Over the past two years, the teachers and students in Carter County, Kentucky have been utilizing goal setting. As a result, the district has shown tremendous growth on not only state assessments, but also on local assessments. Additionally, the number of students meeting benchmarks for college and career readiness has increased significantly. The strategy has provided students and teachers a focus that has enhanced student performance. To measure the impact of goal setting on reading achievement, student performance on the reading section of the state assessment were analyzed when students were in fourth and fifth grades. Data from the 2014 state reading assessment, when the selected students were in fourth grade and did not participate in goal setting, were compared with data from the 2015 state reading assessment, when these same students were in fifth grade and participated in goal setting. McNemar's Change Test analysis was used to determine if a significant difference existed between the reading growth achieved in fourth grade compared to reading growth achieved in fifth grade. Of the 328 students participating in the study, 69% made adequate growth after goal setting utilization as compared to only 60% prior to the implementation of goal setting. Specifically, McNemar's Test results indicated that a significant difference existed in the reading growth performance when comparing the reading growth for the two year period (x[superscript 2]=9.986, df = 1, p = 0.0016). In 2014, 60.4% of the students were classified as making adequate growth, whereas 68.6% received the designation in 2015 (Dotson, 2015). This article discusses goal setting in Carter County and offers four steps to successful academic goal implementation.