Superintendents in Missouri public schools are revising their approach to strategic planning based on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's new iteration of the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP 6). MSIP 6 requires superintendents and other district leaders to rethink the utility of their district's Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP). Historically this document has communicated the goals for the school district to improve over the course of three to five years. DESE has placed more emphasis and accountability on this document truly representing the process of change rather than just documenting the goals for change. This requires deeper planning beyond the comprehensive school improvement plan, which is not a practice of which superintendent's have had enough training or support. The project team researched the concept of strategic planning in public education along with the best practices for creating deep change in a public school setting. The research led the team to create a rubric where district leaders can evaluate their current practices and determine their need for revision to make strategic planning an actionable process in their school district. The team used this rubric and process to investigate three Missouri school districts and evaluate their current practices in strategic planning. The rubric guides users through the evaluation of four domains: Development Process, Planning Models, Implementation Process, and Monitoring Process. This process allowed the project team to provide specific areas of improvement within their process to help each district make their strategic planning process more effective. This paper and the rubric provide a clarity to better understand how district leaders can make deep change happen faster in any public education system. The CSIP document is the beginning of the process, not the end result. Deep change requires additional layers of strategic planning in order to reach the goals outlined in the CSIP. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]