A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Planning: The Foundation of Success for Schoolwide Programs

Changes take time to conceptualize, understand, and map out, however, and it helps to obtain different perspectives about program alternatives. A New Chance: Making the Most of Title I (The Education Trust, 1995) urges schools to base their planning on systematic data that are graphically displayed so that various groups can consider the same information to determine the improvements they need. Examples of information that lends itself to graphic presentation and analysis are: performance on various standardized and school-designed tests; course enrollments and rates of completing honors classes; student and teacher attendance; grading patterns; participation by students and parents in out-of-school activities; teacher participation in professional development; student mobility rates; school completion (in elementary and middle schools) and graduation rates (in high schools); and meaningful break outs of the information by limited English proficiency, migrant status, and family poverty.

School performance indicators such as these, combined with ideas culled from published research or from other schools' or districts' successful experiences, can become the basis for a school's comprehensive plan. According to the 1994 amendments to ESEA, schoolwide programs' comprehensive plans should:

• Define school reform strategies that enable all children to achieve proficiency on the state's standards

• Commit to using effective instructional strategies, including team teaching and applied learning

• Address the needs of all students, especially those who are members of the target population of any programs included in the schoolwide program

• Describe how a school will coordinate its use of federal, state, and local resources

• List the federal, state, and local programs that are part of the schoolwide program

• Describe how the school will provide individual assessment results to parents

• Plan to report assessment results, appropriately disaggregated, if the state has adopted an assessment system; or, if no final assessment system is in place, describe the achievement data and the effective improvement practices the school will use

School Support Teams, Distinguished Educators, and Distinguished Schools Lend Assistance

School support teams bring together teachers, pupil services personnel, and representatives of organizations who have implemented successful schoolwide programs and comprehensive school reform. Team members work cooperatively with each school to develop its schoolwide plan, assess the plan's practicality and appropriateness, and make recommendations about implementation. Once the schoolwide program is in place, the school support team can periodically review the school's progress. Teams consider a school's success in enabling students to meet state performance standards, and they identify new resources for addressing new instructional design and operations problems that arise.

States have also established a corps of distinguished educators and distinguished schools. When possible, distinguished educators are chosen from Title I schools that have been especially successful in helping children meet the state's student performance standards. Distinguished schools--those that exceed the state's definition of adequate progress for three years--serve as models for other schools, and their staff members become mentors for teachers.

Understanding Students' Needs Informs Planning

Students' Educational Needs Drive Comprehensive Planning Planning begins with these fundamental questions: How do our students perform in relation to the state and local standards? What does research tell us about designing instruction to support all students' attainment of rigorous state and local standards? How does our program address the educational needs of children who have difficulty reading, learning math, and performing well in other content areas? How well are we serving students with unique abilities or disabilities? What specialized services do students need if they are limited English speakers, temporarily without homes, or live in families that move frequently? What is a challenging but realistic target for student achievement? What resources are available to carry out new programs schoolwide? What time lines set an ambitious pace for accomplishing change?

"What do [the reforms] look like and sound like in other states and regions? Give us concrete examples of instructional practices," front-line reformers ask.

The comprehensive planning process offers the opportunity to make student achievement the basis of ongoing schoolwide planning. Identifying students' academic, social, and emotional needs is the starting point for planning teams that are setting goals. A thorough needs assessment--or schoolwide self-study--"is the true beginning" of a school's transition to a schoolwide program, says Joan Finch, a district superintendent in the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation in Indiana.

Finch urges new schoolwides to begin planning by checking the school's achievement against state and district standards. Comparing these accomplishments with the school's vision or mission challenges schools, Finch reports, because "usually, a school mission statement is something that just hangs on a wall..." and it takes focused planning "to bring that statement to life."

A Comprehensive Needs Assessment Is Ongoing and Multi-faceted At the Sheridan School in Philadelphia, a leadership team meets each week to carry out a school improvement plan designed by faculty and parents. The leadership team is composed of the principal, a counselor, the school community coordinator, curriculum committee chairpersons, a teachers' union representative, and teachers. The team uses student test scores, report cards, reading levels, and attendance information to continually inform the schoolwide's instructional program. School-based decision making at Sheridan is bolstered by other regular meetings held by grade groups, academic and support committees, and faculty.

The Massachusetts Title I Dissemination Project reports that there is no one "right way" to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment, but some basic ground rules can guide planning: (1) a majority of the school community must agree that such a self-study is necessary and worthy of time and attention and that the school will abide by the findings; (2) students' learning needs should drive and prioritize the school's self-assessment; (3) both school staff and parents can serve as evaluators, concentrating on reducing the obstacles to student learning that are under their control; (4) the needs assessment should be informed by inside stakeholders as well as by objective outsiders; and (5) the assessment must focus on important achievement-related issues (Exchange, 1996).

Central Elementary School in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, illustrates the wide variety of academic sources schools can use to learn about their needs. Their needs assessment consisted of:

• Kindergarten developmental screening and progress reports

• Standardized test score results

• Surveys of teachers, parents, and students

• Report card analyses

• Analyses of students making the transition to first grade

Outside Advisers and Practitioners Can Bring Fresh Ideas to Schoolwide Planning

The School Leadership Team Development Program directs seminars for school-based leadership teams that are seeking a long-term commitment to improving learning opportunities in their schools. Through the leadership seminars, school teams redesign their existing school structures.

The Ventures Program engages participants in "action research" projects--or ongoing self-studies--over a two- or three-year period, to provide new information, innovative ideas, supportive relationships, and time to analyze reform practices. Kentucky and Arkansas have established similar, multi-staged leadership initiatives that connect participants with peers and engage them over the long-term planning and change process (Laguarda, Hightower, Leighton, Tarr, Weiner, & Youngs, 1995).

School Support for Planning Lays a Strong Foundation When the Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward, California, was planning its schoolwide program, the district helped the staff extend its meeting time, lengthening four school days by 15 minutes so that the school could release students two hours early on Wednesdays and teachers would have much-needed planning time. Staff at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary School in Laurel, Delaware, found that after-school and weekend meetings were not the most productive time for teachers to make decisions about schoolwide planning and implementation. The prinicipal worked with the district's federal programs coordinator to give teachers release time so that all teachers could attend some planning meetings during school hours to meet with an outside consultant hired by the district to help the school plan its schoolwide program.

The U.S. Department of Education provides funding for organizations that can help on these issues. Two regionally based networks, the Comprehensive Regional Assistance Centers and the Regional Educational Laboratories, are good contacts for technical assistance. Together, 15 regional "mega-centers" and 10 Regional Laboratories give multiple access points to information and professional expertise. Title XIII of ESEA authorized the Comprehensive Regional Assistance Centers to provide training and technical assistance to states and districts, schools, tribes, and community-based organizations. The ten Regional Laboratories, funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, are solution-finding organizations, dedicated to helping educators in their regions solve the problems they encounter as they put research into practice. Each Lab has expertise in a specific technical area such as early childhood education, student achievement, teaching preparation and training, and systemic education reform and restructuring. Working through groups and consortia of state and local educators, Lab staff members can convene networks, lend advice to groups, and locate information for schools in their regions that are making the transition to becoming schoolwide programs. A complete list of centers and labs, including their specializations, the states and regions they serve, and email and fax numbers, concludes this newsletter.
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[What Is a Schoolwide Program?]

[Making Schoolwides Work for All Students]