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What’s a School Improvement Plan? It’s the holy grail to help your school make improvements year after year.
In short, it will be your key to taking all those monumental yearly goals and breaking them down into bite-sized, achievable goals throughout the year. If your school is creating a general school improvement plan, it will likely include academic, social, and engagement-focused goals for the upcoming school year.
Read on to learn more about school improvement plans, common and achievable goals to shoot for, and the challenges that come with each for the 2023/2024 school year.
Download Our Free School Improvement Plan Template
TL;DR for this article, “Building a School Improvement Plan”
A well-crafted SIP is a powerful tool that helps schools drive positive change and make incremental improvements year after year. A SIP provides a roadmap for enhancing the quality of education students receive. It breaks down monumental yearly goals into achievable, bite-sized objectives.
Common improvement plan goals include:
- Defining and measuring student achievement
- Addressing achievement gaps
- Enhancing instructional practices
- Promoting a positive school climate
- Increasing family and community engagement
- Enhancing teacher effectiveness
Each comes with its unique challenges. Overcoming these challenges requires careful consideration of available evidence, resource allocation, fostering collaboration, and sustaining effort and focus.
Incorporate teachers, their input and classroom data, ongoing support, and professional development for maximum educator buy-in and sustainable improvement.
What is a School Improvement Plan? Do They Work?
A School Improvement Plan (SIP) is a comprehensive document that outlines the goals, strategies, and action steps to enhance the quality of education students receive. Although specific SIP requirements vary from state to state, the core purpose remains to drive positive change in schools.
These plans typically have some goals aligned with outcome measures on statewide assessments, ensuring a targeted approach toward improving student learning. The tips and examples below provide insight into building your school improvement plan for family engagement– a key success metric. Teachers are bought in and thus are more likely to engage – equaling a better outcome.
To think of it another way:
Despite any skepticism surrounding school improvement plans, research indicates their potential for positive impact.
According to a RAND survey, 62% of teachers and 81% of principals believe improvement plans lead to improved schools over five years (Doss et al., 2020).
Pro Tip: It is important to note that teachers with a deeper understanding of their school’s improvement plan were likelier to believe in its effectiveness (Doss et al., 2020). This should highlight how important it will be to involve teachers in creating and implementing your school improvement plan.
Conventional Improvement Plan Goals and Their Challenges
The first error many school leaders make when they create a School Improvement Plan is to set overly ambitious student achievement goals.
Educators know that when you set the bar too high and don’t scaffold, students lose motivation and often don’t even attempt to meet the goal. So it is therefore important to determine achievable goals and increment them over time.
Under better circumstances (detailed below), it is possible to set ambitious student achievement targets every year, as long as you account for the challenges associated with each.
Pro Tip: Try incorporating teachers, their input, and their classroom data while goal-setting for maximum educator buy-in.
Once set, break down the goal into smaller, monthly goals. From there, create weekly goals appropriate for teachers to manage from the classroom. In the first year of building and applying a SIP, you should meet with your teacher leaders weekly to check in and record goal status. In the meeting, you can also offer feedback on how to assist any teachers facing roadblocks.
ClassTag’s Bottom Line
To conclude, building an effective School Improvement Plan (SIP) requires support from your stakeholders from the initial phase. Common SIP goals include student achievement, inclusivity, family engagement, and instructional practice.
Each goal has a series of roadblocks that must be addressed throughout the school year. By involving teachers in drafting the plan, you are more likely to earn the engagement needed at the teacher and family levels. With support from both sides, the chances you attain the proposed goals and increase student achievement also improve.
An effective SIP is associated with positive outcomes such as a higher caliber of education for all students. In fact, the effects of an effective SIP are even further reaching– stronger collaboration amongst your school community, professional growth at the educator and teacher-leader level, and a more supportive and inclusive school climate.
For help creating your unique School Improvement Plan, follow our 5 Steps to Building A School Improvement Plan.
