The Four Domains
Culture Shift
A successful turnaround depends on many people working together to achieve extraordinary results. Attaining the necessary level of commitment to achieve these results requires a dramatic culture shift toward both high academic expectations and concerted effort. A turnaround culture fuses strong community cohesion with an academic press; one without the other is insufficient. Leadership establishes the structures and opportunities for faculty and staff to work together around common goals, engendering a culture of mutual respect, shared responsibility, and focused attention on student learning.
State, district, and school leaders engage families to support their children’s learning and the overall turnaround effort. A strong school community attends to the culture both inside and outside the school, gathering input from stakeholders and gauging perceptions about the school and the turnaround effort. Students are challenged and supported to aim higher, work harder, and realize the satisfaction of accomplishment. A positive school climate reflects a supportive and fulfilling environment, learning conditions that meet the needs of all students, people sure of their roles and relationships in student learning, and a culture that values trust, respect, and high expectations.
Build a Strong Community Intensely Focused on Student Learning
Practice Description
- Celebrate successes—starting with quick wins early in the turnaround process—of students, family, teachers, and leaders. Early success promotes an expectation for further success and engenders confidence in the competence of colleagues.
- Provide explicit expectations and support for each person’s role (expected behaviors) both in the turnaround and in students’ progress.
- Create opportunities for members of the school community to come together to discuss, explore, and reflect on student learning.
- Champion high expectations (of self and others), embed them in everyday practice and language, reinforce them through shared accountability, and follow through on strategies for dramatically improving student outcomes.
School-Based Example
Establish systems (i.e., structures, policies, procedures, and routines) for focused collabora- tive work; recognize student effort and academic mastery; and recognize job satisfaction and camaraderie among staff as essential assets in a turnaround. Maintain a positive, encouraging classroom and school culture for students, one in which they feel safe and supported to share their needs, struggles, and concerns. Recognize each incremental improvement, but keep the focus on ultimate results at the student, teacher, and school levels. Celebrate team accomplishments and offer recognition for hard work and improvement. Frequently and openly review data on turnaround progress (including implementation and leading indicators) and discuss the data with community members.
Desired Future State
Recognizing groups of teachers who work together effectively to improve student learning is important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Ensure that protocols and expectations for effective collaboration are clear and outlined.
- Build routine opportunities into faculty and grade-level meetings to share teachers’ best practices for engaging in highly effective instruction and improving student learning.
- Build opportunities into teacher collaboration time to share “problems of practice.” Create a system to revisit and monitor the effectiveness of newly developed strategies. Celebrate growth.
- Create an opportunity for teachers to reflect on and share their perceptions of the effectiveness of grade-level and across-school collaboration times.
- Create opportunities to celebrate all community members’ contributions to students’ academic, behavioral, and social–emotional growth.
- Create a culture of continuous improvement that celebrates new ideas to improve academic achievement.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What are the expectations of staff collaboration? What are the expected outcomes?
- Are there protocols in place for collaboration?
- Are there groups of teachers who work together effectively to improve student learning?
- How are systems such as teacher collaboration monitored to measure improved student outcomes?
Desired Future State
Teachers and staff generally work with school leaders to make significant changes.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Create leadership structures that include opportunities for staff input from lead teacher teams and decision-making committees.
- Ensure the organization of teacher teams and that all teachers understand the structure and benefits of the model to drive sustainable change.
- Create PLC opportunities for other staff groups to engage in work that supports the mission and vision of the school through collaboration and ongoing discussion, action, and monitoring of goals.
- Build regular collaboration time for teachers to use data in responsive instructional intervention plans, including targeting curricular resources and instructional strategies to support all students throughout the school year.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What routines are in place for the administration to receive feedback from teachers and staff?
- What process is in place for teachers and staff to provide feedback to the administration about significant changes?
- How are you working with turnaround school leaders and teachers to acknowledge and include their ideas in creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
- How are you inviting parents and community members to engage in meaningful dialogue? How are you including their ideas in the process of creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
- Do teachers and school leaders have structured time together to discuss the needs of the school?
- How are major decisions around instructional changes developed? Whose input is included?
- Is there a system to elicit feedback once an initiative is in place and throughout the process?
Desired Future State
School discipline policies are extremely effective at eliminating disruptive behavior.
Note: For relevant strategies and suggestions and reflection questions, see 4.1.32 below.
Desired Future State
School discipline policies are extremely effective at addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Examine current policies and data on behavioral issues and patterns of
- Collaboratively build a positive behavior management
- Consistently enforce and emphasize designs that effectively manage behavior while keeping students in the learning environment.
- Establish a dedicated leadership team to examine student behavior and discipline and invest in the continuous improvement of the system.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What is the current discipline plan?
- What adjustments can be made so that the discipline plan has a greater impact on student behavior?
- Are the timelines associated with the current discipline plan appropriate and effective in impacting student behavior?
- Analyze the source of behavioral Who is involved? What is the scope of the problem? What is the strength of positive relationships with the students involved?
- Consider how the school engages the students involved. Are there instructional interventions such as project-based learning, place-based learning, real-world applications, or innovative uses of technology that better engage these students? What is their academic progress? How is the school better supporting academic and behavioral success? What role does the instructional program play in promoting unsafe behaviors
- Consider those affected by safety issues. Who are these students, and how is the school working better to support the safe pursuit of quality education?
Desired Future State
Enforcing policies to ensure a safe environment is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Create staff, parent, and student versions of the discipline policy and expectations and distribute them to all community members.
- Keep all communication channels open to inform and build an ongoing awareness of any school climate and safety issues affecting the campus.
- Collaborate with parent and community service agencies to address behavioral issues.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What conditions support a safe learning environment for students? Parents? Teachers and staff?
- What policies are currently in place to support a safe learning environment?
- What adjustments can be made to current safe learning environment protocols to increase their effectiveness?
Desired Future State
Programs that focus on clear, positive student behavior expectations are developed, actively used, and shown to improve student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Prepare school culture for positive behavioral
- Provide professional learning to empower practitioners to succeed in positive behavioral strategies.
- Ensure the sustainability of positive behavioral strategies via schoolwide integration and community buy-in.
- Create opportunities for students to become active participants in positive behavioral strategies.
- Foster positive relationships among students, their families, the school, and the community.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What programs are currently in place that focus on positive behavioral expectations for students?
- Are current positive behavioral programs shown to improve learning and behavior? How do you know?
- What is the vision for the connection between positive behavior and improving learning?
- How are school leaders supporting schoolwide positive behavioral strategies?
Desired Future State
In classrooms, in hallways, in bathrooms, and on school grounds, students and staff feel extremely safe. They do not feel threatened, in danger of being bullied or intimidated, or concerned about their physical or emotional safety.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Provide clear and consistent expectations for student behavior, including expectations of student actions in the classroom, hallways, and common areas.
- Consistently uphold these expectations for all students.
- Survey the condition of the facility and facility-related learning goals and establish a facilities plan that advances school goals by addressing maintenance, renovation, and repair.
- Establish clear expectations with the school community to maintain a clean environment.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Is there an up-to-date safety plan? Where is it located? Who is aware of what is included in the safety plan?
- How often is the school’s safety plan updated?
- How do community members communicate safety concerns regarding physical spaces at the school?
- Consider particularly problematic areas of the Where do the problems occur? What is the level of adult presence in these areas? How are the areas better managed (e.g., through more intensive supervision, shifts in traffic patterns, closing the area)?
- Analyze school resources and increase resources dedicated to campus security as needed. Consider if there are ways to restructure the resources for a more significant impact.
- Analyze the source of behavioral Who is involved? What is the scope of the problem? What is the strength of positive relationships with students involved?
- Consider those affected by safety Who are these students?
Desired Future State
Ninety-six to 100 percent of students have a meaningful personal relationship with teachers or staff, characterized by relationships that are close enough to enable teachers and staff to notice changes that occur in the student’s life that could impact student engagement, safety, or learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Assess student/adult relationships and intervene to ensure that every child has a meaningful relationship with at least one adult in the building.
- Expand professional development on classroom management models, which focus on building positive relationships with students, creating a classroom community, and having positive interactions with students.
- Consider adopting interaction and relationship-building principles across the schools for all adults that address how to get compliance and ownership of decisions from students around expectations.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What practices are in place to support meaningful student/adult relationships? What additional practices could be considered?
- How do adults communicate which students they are engaging to provide meaningful support?
- What percent of students currently have a meaningful relationship with an adult?
- Are school leaders modeling the desired interactions with students?
- Are structures, activities, and time in place for staff to build meaningful personal relationships with students?
- How do the positive relationships with students tie into the mission and vision of the school?
Desired Future State
All staff in the school have high expectations for students.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Design a survey to administer to students throughout the year to collect data on student perceptions of the expectations adults on campus have for them. Review the data quarterly and plan actions to increase student perceptions of adults having high expectations for all students on campus.
- Gather artifacts formally communicated to students, families, and teachers regarding expectations for Enlist a group to review the artifacts to determine if they are consistent in messaging and convey sufficiently high expectations. Make adjustments in future communications as warranted.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How are you communicating a culture of high expectations for students?
- What strategies can be shared with teachers and staff to encourage high expectations for students?
- How are you communicating the progress of turnaround efforts?
- Who is accountable for this communication at each level?
- How is the path made clear to everyone?
- Do all adults in the school have high expectations for all students? What evidence is collected to address this?
- Which students are outliers to staff expectations? How are these students similar?
- Has the school undergone professional learning focused on adult expectations for student learning, growth mindset, and culturally responsive teaching?
Solicit and Act Upon Stakeholder Input
Practice Description
- Collective perceptions—held by school personnel, students, families, and the broader community—about the degree to which their school climate is or is not positive are gathered and used to gauge the climate-related work to be done by a school striving for turnaround.
- Community perceptions are considered when identifying priorities and improving the underlying conditions that contribute to school climate issues.
- Acknowledge and respond to constructive feedback, suggestions, and criticism.
School-Based Example
Learn what constituents think by conducting surveys, holding forums and focus groups, and making suggestion boxes available. Share and act on what is learned. Take constituent input into account when making program decisions. Consistently demonstrate that all voices are heard.
Desired Future State
There are a range of communication systems, co-created by teachers and leaders with consistent feedback loops, to give staff the information to follow through on responsibilities.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Meet with teacher teams to establish effective ways to communicate information that needs teacher follow-through. What times and modes are best? What are the expectations for feedback and questions?
- Develop transparent systems of communication to involve all staff in the understanding of goals, expectations, and responsibilities.
- Provide information to staff members through various modes and communicate how to expect the information. Be clear and intentional in stating expectations and needed follow-through.
- Establish a process of reserving regular blocks of time for collaboration between the leadership team and staff.
- Be intentional in including paraprofessionals and itinerant teachers in communications in a way that enables them to stay informed about decisions and provides them with opportunities to offer feedback and ask questions.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What systems of communication are currently in place?
- How does leadership currently communicate the responsibilities of teachers and staff?
- How are you working with turnaround school leaders and teachers to acknowledge and include their ideas in creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
- Has the leadership team surveyed or met with teacher teams to discuss practical ways to share information that meets the needs of the teaching staff?
- Are efforts made to ensure that there are consistent feedback loops?
- Are the communication systems currently used in schools co-created by teachers and leadership staff?
- Do the communication systems result in the desired impact and connections between staff and leadership?
Desired Future State
Scheduling community forums for listening to parent and family concerns is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Examine parent communication processes and consider how well these processes provide opportunities for meaningful communication with parents.
- Establish clear goals for parent communication.
- Identify expectations for teacher and school leadership communication with Use research on parent involvement.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What opportunities exist to broaden the representation of voices?
- Do all voices have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions?
- How are you inviting parents and community members to engage in meaningful dialogue? How are you including their ideas in the process of creating a culture that values effort, respect, and academic achievement?
- How are you including members of the community in the turnaround efforts? How are you encouraging them to participate in the turnaround process?
- Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
- How are school leaders creating a forum where families feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued when raising concerns?
Desired Future State
Scheduling group meetings to talk to parents and families about school curriculum and testing is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Continue to support academic partnerships between the school and families by scheduling two or three times throughout the year for parents to come into the school to learn in detail about their child’s courses and how to support them.
- Create a parent engagement committee that includes the school’s parent liaison. The committee collects relevant data that drive planning for the format of meetings and the selection of offerings to families.
- Utilize the parent liaison for additional follow-up contact with parents who do not attend.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What consistent community forums and/or meetings are currently in place?
- What current community forums and/or meetings are consistently well attended and/or supported? Why do you think that is?
- Do parents think their voice is valued? How do you know?
- Are meetings designed so that parents are fully informed and can ask questions and discuss school curriculum and testing?
- Are meetings held at a convenient time and place for parents and in a format that works for them?
- Which families are historically attending the meetings? Is the school reaching the majority of its families? Who is not in attendance?
- Are parents made aware of the curriculum and testing programs that enable them to assist their children?
Desired Future State
The school creates structures for problem solving in which teachers and school leaders engage in meaningful, challenging conversations.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Organize staff into meaningful collaborative teacher teams that take collective responsibility for student learning and work interdependently to achieve shared goals for which members hold themselves mutually accountable.
- Engage collaborative teacher teams in both vertical and horizontal conversations around student learning and instructional needs.
- Provide professional learning for all staff on “crucial conversations” as a method to strengthen staff relationships.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What systems of communication are currently in place to allow for challenging conversations?
- What is the plan for engaging in challenging conversations when the traditional path does not allow for all teachers and staff to share their thoughts?
- How are school leaders and teachers working together to problem-solve to address the school’s instructional needs and the students’ academic needs?
- How open are teachers to engaging in meaningful, challenging conversations with colleagues? With the administrative team?
- How open are school leaders to engaging in meaningful conversations with staff that result in thought-provoking dialogue?
- How are school leaders creating a forum in which community members feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued when engaging in challenging conversations?
Desired Future State
Feedback from parents and families is provided through surveys and other methods such as forums, focus groups, and suggestion boxes.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Conduct a survey of families and students to gauge perceptions about the school, its effectiveness, and their place in it.
- Use different formats to elicit feedback from parents, including direct and indirect outreach, such as surveys, online meeting forums, focus groups, parent meetings, and suggestion boxes.
- Build opportunities for the teaching staff, school leadership, and parents to provide feedback to each other regarding a child’s well-being and academic process.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How are you soliciting input from interested parties regarding their perceptions about the schools?
- How are community members from often-underrepresented voices represented?
- Do all voices at the table have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions?
- What tools need to be created to solicit such input?
- Who is accountable for developing and distributing those tools?
- What is needed to adjust community members’ perceptions about turnaround schools, if negative?
- How are you showing them turnaround school progress?
- Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
Desired Future State
Collecting constructive criticism and applying that feedback to the decision-making processes is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Collect feedback from teachers throughout the year to determine the effectiveness of the decision-making processes used by the school.
- Create a process allowing constructive feedback around the school’s instructional strategies and students’ and teachers’ needs.
- Provide professional learning opportunities for all staff on ways to engage in challenging conversations that lead to problem solving.
- Provide teachers and paraprofessionals with constructive feedback, giving them clear goals, strategies, and support for instructional improvement.
- Structure meetings to provide opportunities for engagement in thoughtful dialogue.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Is constructive criticism valued in your school community? How do you know?
- What systems are in place to respond to constructive feedback?
- What systems are in place for collecting constructive criticism? What is the desired result of these systems?
- Does school-level leadership apply feedback to staff for the decision-making and problem-solving processes?
Engage Students and Families in Pursuing Education Goals
Practice Description
- Intentionally build students’ personal competencies to pursue goals, persist with tasks, appraise progress, hone learning strategies, and direct their learning to further enhance their capacity to learn and succeed.
- Provide students with opportunities to connect their learning in school with their interests and aspirations.
- Meaningfully engage parents in their child’s learning, progress, interests, and long- term goals.
School-Based Example
Programmatically and systematically build students’ skills in setting learning goals, managing their learning, and pursuing their goals by charting progress on coursework and toward their postsecondary goals; inform and engage families in planning and supporting their children’s education goals; provide students and their families with a full explanation of assessment results and interest inventories to help them make the best decisions; tap community resources and expertise to expand students’ understanding of potential careers and education options.
Desired Future State
Our school works with family and community groups to determine the best time and location for public meetings and provides transportation and childcare to increase attendance.
Note: For relevant strategies and suggestions and reflection questions, see 4.3.30 below.
Desired Future State
At least one parent or guardian attends for every student.
Note: For relevant strategies and suggestions and reflection questions, see 4.3.30 below.
Desired Future State
There is sufficient time, and parents and teachers have meaningful discussions to develop strategies to help students’ progress.
Strategies and Suggestions
Family outreach
- Support staff in building their capacity to facilitate the development of strong, trusting family relationships that lead to collaboration.
- Encourage teachers to make positive personal connections.
- As a school leader, make one positive phone call each day.
- Increase staff knowledge of ways to engage families through resources, materials, meetings, discussions, and hands-on opportunities that support student academic growth.
- Establish a system for school-to-home and home-to-school communication that occurs weekly and monthly. Provide opportunities for families to collaborate and communicate with staff.
- Connect with parents through mobile phone apps, classroom-based websites, and the student information system; provide parents with training on how to monitor their child’s progress.
Family engagement
- Create a welcoming school climate. Provide printed information (in the parent’s home language if possible) that includes school policies, school contact information, and the school calendar. Hold an open house at the beginning of the school year. Provide translators during school activities.
- Provide families with accessible and relevant resources to use at home with their child to increase engagement and improve student growth.
- Involve parents in volunteer activities.Recognize volunteers regularly.
Student learning goals
- Provide families with workshops and materials that engage them in grade-level learning goals. Print suggestions for parents on ways to support their children at home.
- Encourage homework assignments that require students to share their work with their families.
- Engage parents in holding their children to high expectations and supporting their success at home.
- Build level-to-level (e.g., elementary to middle school) transition strategies to prevent student struggles and help them succeed.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How are parents and your school community made aware of public meetings?
- How do you keep track of parent and other family attendance during family engagement opportunities?
- Do parents and/or other family members only interact with teachers? What opportunities do they have to interact with staff and administration?
- Other than the teacher, do parents and/or other family members have an additional individual with whom they can connect for support?
- How are you sharing assessment results and explanations with families?
- What needs to be in place to ensure that all families have access to this information?
- How are you assisting families in educational planning?
- How are school leaders scheduling and planning meetings for families in such a way as to respect them as individuals and value their time?
Desired Future State
Family visitors are sought out by teachers and welcomed as a key asset for student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Conduct parent surveys gathering parents’ perceptions as visitors in the building and classrooms. Align these data to perception data collected from teachers regarding the helpfulness and effectiveness of parent visitors in their classes.
- Create a vision statement including parents as Working with the teaching staff and parents, develop guidelines to indicate what successful implementation entails.
- Communicate the school-parent involvement vision to all interested parties.
Clearly outline the purpose, benefits, and responsibilities of both parent visitors and teaching staff.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Are parents and/or families allowed to observe and/or visit classrooms? Are families aware of classroom visitation opportunities?
- What efforts are made to gather parents’ perceptions of the school as partners in their child’s education?
- Has the school developed a system that gives parents access to the school and classroom?
- Are parents aware of the grade-level expectations for students and given ways to support their child’s learning?
- Is the school aware of the parents’ expertise to support student learning through volunteer work, classroom visits, or other opportunities?
- Is information easily understood and used by all intended audiences? Are translation services employed as needed for parent audiences?
Desired Future State
A program to enhance personalized learning opportunities for students is developed, actively used, and shown to improve student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Adopt technology-usage learning experiences for students that promote personalized learning.
- Prioritize which learning opportunities to personalize for remediation and acceleration of student learning.
- Incorporate individual goal setting where students set short- and long-term goals around foundation grade-level skills, including opportunities to accelerate learning.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- To what extent are teachers helping students articulate their aspirations and connect their learning to the pursuit of these aspirations?
- How are school-based programs developed to enhance personalized learning opportunities? Are they shown to improve student learning?
- Do extended learning opportunities give space for students to pursue personal learning goals?
- How are personalized learning opportunities monitored and selected?
- How successful are the school’s graduates in completing post-secondary work or obtaining work in their chosen careers?
Desired Future State
Ensuring students are prepared for college and careers is extremely important to school leaders.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Design counselor schedules so a significant amount of their time is spent on college and career counseling.
- Leaders and teachers work to build an academically motivated school culture based on college-going and career-readiness systems.
- Messaging from teachers and leaders regarding achievement recognizes and acknowl- edges students for both growth and achievement.
- Teachers work to connect learning to real-life applications and careers when possible.
- Hold events that build a college-going and career-readiness culture.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Are parents and/or other family members made aware of potential next steps after graduation? How do you know they are aware?
- Are students prepared for college or a career once they have graduated from high school? How are these data collected?
- Does the school have data on the college and career selections of their graduates?
Build a Strong Community Intensely Focused on Student Learning
Practice Description
- Celebrate successes—starting with quick wins early in the turnaround process—of students, families, teachers, and leaders. Early success promotes an expectation for further success and engenders confidence in the competence of colleagues.
- Provide explicit expectations and support for each person’s role both in the turnaround and in students’ progress.
- Create opportunities for members of the school community to come together to discuss, explore, and reflect on student learning.
- Embed high expectations in everyday practice and language, reinforce them through shared accountability, and follow through on strategies for dramatically improving student outcomes.
LEA Example
The LEA provides systems and structures to support collaborative district and school work, such as dedicated time for reflection and collaboration. Personnel evaluations are aligned with the expectations for their roles in turnaround. There are opportunities for sharing turnaround progress and successes.
Desired Future State
Effective teachers are regularly recognized, celebrated, and provided opportunities to continue improving their teaching and leadership, resulting in high levels of satisfaction and retention among the LEA’s highest performing teachers.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Regularly assess and monitor student learning across the district to provide recognition opportunities for teachers based on student performance.
- Provide regular opportunities for teachers to receive feedback on their performance through formal and informal feedback processes.
- Provide effective teachers with opportunities to lead professional learning for other teachers or to lead other work that provides a challenge and recognizes their demonstrated performance.
- Identify opportunities for effective teachers to step into formal and informal leadership.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How do teacher evaluation processes currently support the identification and advancement of effective teachers?
- How often are effective teachers publicly celebrated across the district?
- How often are the district’s effective teachers provided regular feedback on their instructional practices?
- How does the district recognize effective teachers?
Desired Future State
The LEA works with school leaders to develop a districtwide process to create teacher collaboration opportunities. Teacher collaboration opportunities are consistent and clear, and teachers are focused on working collaboratively to increase all students’ academic, behavioral, and social–emotional growth.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Ensure that protocols and expectations for effective collaboration are clear and outlined across schools.
- Provide opportunities for professional learning for school leadership.
- Regularly provide opportunities for school leaders to share best practices that promote both formal and informal teacher collaboration.
- Regularly record and publish best practices in teacher collaboration across the LEA.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Do all schools in the LEA have regularly established teacher collaboration times?
- Do school leaders and staff have regular training opportunities to learn about and practice using the district’s collaborative protocols?
- How does the district identify, catalog, and promote best practices in teacher collaboration across the district?
- Do district protocols allow school leaders to collaborate to analyze school data?
Desired Future State
The LEA uses the teacher evaluation process to align results with districtwide professional development needs and individual teacher professional learning needs.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Establish a teacher evaluation and continuous improvement process that allows the LEA to identify effective teachers as defined by district protocols.
- Provide an opportunity for teachers to give feedback about their professional development needs.
- Refine teacher evaluation rubrics and processes to clearly focus on student outcomes.
- Ensure that teacher evaluation and continuous improvement processes include tracking student achievement and growth.
- Ensure that teacher evaluation processes are transparent and that all teachers have opportunities to grow and change practice to meet the expectations of the teacher evaluation system.
- Provide regular professional learning opportunities to all teachers in the district, with differentiated opportunities by level, content, and skill.
- After every professional learning opportunity, provide formal opportunities for evaluation and analyze the results to ensure professional learning is meeting the needs of teachers.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- What professional learning opportunities are available to all teachers in the LEA?
- How are professional learning opportunities differentiated for teachers based on level, content, skill, or other characteristics?
- How do current teacher evaluation processes provide data to better identify areas of teacher professional development needs?
- How aligned is the district’s teacher evaluation system with strong instructional practices prioritized by the LEA?
- How are teacher evaluation data analyzed to identify professional learning opportunities?
Desired Future State
The LEA provides a comprehensive teacher evaluation system used by all schools that allows for data analysis and disaggregation so that the LEA’s instructional vision can be monitored.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Align the categories of the teacher evaluation system with the LEA’s instructional vision.
- Use or establish a teacher evaluation tool that allows data to be captured and analyzed for trends and compared to the district’s definition of quality teaching.
- Ensure that all teachers are evaluated at least annually to ensure continuous improvement and alignment with the LEA’s vision of instruction.
- Use time at principal meetings at least semiannually for school leaders to analyze school-level evaluation data and create action plans addressing key areas.
- Establish professional learning plans at the LEA level based on trends in evaluation data.
- Provide regular professional learning opportunities for school instructional leaders on understanding results from the evaluation system’s indicators and providing coaching based on those results.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How does the district currently collect and analyze teacher evaluation data?
- Is the district’s teacher evaluation system aligned with the district’s instructional protocols?
- Is the LEA’s professional learning program aligned with the evaluation system?
- Are school leaders proficient in coaching teachers toward meeting key indicators on the LEA’s evaluation system?
- Are all teachers evaluated?
Desired Future State
Each school in the district has established teacher working groups with clear schedules, protocols, and objectives. These working groups provide strong connections and collegiality for teachers and help increase teaching efficacy across the district.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Identify a coherent, clear strategy for teacher collaboration across the LEA that includes a specified purpose.
- Ensure that all schools have teacher collaboration times built into their schedules.
- Ensure that protocols and expectations for effective collaboration are clear and outlined at all schools.
- Provide training to all schools’ leaders to ensure that they have a deep understanding of high-quality teacher collaboration.
- Ensure that all core content teachers have access to high-quality instructional materials and aligned assessments from which to guide collaborative efforts.
- Regularly observe teacher collaboration opportunities across schools and provide feedback.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Do all schools have regular teacher collaboration times built into existing schedules?
- Has the district provided clarity around the processes, protocols, and purposes of teacher collaboration times?
- How do schools’ teacher collaboration efforts compare to LEA expectations? How do district leaders know?
- What support does the district provide to ensure teachers have access to high-quality instructional resources for collaboration?
- How do LEA leaders support schools in developing and implementing teacher collaborative structures?
- How often do LEA leaders observe teacher collaboration alongside school leaders to provide feedback?
Solicit and Act Upon Stakeholder Input
Practice Description
- Collective perceptions—held by school personnel, students, families, and the broader community—about the degree to which their school climate is or is not positive are gathered and used to gauge the climate-related work to be done by a school striving for turnaround.
- Community perceptions are considered when identifying priorities and improving the underlying conditions that contribute to school climate issues.
- Constructive feedback, suggestions, and criticism are acknowledged and responded to.
LEA Example
The LEA uses a diagnostic instrument to solicit feedback from school personnel, families, students, and community members early in the turnaround process, with periodic follow-up surveys to assess perceptions of the school and the turnaround effort. The LEA provides training for school leaders on assessing stakeholder perceptions and acting on what is learned.
Desired Future State
The LEA uses social media, public areas, its website, and other means to dispense information to families and community members. All families have access to regular communication and updates from the district regardless of their means and languages.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Use accounts with all major social media platforms to post weekly updates, celebrations, events, and important information.
- Ensure all external communication is posted in ways that will best reach the district’s students, families, and community.
- Regularly analyze media engagement metrics to determine the best means of communication with the community.
- Provide training and resources to support schools in establishing and maintaining social media accounts to facilitate information sharing.
- Regularly share updates on the LEA’s progress toward the strategic plan both internally and externally through social media.
- Ensure family liaisons and other key staff are trained in best practices of communication to be able to market the work and upcoming events at all schools.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Which social media platforms or other means of communication are used most by the community? How can social media engagement data be used to better understand how to best communicate with the community?
- Do the LEA and individual schools have the ability to post important updates to social media in multiple languages?
- Does the LEA have trained staff who regularly focus on providing responsive communication techniques to actively reach out to the community?
- How does the community most often find out information about the district and its schools?
Desired Future State
The LEA has regular survey opportunities for students, staff, families, and the community to provide their perspectives on the climate of schools in the LEA. The LEA has a robust process for evaluating the data in relation to stated goals and for setting specific actions at the LEA and school levels based on results.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Use an existing or LEA-created climate survey that can easily assess the LEA and individual school climates in relation to stated and desired outcomes.
- Ensure a student, family, and community survey is translated into as many applicable languages as possible and is easily accessible via phone, email, and other common platforms.
- Administer a survey to students, staff, families, and the community and provide an easy-to-use platform with which the LEA can analyze the data.
- On an annual basis, set LEA-wide targets based on climate survey results and regularly present the data relating to goals in public meetings.
- Use social media to communicate the availability of an LEA and school climate survey and to communicate the results and planned actions based on the data.
- Regularly engage the school board in both goal setting and action planning around the climate survey.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How does the LEA currently collect data on school climate? Is there a school climate survey that is aligned with the LEA’s priorities?
- What goals does the LEA currently set for school climate?
- How often and in what ways are principals analyzing school climate data and creating action plans?
- How do families access a climate survey?
- Do all families know how to access the climate survey or know the importance of it?
Desired Future State
Principals receive comprehensive training and support to analyze climate data and act on results. The training helps all principals correctly identify trends, celebrate gains, and target areas of improvement. Each school sets an action plan to support areas of improvement, and those plans regularly support improvement in the targeted areas.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Provide baseline training to all school leadership around the use of the LEA’s various climate data sources.
- Ensure that data systems for behavior, attendance, and school climate surveys are regularly and easily accessible to principals.
- At least annually, provide an update on the LEA’s expectations for principals’ data use and resulting action planning.
- Use regular principal meetings or other leadership touchpoints to allow school leaders to analyze their school’s data for trends, results versus goals, and other pertinent issues and to identify specific targets and action steps for the next 60–90 days.
- Identify specific LEA personnel to support principals with plan development and monitoring as necessary.
- During routine principal meetings or touchpoints, share updates on progress toward their climate plan outcomes.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Does the LEA currently use a climate survey to gauge various stakeholder group opinions?
- What data sources are currently available to school leaders to analyze school climate? How often are those data sets updated? How easy are they to access?
- How skilled are principals at using climate data to identify high-priority areas and create improvement action plans?
- How often does LEA leadership engage with schools regarding specific climate data and support key improvements?
- Does the LEA have dedicated time and resources for supporting the analysis and action planning around the school climate?
- Does the LEA provide time and opportunities for principals to share their climate data and action plans to push each other’s thinking and sharpen their ideas?
Desired Future State
Feedback from surveys is regularly obtained from all stakeholder groups. The results of those feedback surveys are reported transparently and used to guide decision-making across the LEA.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Use a survey across schools that supports the analysis of climate data from multiple stakeholder groups, including students, teachers, and families.
- Ensure surveys are accessible in all languages that are used in the LEA, to the extent feasible, and provide multiple ways to access the survey.
- Ensure that climate survey results are central to shared leadership discussions and addressed through goals in school improvement plans.
- Ensure that the LEA’s strategic plan includes targeted goals for increasing positive responses in key areas on the feedback surveys of all stakeholder groups.
- Regularly provide opportunities to support school leadership in understanding how to analyze and draw conclusions from the results of climate surveys.
- Report on the results of various feedback surveys publicly at board meetings, and include open dialogue regarding the district’s response to the data.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How does the district currently collect data on school climate? Is there a school climate survey that is aligned with the district’s priorities?
- What goals does the district currently set for school climate?
- How often and in what ways are principals analyzing school climate data regularly and creating action plans?
- How is the school board involved in supporting the setting of climate goals and focusing on the district’s status related to established goals?
- How many families can access a climate survey in the district? Are there barriers to access that need to be addressed for particular populations such as students classified as English Language Learners or those from low socioeconomic backgrounds?
- Do all families know how to access the district’s climate survey or know the importance of it?
Desired Future State
School leaders are given regular formal and informal opportunities to provide feedback to district leadership on a variety of pertinent issues. The district has a formal process for collecting and analyzing school leader feedback and regularly communicates its responses to the feedback.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Build formal opportunities into every school leader’s evaluation cycle for the leader to provide candid feedback regarding district processes, structures, policies, and so on.
- End all regular school leader meetings with survey opportunities for leaders to provide input on the use of time and relevance of topics and to provide other feedback about the district.
- Regularly conduct an anonymous school leader survey that allows leaders to provide feedback on the district. Transparently report on and use the data to inform setting goals and priorities for the district.
- Establish a school leader council of highly effective leaders to regularly meet with district leadership to plan how to respond to feedback.
- Report on formal school leader survey results in public board meetings as part of reporting on broader perception survey data, and use the results to establish district goals.
- Ensure that all regular check-ins with school leaders include an opportunity for them to freely provide feedback on district operations and areas in which the school leaders could use more support. At subsequent meetings, ensure follow-up on concerns, including indicating when concerns cannot be addressed.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How is formal feedback currently gathered from school leaders?
- How do district leaders know the perception of school leaders on a variety of school issues?
- Do school leaders regularly and transparently provide constructive feedback to the district or are they more likely to use alternative, less productive routes to share their concerns?
- How often do district leaders discuss trends in school leader perception data and action plans for improving those perceptions?
- Does LEA leadership regularly check in with school leaders to support their work? Do those check-ins include regular opportunities for school leaders to provide feedback?
Engage Students and Families in Pursuing Education Goals
Practice Description
- Intentionally develop students’ metacognition to build skills in setting goals, persisting, assessing progress, refining strategies, and taking charge of their learning to enhance their success.
- Provide students with opportunities to connect their learning in school with their interests and aspirations.
- Meaningfully engage parents in their child’s learning, progress, interests, and long-term goals.
LEA Example
The LEA provides resources for students and families on college and career planning, such as assessments, interest inventories, and career and college information. The LEA also provides templates for students to plan coursework and college and career pathways and provides line items in the school budget for resources related to family engagement that supports student learning. The LEA includes in monthly board reports information about each school’s data-supported progress with family engagement. The LEA sets aside time and provides structures for parent groups focused on improved student learning.
Desired Future State
All schools within the LEA hold regular public meetings to engage families. The LEA supplies guidance and support to all schools to ensure schools have the skill and capacity to broaden and strengthen outreach efforts so that a high number of families across all demographics attend events.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Ensure that board policy, LEA strategic plans, and LEA policy provide specific guidance and structure for the frequency and type of family engagement opportunities schools must adhere to.
- Provide a family engagement coordinator at the LEA or school level to support schools in designing, communicating, and executing strong family engagement opportunities.
- Ensure that the LEA’s strategic plan includes specific guidelines and strategies to regularly engage community members and families.
- Support schools in hosting ready-to-use family engagement meetings with prepared slide decks, talking points, flyers, and promotional materials.
- As part of an annual school improvement plan development, ensure that each school includes a family engagement calendar with key events, including public information meetings, and provide guidance and support for the planning and execution of these events.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How many schools within the LEA hold regular family engagement events?
- Does the LEA have guidance and specific requirements regarding the number and type of family engagement opportunities that schools should provide?
- Does the LEA regularly track the number of families attending different events to celebrate bright spots and support struggling schools with more engagement?
- Does the LEA provide each school with a dedicated family engagement coordinator or other family engagement support personnel?
- Does the LEA provide material support for public school meetings, such as flyers, slide decks, food, and so on?
- Does the LEA have partnerships with community organizations and other groups to provide creative spaces for public meetings that may reach more families?
Desired Future State
The LEA has a robust family engagement and empowerment strategy that includes a parent–teacher organization (PTO) or similar body, opportunities for parents to assist in classrooms, and structured opportunities for parents to inform and provide input on the LEA’s strategy.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Ensure that every school has a functioning PTO or similar organization to support family involvement and engagement.
- Use public meetings to share information about the LEA’s strategy and to provide authentic opportunities for families and the community to inform the district’s strategy.
- Use board meetings to highlight trends in public engagement, provide updates on the LEA’s plans for improvement, and identify ways in which LEA leadership has enacted strategies based on community input.
- Provide training and support for school leaders and teachers to identify ways of engaging parents in schools.
- Provide all schools with a background check application system and an easy-to-use check-in system for parent volunteers.
- Ensure that volunteer opportunities for classrooms and parent organizations are accessible to all parents.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Does every school in the LEA have a dedicated PTO or similar organization?
- Are all relevant student demographics represented in parent and family organizations and school volunteer opportunities? If not, what barriers to information or access exist?
- Does every school in the LEA have family or community member volunteers in classrooms?
- Does the district provide multiple, meaningful opportunities for families to give substantive input about the direction of the LEA?
- How do public board meetings promote more family engagement in the LEA?
- Does the LEA provide the resources necessary to support schools with easily vetting and maintaining parent, family, and community member volunteers?
Desired Future State
The LEA budgets for a sufficient amount of school-level funding that is dedicated to strong levels of family engagement in all schools.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Analyze the current level of funding set aside for family engagement activities, including the types and efficacy of those activities.
- Consider budgeting for a family liaison at all schools, or as many as possible, to lead and coordinate family engagement efforts.
- Research possible grant and other funding sources for family engagement and identify resources that fit the LEA’s overall family engagement strategy.
- Present research findings on family engagement alongside the LEA’s plan for improving engagement to encourage the board to allocate resources toward family engagement.
- If the LEA has a site-based budgeting strategy, work with each school to identify its family engagement strategy aligned with the LEA’s overall strategy, and support the school in budgeting appropriately toward meeting its stated outcomes.
- During annual budgeting processes, ensure family engagement funding is prioritized in the initial steps of determining funding for each school.
- Provide training and guidance to finance staff within the LEA to ensure understanding of the importance and funding demands of a strong family engagement strategy across the LEA.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- To what extent are the LEA and schools allocating resources toward family engagement?
- How does the LEA engage publicly with the board on the importance of family engagement and the funding needed to support its efficacy?
- How much knowledge does the LEA’s financial staff have of the need for dedicated funding for family engagement?
- Does each school have the finances needed to fund essential family engagement activities?
- Does the LEA analyze the effectiveness of various family engagement activities to determine the return on investment and allocate resources accordingly?
Desired Future State
There is a clear process across all schools for parent groups to engage with student learning goals to provide meaningful input on the schools’ next steps.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Identify assessments for monitoring student progress that include tools that can be used to engage parents in understanding and acting on the results.
- Provide resources for all schools to support parents in accessing and understanding student goals and data.
- Support schools in focusing on student goals and progress as a key component of parent–teacher conferences.
- Partner with the board to ensure that board goals incorporate a focus on student learning goals.
- Provide training to PTOs or other parent groups at each school to support understanding of student learning goals, support setting student learning goals, and get their input on how to best engage other parents with their individual student’s learning goals.
- After major assessment cycles, engage relevant parent and family groups with an analysis of how the assessment results compare to student learning goals.
- Support schools in establishing routines in which teachers set goals with students around each assessment cycle, and include a communication with parents.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Does the district have regular progress monitoring data that can be used for student goal setting?
- Do the assessments that are used across schools allow for easy, parent-friendly reporting of student results and how those results measure up to established goals?
- How does the district currently engage with parent groups around student goals?
- Do all parents know or have access to their student’s learning goals?
- Does the board regularly set and discuss progress toward student learning goals?
- Does the LEA engage parent organizations as communicators of student learning goals?
Desired Future State
Schools across the LEA have and execute a strong process for student college and career planning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Develop an LEA strategic plan for supporting student college and career planning that includes multiple pathways and options for students and takes into account the LEA’s community needs and assets.
- Use annual school improvement planning processes to support all high school–level leaders with developing a plan for increasing college and career readiness for all students.
- Support all high schools in the LEA to develop a clear, focused set of college and career pathways so all students have the opportunity to accelerate.
- Provide training to high school counselors and design job descriptions so that counselors can spend a significant portion of their time providing college and career counseling for students.
- Identify student learning goals directly tied to college and career readiness at the LEA and school levels and monitor progress toward those goals.
- Develop a process by which every student in the LEA has a personalized college or career readiness plan that is discussed and modified regularly from 6th grade through graduation, with appropriate counseling and advising support.
- Host a job fair for high school students annually to support connections between businesses and students.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How do you currently track the progress of college and career readiness at schools across the LEA?
- What goals are set for schools to ensure that all students are college or career ready?
- Does every secondary school in the LEA have multiple clear pathways for students to gain an industry certificate or significant college credit toward a postsecondary option of their choosing?
- What supports does the LEA provide to schools to both develop and implement a strong college and career readiness plan for all students?
- Does the LEA publicly identify and track progress toward college and career readiness goals?
- Does the LEA have data on the college and career selections of all of its graduates? Are those data reported publicly and used for improvement planning purposes and goal setting?
Desired Future State
All schools within the LEA focus a great deal on increasing family involvement in student learning.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Support schools with materials and resources that parents and families can use to understand how to best support their students.
- Provide pamphlets and flyers for schools to use in helping parents understand their students’ needs at different developmental stages, including transitions from one grade level to another.
- Provide assessment and grade-level data in parent-friendly platforms to support parent understanding of student learning across the LEA.
- Support all schools by designing family–teacher or parent–teacher conferences that bolster family or parent attendance and focus on student learning.
- Regularly monitor the attendance at and effectiveness of each school’s parent events that focus on student learning, and provide additional resources to schools that need support.
- Provide families with workshops and materials that engage them in grade-level learning goals. Print suggestions for parents on ways to support their children at home.
- Encourage homework assignments that require students to share their work with their families.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- How does the district support schools’ efforts to increase family involvement?
- How does the district track attendance at and measure the effectiveness of parent events that focus on student learning goals?
- How does the LEA support families during level-to-level transitions of students?
- What resources are available to all schools to help them support families in understanding student learning goals and how they can best support their students?
- Do LEA leaders help to train school leaders on the best ways to support families in understanding and helping with their students’ learning?
- How does the LEA support schools in organizing effective parent–teacher conferences that encourage family attendance and engagement, enabling families to support the school’s efforts at home?
Desired Future State
Strong connections exist between the schools in the LEA and the overall community.
Strategies and Suggestions
- Use communications staff within the LEA to build strong connections with local community organizations.
- Host events for local community leaders to inform them about the LEA’s current state, goals, and future plans.
- Work with local business leaders to establish internship and other career opportunities for students.
- Use an annual asset and needs assessment to determine the strengths and opportunities in the community so that the LEA may prioritize needed supports.
- Identify local organizations that can supply needed wraparound services for students.
- When possible, use school resources, such as building spaces, for community purposes, especially outside of school hours.
- At least annually, survey community organizations and members about their perceptions of the LEA and use that information as part of a broader improvement planning process.
Reflection Questions for Consideration
- Which community organizations exist in the community that may support students either inside or outside of school? How is the LEA currently engaging those possible partners?
- What is the community’s perception of the LEA? How do LEA leaders know?
- How many schools within the LEA have robust partnerships with external organizations so students and families can access those organizations’ resources from within the school building?
- How often does the LEA purposefully share its status, goals, and plans with the broader community outside of its own public board meetings?
- Does the LEA have personnel who focus on supporting schools and the LEA as a whole by reaching out and establishing partnerships within the community?
- Is there available space within schools that could be used for community resources to support students and families?
- Does the LEA complete an annual assets and needs assessment to understand the community and help plan efforts to better engage with the community?
A Note on Numbering:
The numbering system corresponds to the Four Domains framework and the numbering of items in the CALL surveys. in the example 1.2.30, the first number represents the domain (ex. Domain 1), the second number represents the practice (ex. Practice 2), and the third number represents the item number from the CALL survey that is most relevant to this practice item (ex. item 30).
View Diagram
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The bottom label reads ‘District Vision for Student Learning (1.1.10).’ Arrows point upward to four boxes: a large top box ‘Descriptor of a practice item’; a right-side stack with ‘Domain’ above ‘Practice’; and a lower right box ‘CALL survey item that addresses this practice item.’ The arrows indicate that each element—descriptor, domain, practice, and CALL survey item—connects to the example practice item.
The bottom label reads ‘District Vision for Student Learning (1.1.10).’ Arrows point upward to four boxes: a large top box ‘Descriptor of a practice item’; a right-side stack with ‘Domain’ above ‘Practice’; and a lower right box ‘CALL survey item that addresses this practice item.’ The arrows indicate that each element—descriptor, domain, practice, and CALL survey item—connects to the example practice item.