Doctors exist to make sick people better. Businesses exist to make money. Schools exist to make kids learn. Each world-- medicine, business, education-- functions through a process. Our process is called school improvement. Every action of our day aligns to this process.
"Good morning, Mr. Johnson. What are doing today in math class?"
"Working on fractions because increasing this understandings in the minds of our students will result in higher levels of achievement which will lead our school toward making our school improvement goal that math achievement will rise. Thanks for asking."
"Good Morning, Coach Ayala." What are you planning for today's practice?"
"Extra lines and wind sprints. When our student athletes are stronger and faster, not only are they more successful in the competition, they are more able to learn the fractions in Mr. Johnson's math class. They are even more likely to be in school in the first place because of their extra curricular involvement. Therefore, it could be said that extra lines and wind sprints are leading us toward our school improvement goal of increased student achievement in math. Thanks for asking."
"Superintendent Smith, what are you doing today?"
"I am attending the RtI meeting with our principals and curriculum director because once we learn about RtI, we will have a structure to establish in our district that will facilitate the achievement of our school improvement goals. Attending today's meeting is part of our professional development. Being here today and then acting on what we learn is the way to school improvement. Thanks for asking."
"Sarah, what are you doing at the ESU today?"
"Working on several projects that our panhandle schools need to improve their schools. Every day is about school improvement. Thanks for asking."
School Improvement Basics
1. Every thing that happens at school is toward the end of accomplishing the school improvement goal which is one of three things- improve reading, improve writing, or improve math.
2. A district has a professional development plan so it can map out the when, what, who, and how the school improvement goal will be accomplished.
Step 1 Highly functional schools have the dates for staff development on the calendar for the the next year before the current year is even over. Of course, the school might not know exactly what the staff development will be April 27 at 2:00, but we do know that somehow at that place and time we will be working toward our school improvement goal.
Step 2 If a school already has the structure for staff development in place, the next step is to set objectives for those days that support the achievement of the school improvement goal.
Step 3 Monitoring.
"What gets measured gets done." McRel
"What is not monitored is optional." Learning Network
We do staff development and wonder why nothing sticks or gets implemented. Are we doing walk throughs at our schools specifically looking for what the staff development was about, giving timely and meaningful feedback in relationship to the staff development objective, and then collecting data about the current level of understanding and implementation to use in planning the next staff development?
