D.C. school officials announced a broad agenda last night to overhaul the city's troubled school system by establishing performance standards for students, a citywide curriculum and performance contracts for teachers and administrators.

D.C. school board members and Interim Superintendent Elfreda W. Massie offered few specifics about the plans or their implementation. Under the agenda, the policies and curriculum would be in place for classes this fall.

A reading and math curriculum would be created, and citywide standards for all grades would be established based on the "best state standards," according to the agenda. Student progress also would be monitored more closely.

A "reward and sanctions" plan would be put in place for teachers and administrators, Massie said, though officials last night offered no specifics. A private firm would be hired to improve how the school system handles its finances.

The agenda -- conceived at a Georgetown hotel during a two-day retreat for school officials that ended yesterday -- accepts the recommendations of a December report by the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools that called the system's instructional program incoherent and lacking in accountability. The plans also were partly a response by school officials to efforts by D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to change how the schools are governed.

"What we're trying to do is increase the pace of improvements. . . . There are some things that can't wait," Massie said at a hastily called news conference.

Changes could not be implemented without public meetings and a vote by the school board.

The study by the D.C.-based Great City Schools council concluded that the District's school system produced "abysmal results" and had "abdicated its leadership responsibility for student achievement" by giving individual principals too much power over instruction. The council, a coalition of 60 of the country's largest urban public school systems, works to promote urban education.

"I do think I have failed. The school board has failed and the city has failed,'' said school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz. "We really have to come together as a school board and do what we can do."

Officials in the mayor's administration have said Williams wants the authority to hire and fire the school superintendent. Under such an arrangement, the school board would assume an advisory role for the 64,248-student system.

"We think this rollout of reform is consistent with what he's been asking," school board member Miran Saez said in an interview.

Officials said the D.C. schools also would adopt a "discipline management plan" under the reform proposal to increase student safety. On Monday, a 17-year-old student was shot to death at Ballou High School in Southeast Washington. Cafritz said she favored plans that Williams will announce today for D.C. police to take over security at the city's high schools.

School officials said the proposed changes would come in stages. Cafritz said some of the money for the changes would come from making operations more efficient.

"I think we have to have a pretty long view of the budget," she said. "These broad measures will transform the school system. It cannot happen fast enough."