An Introduction to Successful School-based Strategic
Planning Science-to-Practice
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction
The Elementary
and Secondary Education/Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA/ESSA) requires
every state department of education to oversee and evaluate the school
improvement processes for at least 5% of their lowest performing schools. Moreover, these State Education Agencies (SEA)—ESEA/ESSA’s
term for any state department of education—must provide guidance to the
districts involved so that the schools in improvement status have at least
one evidence-based intervention in their improvement plans.
But the State Departments
of Education have a Dilemma:
We still have not
identified science-to-practice approaches that match the “right” interventions
to the root causes underlying a school’s under-performance. In addition, we really have not identified
many interventions that have consistently and predictably turned students’
academic performance around.
Finally, most SEAs
have focused on providing global “intervention menus”—rather than encouraging the
functional assessments needed to explain exactly why a school’s students are
not academically (and socially) succeeding.
_ _ _ _ _
In Part I of this
two-part Blog series, we recommended that SEAs:
* Require low
performing districts and schools to use a scientifically-and-field-based-proven
strategic planning process as their primary and first
evidence-based practice.
This will satisfy
ESEA/ESSA’s evidence-based practice requirement, resulting in better decisions
relative to the organizational, curricular, instructional, and multi-tiered
systems of support practices (including strategic and intensive
interventions) that are needed by a school relative to staff and student
success.
_ _ _ _ _
In saying this,
however, I want to emphasize the intent in using the scientifically-and-field-based-proven
phrase above.
Educators must understand
that there is an independent science of strategic planning and organizational
development—that has identified scientific principles and practices that
transcend different settings, situations, circumstances, and businesses.
Thus, in order to
maximize district and school improvement success, this science needs to be
validly and differentially applied to the common and unique circumstances
in specific educational settings by practitioners who have experience and a
demonstrated track record of success in schools, districts, regional
resource centers, and state departments of education.
For the past five
years or more, the U.S. Department of Education has funded at least two
Technical Assistance Centers focused on strategic planning, school improvement,
and scaling-up science. These Centers
have tried to create their own strategic planning processes—often without
integrating and applying the known and (pre-)existing science of strategic
planning and organizational development.
Not surprisingly, their track records, especially at the state
department of education level, are spotty at best.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Summarizing Part I
to get to Part II
In Part I of this
Blog, we reviewed two reports focusing on school improvement and
ESEA/ESSA. These reports were:
ESSA Leverage Points: 50-State Report on Promising
Practices for Using Evidence to Improve Student Outcomes (January, 2018; Results
for America).
Examples of Actions Taken by Principals Trying to Lead Turnaround
(2017; The WestEd Center on School Turnaround).
_ _ _ _ _
This first report analyzed
the ESEA/ESSA Consolidated State Plans that have been submitted to the U.S.
Department of Education over the past 10 months—from every state department of
education in the country—in the area of school improvement for low performing
schools.
Specific to the
process of strategic planning and organizational development, two findings were
notable:
* Only seven states
(DE, IN, IA, MN, OH, OK, and TN) prioritized high-quality needs assessments
as a key component of the school improvement process.
* Just nine states
emphasized the use of evidence and continuous improvement in the design of
their school improvement applications.
_ _ _ _ _
The second report
identified a number of common strategic planning and organizational assessment actions,
but it did not identify:
* How to link the
results of an organizational assessment (at the district, school, staff, and
student levels) with the actions discussed; and
* How to
objectively and empirically prioritize the problematic characteristics or
conditions in a specific district or school such that certain actions are more
advantageous and predictive of improvement success.
It did not do this
because, in essence, that would be indefensible.
Indeed, Carlas
McCauley, the Director for School Turnaround at WestEd, the group that
published this report recently said in an Education Week article:
States, meanwhile, are still sorting through exactly
what their role will be (in ESEA/ESSA) when it comes to helping districts and
schools pick improvement strategies and supporting them through the
process. They could, for instance,
decide to come up with a list of approved strategies and providers for districts
to choose from, although that’s not a must.
But state officials interested in taking that step
might not have many options to put on those lists—at least at first. There’s just not much out there when it comes
to turnaround strategies with a clear track record of fixing the
lowest-performing schools.
To expand on this
point, it is notable that ESEA/ESSA defines “evidence-based practice” by
outlining a research-based system that categorizes interventions as having
“Strong evidence,” “Moderate evidence,” or “Promising evidence.”
And yet, to a large
degree, these distinctions are virtually meaningless given the following. Specifically. . . another recent Education
Week article on school improvement noted:
While the federal What Works Clearinghouse has
reviewed more than 10,000 studies on various interventions, a forthcoming
meta-analysis based on the clearinghouse’s reviews found only 29 different
interventions showed significant effects—and the average effect was small,
particularly when the interventions were in messy real-school contexts instead
of highly controlled laboratory settings.
And so, a major
fear with this second Report (and, in general) is that districts or schools
might simply pick one or more actions from its menu of school improvement
clusters. . . without linking them to the results of a systematic and
effective needs and root cause assessment, resource and capacity analysis, and
strategic planning process.
Indeed, when
districts or schools choose school improvement strategies based on:
* Their perceptions
of what the problem is, or what might work;
* The preferences
of staff (or others);
* The testimony
(endorsements, or marketing) of others;
* The ease
of implementation;
* The resources
(or lack thereof) available; and/or
* What worked
elsewhere. . .
the likely result will be continued failure, increased
frustration, and perhaps, a more serious or convoluted problem.
It is because of all
of these concerns that this Blog Part II will provide a science-to-practice introduction
to strategic planning and organizational development.
This introduction
is based on my work in thousands of schools across the country with Project
ACHIEVE, our evidence-based (as cited on the National Registry of Evidence-based
Programs and Practices—NREPP). Project
ACHIEVE was the U.S. Department of Education-approved school improvement
process for the Arkansas Department of Education for all Focus Improvement Status
schools in the state during the NCLB Waiver/Flexibility years of the Obama
administration.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The Strategic
Planning Areas in Continuous School Improvement
Strategic planning,
organizational development, and progressive school improvement involves
ongoing, interdependent, scaffolded, and articulated processes that have
specific stages distributed across the school year. Often tied to districts’ annual budget
cycles, effective strategic planning and school improvement focus on the staff
and skills, materials and resources, instruction and intervention, and
formative and summative evaluations needed to educate a diverse and often
complex student body.
At a functional
level, most districts and schools need to set annual strategic goals and school
improvement activities in the following areas:
* Organizational
development—including resource mapping and development, capacity-building
and sustainability, and systems-level support to schools, staff, and students
* Effective
school and schooling—including the use of scientifically- or research-based
practices at the administrative, curriculum and instruction, progress
monitoring and evaluation, and multi-tiered (i.e., prevention, strategic
intervention, and intensive need) service and support levels
* Professional
development and staff evaluation—including supervision and mentoring, and
teacher/educator effectiveness, accountability, and evaluation
* Multi-tiered academic
instruction, assessment, and intervention— including positive academic
supports and services
* Multi-tiered
positive behavioral support systems—including attention to school safety,
school and classroom climate, effective classroom management, and student
health, mental health, and wellness
* Multi-tiered
systems of support—including problem-solving teams, consultation processes,
and data-based functional and diagnostic assessments leading to effective
instructional modifications and/or academic/behavioral interventions
* Parent and
community outreach and involvement—including needs assessments, training,
support, capacity-building, advocacy, and the braiding of school and community
services and supports
* Data
management, evaluation, and accountability—including the formative and
summative tracking of system, school, staff, and student outcomes
All of this
planning is operationalized in a school’s annual School Improvement Plan—a
detailed plan that should outline student, staff, and school goals, objectives,
activities, and outcomes, respectively.
When crafting these
Plans, it is essential that school leaders focus on the preventive services,
supports, strategies, and programs that most strongly predict and result in
students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral learning and
success. This occurs best when schools
adopt and practice effective shared leadership approaches that involve
collaborations among teachers, support staff, related service specialists,
administrators, and others at the district level.
When sound
preventive practices are implemented with fidelity, more students are
successful, and fewer students need individual assessments and multi-tiered
strategic or intensive services or supports.
At the same time,
comprehensive School Improvement Plans also must explicitly address the
multi-tiered services, supports, programs, and strategies that students need at
the strategic and intensive/crisis management levels . . . in both academic and
social, emotional, and behavioral areas.
This is a
frequent, significant gap in most Plans.
Indeed, in a
figurative sense: While it’s
important to prevent a crisis, it’s just as important to know the early warning
signs and how to respond to an impending crisis, while also having plans and
resources to address a crisis if it actually occurs.
_ _ _ _ _
Key Past Lessons in Strategic
Planning
What many in
education are not aware of is that strategic planning is a well-researched and
established independent and scientific endeavor. That is, the science of strategic planning
exists as a generic “body of work” that is then applied to a specific
discipline. Moreover, decades of
research in strategic planning—combined with research in organizational, group
process, social, and other areas of psychology—have established a core set of
successful principles, practices, and approaches.
And it is these
core principles, practices, and approaches that are applied to (once again)
specific fields or disciplines—for example, business, government, social
services, and education.
From a historical
perspective, it is important to revisit the work of the Annie E. Casey
Foundation. In the early 1990s (over 25
years ago), this Foundation sponsored a five-year, five community New Futures
grant initiative to prepare disadvantaged urban youth for successful lives as
adults. After investing an average of
$10 million in each community, the Foundation evaluated the implementation and
planned change process so that future initiatives would be more efficient and
effective.
In the end, the key
lesson was that, in the low-income communities involved, systems-level
initiatives, by themselves, could not transform poor educational, school, and
health outcomes for vulnerable children and families. That is, institutional change was not enough. The change process required a comprehensive
and strategically-planned and implemented home, school, and community
collaboration that included social-capital and other economic-development
initiatives targeting entire low-income neighborhoods.
Among the other
lessons described in this Report were the following:
1. Comprehensive
reforms are very difficult and involve, at times, the path of most resistance.
2. Comprehensive
reform requires advanced and ongoing efforts to build constituencies that are
committed to long-term efforts, to strategic planning, and to the development
of systems that can sustain the change process over time and through changes in
leadership.
3. Comprehensive
reform efforts must be planned, public, realistic, and shared; and they need
core leadership, management systems and skills, conviction and momentum, and
credibility and legitimacy to have any hope of success.
4. Comprehensive
reform requires a blend of outside technical assistance and local commitment,
leadership, planning, funding, and evaluation that results in local ownership
and self-renewal.
5. Comprehensive
reform requires repair, revision, reassessment, and recommitment. Significant
modification should not be interpreted as a sign of failure.
6. Comprehensive
reform often requires the development of entirely new systems and ways of
being. The alteration of existing systems or the implementation of new systems
built alongside old systems often will not lead to real change and enduring
outcomes.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Key Present
Lessons to Guide Strategic Planning
As a pragmatic
first step in applying strategic planning to school improvement, schools need
to continuously consider six fundamental questions throughout their
outcome-based improvement journey. These
questions recognize both the systemic nature and the student-centered focus of
school improvement.
The Six Fundamental
Questions are:
1. How do we design
and deliver an evidence-based academic
and instruction system that successfully addresses the differentiated
needs of all students while improving their rates of learning such that they
progress through the grade levels and graduate from high school with the applied
skills needed for college and/or career success?
2. How do we create
a functional assessment and progress monitoring continuum that is
curriculum-based, that can track students’ learning and mastery over time,
while also guiding the development of successful, strategic or intensive
interventions when students do not respond to effective instruction?
3. How do we design
and deliver an evidence-based school
discipline, classroom management, and student self-management (or positive
behavioral support system) that increases all students’ interpersonal, social
problem-solving, conflict prevention and resolution, and emotional control and
coping skills; that creates safe and connected classroom and school
environments; and that maximizes students’ motivation and their academic
engagement, independence, and confidence?
4. How do we create
functional assessment and progress monitoring approaches to track students’
social, emotional, and behavioral learning, progress, and mastery that are
ecologically-based and culturally-sensitive; that can evaluate student,
classroom, and school outcomes; that can facilitate the development of
successful strategic and/or intensive interventions when students do not
respond?
5. How do we
increase our parent outreach and involvement so that all parents are motivated,
capable, and involved in activities that support and reinforce the education of
all students?
To complement this,
how do we increase our community outreach and involvement so that real interagency and community
collaboration occurs—resulting in effective, efficient, and integrated services
to all students at needed prevention, strategic intervention, and intensive
service levels?
6. Finally, how do
we design and deliver these activities as an integrated, unified educational
system through a strategic planning and organizational development process that
braids data-based functional assessment and problem-solving to guide decision-making
with ongoing formative and summative evaluation?
Moreover, how do we
institutionalize this process such that it becomes self-generating, self-replicating,
and responsive to current and future student, staff, and school needs?
_ _ _ _ _
All of these
questions, and the targets embedded in them, are essential to a school’s
continuous, progressive improvement and, ultimately, its students’
success. But the improvement and
strategic planning process takes more than evidence-based approaches. These approaches must be complemented by the
professional and interpersonal interactions that support every staff member. .
. from day-to-day, week-to-week, quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The Strategic
Planning Process and Its Phases and Activities
Strategic planning
is a continuous, systematic process that helps schools and districts identify,
plan, prepare for, execute, and evaluate their short- (i.e., annual) and
long-term (i.e., three or five year) goals, activities, and explicit
outcomes.
Designed to attain
these short- and long-term outcomes, strategic planning also results in actions
that are:
* Consistent with
the school’s vision, mission, and needs of its students and staff;
* Reflective of the
school (and community’s) strengths and assets, weaknesses and limitations,
opportunities and resources, and threats and barriers;
* Focused on
strengthening the school’s organizational capacity and resources while
increasing effective and efficient staff collaboration and leadership;
* Committed to
fiscal and technological integrity; and
* Unapologetic in
emphasizing data-based decision-making, the use of scientifically- or
research-based approaches and practices, and staff accountability and
consistency.
_ _ _ _ _
Typically, a
school’s strategic planning process is chronologically aligned with the
district’s budgeting cycle. Working
backwards, most districts begin their fiscal year on July 1st, and
the school board often passes the annual budget by the end of May (at the
latest). Thus, schools in the district
must submit their strategic plans and budgets to the superintendent by the end
of February (at the latest) so that all requests can be analyzed, approved, and
then integrated into the district’s comprehensive plan and budget by
April. This means that schools must
begin their individual strategic planning processes by December at the
latest.
Once the school
board passes the budget, each school then needs to revisit its School
Improvement Plan—adjusting and finalizing all goals and activities based on the
now-approved district and school priorities, and the funds and other resources
provided.
The Five Strategic Planning Phases. In the context of organizational change and
continuous improvement, strategic planning can be organized in five phases at
the school level.
[The recommended
activities within each phase are briefly identified below. I am happy to have more-personalized
discussions about these phases and activities for those who contact me.]
During Phase 1
(Assessing Organizational Readiness/Needs Assessments and Audits), the following
primary activities typically occur:
A. The School Leadership Team is
established (or reconfirmed); and it organizes the strategic planning process
B. The
motivational readiness of the school for strategic planning and implementation
is evaluated
C. The
organizational readiness of the school for strategic planning and
implementation is evaluated
D. Community
stakeholders and other important constituent groups are involved
E. Internal
(District, School, Staff, Student) current status and trend analyses, needs assessments,
internal organizational scan/ SWOT analyses, and personnel and resource analyses
are completed
F. An external
(Community, Regional, State, National) environment scan and analysis is
completed
_ _ _ _ _ _
During Phase 2
(Writing the School Improvement Plan) of the strategic planning process,
the following primary activities typically occur:
A. The School
Improvement Plan is written based on the Phase 1 results
B. The School
Improvement Plan is checked for its consistency with the school’s vision and
mission statements
C. The School
Improvement Plan is submitted to the Superintendent and is integrated into the
district’s budgeting and strategic planning process (typically by the end of
February)
_ _ _ _ _
During Phase 3
(Establishing the Infrastructure to Implement the Plan), the following primary
activities typically occur:
A. The school
builds (or continues to build) its resources and capacity in preparation for
School Improvement Plan implementation (beginning at least by May or June)
B. The school
completes a year-end Consultation Referral Audit
C. The school
completes a year-end Get-Go process to share and apply (especially relative to
differentiated instruction) “lessons learned” to the new school year
D. The school and
its committees complete other end-of-year articulation activities to prepare
for the transition to the next school year
_ _ _ _ _
During Phase 4
(Implementing, Monitoring, and Evaluating the Plan), the following primary
activities typically occur:
A. The School
Improvement Plan is implemented at the beginning of the new school year (or
during the planning days immediately before the beginning of school)
B. Individual
teacher Professional Development Plans are written and approved, and they are
evaluated biannually
C. Progress in
the different areas of the School Improvement Plan are evaluated at the school,
committee, staff, grade, classroom, and student levels
D. The School
Improvement Plan is formally evaluated at the end of the first six weeks of the
school year, and then on a quarterly basis (typically the end of October and
during January)
E. The January
evaluation re-initiates the strategic planning process relative to the relevant
activities needed in Phases 1 and 2
_ _ _ _ _
During Phase 5
(Reviewing, Retooling, and Renewing the Plan), the following primary activities
typically occur:
A. A summative
evaluation of all areas of the School Improvement Plan is completed (typically
in April)
B. This
evaluation and review process eventually leads back to the relevant activities
in Phases 2 and 3
_ _ _ _ _
While I have worked
with well over a thousand districts or schools in implementing these Phases and
Activities, it is critical to note that the outline above is just a
blueprint or roadmap. During actual
implementation, the current status of the school—largely determined by the
Phase 1 Needs Assessments and Audits—guides the depth, breadth, and sequencing
of the different activities.
Thus, there is a
“science-and-art” in applying strategic planning and these different Phases and
Activities. The ultimate success is a
collaborative process. But there is no
substitute for experience.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
As transformational
leaders, all educators are in the business of school improvement. While teachers and support staff are focusing
on student improvement. . . Building administrators and supervisors are
focusing on staff improvement. . . and, district administrators are focusing on
school improvement.
And this
improvement is contextual. Some schools
want to go from “great to greater.” Some
schools from “good to great.” And some
schools from “targeted or comprehensive external support” to a level of “good”
independent success.
Thus, in order
for school improvement and turn-around to succeed, it needs to be done at
each involved school and district site using intensive and sustained
activities that include:
* Ongoing local
needs assessment and strategic planning science-to-practice processes;
* Local resource
analysis and capacity-strengthening science-to-practice processes; and
* Local and on-site
organizational, staff development, consultation, and technical assistance science-to-practice
processes
The Key to these
processes are the professionals (both at the site and involved as consultants),
and their ability to use sound strategic planning processes to select the best
services, supports, strategies, and interventions at the district, school,
staff, and student levels to facilitate ongoing and sustained success—at all of
those levels.
As districts and
schools do the challenging work of school improvement, and as they engage in
their current strategic planning processes, I hope that a re-emphasis on the
science-to-practice principles and practices will increase your success. . .
especially as this process necessarily evolves in the next months leading up to
the 2018-2019 school year.
While we all devote
our full and undivided effort every day to improve system, school, and staff
processes on behalf of our students. . . we all also need to be “students of
strategic planning” to ensure that those efforts are maximizing their outcomes.
_ _ _ _ _
I hope that this two-part
Blog series on strategic planning has generated both interest in and questions
about this process—especially as our state departments of education move toward
finalizing their respective processes on behalf of our districts and schools
nationwide.
Please get involved in these state
discussions, and help our departments of education—once again—to recognize
that:
* There are very
few foolproof evidence-based practices currently available for immediate
implementation in our schools;
* Simply providing
“menus” of these practices—in the absence of strategic planning and root cause
analyses—is NOT its own evidence-based practice;
* The first and
best evidence-based practice is a strategic planning process that is based on the
existing science that is then applied to educational settings;
* We must
be wary of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Technical Assistance Centers
and their “school improvement” approaches— especially given their spotty track records
of implementation and success; and
* Strategic
planning and organizational development is a local activity and process.
. . and departments of education need to follow ESEA/ESSA’s allowances, letting
this process be as autonomous as possible.
_ _ _ _ _
If you would like
to continue this discussion on a more personal level, I am always available by
e-mail. If your Leadership or Strategic
Planning Team would benefit from a free one-hour conference call with me, let’s
set it up as soon as possible.
Best,
Howie
