dropouts that year.  That last one might lead them to ask why that happened.

 

They might also react to it completely wrongly, but I don't think it is a wrong thing for a COUNCIL ADVANCEMENT group to track.  They are after all focused on that one particular method.  They might also be interested in tracking rates of First Class achieved per year (effectiveness of early program) or rates of first class to star each year (effectiveness of the transition from early to late program).