HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement

High functioning schools will engage in a variety of continuous improvement processes utilizing specific activities at the appropriate times. However, schools just beginning the improvement process may need to adjust the time lines to allow time to institute practices, processes and procedures that may not be in place. Keep in mind that this is a two-year process.

Page 1 frames the year-long processes, practices and procedures of continuously improving schools. Improvement Processes that should be ongoing throughout the year Conduct regularly scheduled staff meetings Celebrate successes that support values and Conduct family/community engagement beliefs activities

Administer benchmark/common Maintain documentation of school Provide support for personalized learning assessments and analyze data to determine leadership team meetings (e.g., agendas, instructional effectiveness and make minutes, work plans, sign in sheets,) Areas necessary adjustments of focus are included each meeting

Monitor classroom instruction and Monitor and assess SMART Goal progress Monitor changes in classroom instruction improvement in student learning on a periodic basis

Participate in the i nstructional rounds Construct, evaluate and integrate data walls Structure the work of collaborative teaming process into the work of school improvement and the leadership team

West Virginia Department of Education Page 1 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement

Section A. EVIDENCE MAY/JUNE/JULY/AUGUST 1. Revisit or determine core Core beliefs; Langford tools, signatures of staff commitments; core beliefs and values that will lead values & beliefs-consensus; agenda & minutes of how core to collective commitments. values/beliefs developed; strategic plan 2. Revisit or develop a structure Roles/purpose; agendas; minutes; norms; SWOT; for the leadership, collaboration/focus teams; time in schedule; norms for group collaborative and focus teams. meetings 3. Revisit or create a meeting School calendar; calendar/agendas/minutes for leadership teams, schedule for all grade level teams, dept teams (time other than conversations about collaborative/focus teams. discipline, parent conferences, etc.) (a minimum of weekly collaborative team meetings). 4. Revisit or develop a process to Names of participants; schedule; agenda; minutes; goals; action plan; promote student leadership and results; student government organizations; student Advisory provide a mechanism for Council; forums; surveys; I-Lead; student council/government student voice. 5. Begin or continue strategic Original strategic plan; dates/minutes/agendas; actual updated planning with stakeholders. strategic plan; PD schedule; needs assessment; data used to develop Develop a sustained, annual PD plan; list of stakeholders-verification of persons with real professional development plan based on needs as determined interest/ones that will take ownership; agendas & minutes of by measurable student data. meetings; collaborative conversations about specific school data (Dibels, AIMSweb, WESTEST2, culture surveys, attendance & identify root causes/weaknesses)

West Virginia Department of Education Page 2 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement 6. Revisit or conduct School Counseling plan; audit results; revision of plan Counseling Program Audit and revise or develop the School Counseling Plan. 7. Create a calendar of school Google calendar events.

Section B. EVIDENCE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER/OCTO BER 1. Disaggregate WESTEST 2 Data teams; D-day—disaggregate day; results; sigh-in sheet; agenda; data-involving all staff minutes; worksheets; plan/accountability for using data members.

2. Analyze all school data Online monitoring; plan of action for improvement (where data was (including DP21/WVEIS data, used) Student Needs Assessment, Stakeholders Survey) related to the Standards for High Quality Schools.

3. Develop and implement Actual plans, monitoring, observations, Acuity results intervention plans for academics, attendance, behavior, and at-risk students. 4. Match Mentors with at-risk List of mentors & students; data on attendance, achievement, students.

West Virginia Department of Education Page 3 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement discipline; list of mentors and plans 5. Determine three focus areas. List of 3 focus areas (based on data)

6. Convert focus areas to school SMART goals; action plans SMART Goals (objectives.)

7. Establish collaborative team SMART goals for teams goals that align with school goals.

8. Conduct initial WESTEST 2 Student data notebooks; students; test talk leaders; forms; student Test Talks. goals

9. Begin the work of the School Minutes; agendas; member roster; roles; evidence of training; Leadership Team. meeting calendar

10. Conduct a faculty Faculty senate agendas; sigh in sheet; copy of PPT; overview (Instructional Practices Inventory) IPI overview. 11. Conduct the first IPI data Date on calendar; IPI data—pie charts; minutes of faculty collection and facilitate faculty conversation distributed to staff discussion. 12. Construct data walls and or Picture of data wall; data notebooks; thumb drive; data displayed data notebooks.

West Virginia Department of Education Page 4 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement 13. Implement the process to Schedule of meeting dates; Elected/selected students; Action plan in promote student leadership and writing; minutes; student needs assessment provide a mechanism for student voice. 14. Administer the culture survey Date for Culture Survey; results; plan for using results; progress on an annual cycle. S3 high monitoring of plan schools also administer the climate survey.

15. Begin to gather Parent Advisory Council; Parent trainings and activities; documentation/data about agendas/sign-is; surveys; Online Wikis and Blogs; ; School-home parent engagement. communication (newsletters, data notebooks, letters emails); agendas and sigh-in sheets from parent activities; strategic plan documentation that parent activities based on needs/data; parent surveys 16. Incorporate an extended Credit recovery logs day/year program (if applicable.)

17. Develop Individual Student 8th grade plans reviewed annually Transition Plans (ISTP) for students at the appropriate grade levels. 18. Finalize the online strategic Finalized online strategic plan plan document.

West Virginia Department of Education Page 5 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement Section C. EVIDENCE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DEC EMBER/JANUARY 1. Conduct second IPI and Conducted in December; minutes from collaborative discussions facilitate faculty discussion. regarding IPI, Data chart displayed in faculty meeting room; faculty meeting notes distributed 2. Complete Cultural Typology Report; agenda/minutes of collaborative conversation; cultural and share with the faculty. Typology results and discussion notes; agenda from PLC’s or PD session where Typology is discussed; plan to address toxic, fragmented, balkanized practices 3. Participate in collaborative Notes taken during collaborative conversation and reviewed during conversations and discuss the leadership meeting follow up questions with the leadership team. 4. Conduct a professional staff PD on DOK and IPI development training to show the relationship of IPI to DOK. Section D. EVIDENCE JANUARY/FEBRUARY/MARC H 1. Use DP21 and other sources to DP 21 documents; WVEIS reports; HR reports for teacher examine leading indicators of attendance; IPI to determine student engagement; data walls, change (e.g., student and strategic plan; minutes from collaborative teams teacher attendance, discipline, student engagement.)

West Virginia Department of Education Page 6 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement 2. Conduct third IPI and facilitate Evidence of IPI data; observation of faculty discussion, minutes of faculty discussion. faculty discussion; IPI charts; faculty senate agenda and minutes; IPI data sheets

3. Conduct follow-up WESTEST2 List of students and faculty for match-ups; post the schedule; student Test Talks. portfolios; conducted in March

4. Participate in collaborative Observation of collaborative conversation; review of follow-up conversations and discuss the questions; Leadership Team minutes follow- up questions with the leadership team. 5. Administer the Audit of Survey results; report from audit Principal Effectiveness (survey.)

Section E. APRIL/MAY EVIDENCE

1. Create and deliver the annual Presentation evidence of data and activities; planning meeting presentation to SSOS. Describe agendas and sigh-in sheets; presentation materials such as PPT and what events have taken place; video; participation in the event; copy of presentation number of participants; accomplishments and challenges/ and describe the impact of the WVDE SSOS. 2. Plan motivational activities for Plan for activities; pictures from activity summative assessment.

West Virginia Department of Education Page 7 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement 3. Analyze and disaggregate all Agendas/minutes; worksheets; charts; action plans available data.

GLOSSARY

Analyze data—Determine the meaning of data. What do the data tell a school about its practices? Why are the data what they are? What are the root causes of the data?

Annual Presentation—Required Tier I and SIG school meeting in May held with WVDE, RESA, and district representatives to present data and evidence of progress toward school SMART goals

At-risk students--Students who are showing evidence of failing a subject or a major task, important to success in school

Audit of Principal Effectiveness—A survey that provides information about the effectiveness of principals in dealing with personnel inside and outside the school setting, nurturing school climate, and serves as the educational leader of the school. (Valentine, J)

Benchmark Assessments – Designed to assess the objectives taught during an instructional cycle, benchmark assessments provide comparisons to state standards thus showing a "benchmark" of student proficiency at a particular point in time. Typically uniform in

West Virginia Department of Education Page 8 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement timing and content across classrooms and schools, benchmark assessments provide results that can be aggregated at the classroom, grade, school and district levels. This information, when provided to school and district decision-makers, serves as an interim indication of how well students are learning and raises important questions regarding the impact of instructional programs and teacher practices. These assessments may serve a variety of purposes, including predicting a student’s ability to succeed on a large-scale summative assessment, evaluating a particular educational program or pedagogy, or diagnosing gaps in students’ learning.

Climate Survey—Survey to help schools learn about their school climate (the total environment of an organization including physical and social dimensions, administrative structures and culture) and learning/teaching conditions that facilitate the school improvement process. School climate is a multidimensional construct that is the manifestation, the visibility, of the interaction of the four forces (Physical, Social, Environment and Culture) that create it, with culture being the most dynamic. Collaborative Conversations— Twice yearly conversations designed to help identified Tier I and/or SIG schools process and reflect on their progress toward meeting their school SMART Goals. Participation is designed to build the capacity of schools to self-assess as part of the improvement process. The conversations take place via conference call between representatives of the school, district, RESA and WVDE.

Collaborative Teams – Teachers are organized into collaborative teams on the basis of shared responsibility for addressing the critical questions of teaching and learning with a particular group of students – for example, by content, course or grade level. Team members work interdependently to achieve a common goal for which each member is mutually accountable. Each teacher team engages in a collaborative process to improve student learning by: clarifying essential outcomes by grade or course; developing common assessments; establishing targets and benchmarks; analyzing assessment results; and planning for interventions and instructional improvement strategies. Teams are guided by student data to identify student, teacher and school learning needs. Each collaborative team is facilitated by a team leader who serves on the School Leadership Team and has a process for communicating with other teams. All teachers participate in collaborative teams.

Common Formative Assessments – Assessments created collaboratively by a team of teachers responsible for the same grade level or course. Aligned to the learning targets taught, Common Formative Assessments are administered to all students in that course or grade level. Given periodically throughout the year, the results of common formative assessments are analyzed by the team and used to identify (1) individual students who need additional time and support for learning, (2) the teaching strategies most effective in helping students acquire the intended knowledge and skills, (3) areas in which students generally are having difficulty achieving the intended targets and (4) improvement goals for individual teachers and the team.

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Culture Survey—A tool developed by Jerry Valentine that helps provide insight about the shared values/beliefs, the patterns of behavior and the relationships in the school. The survey measures six unique factors (collaborative leadership, teacher collaboration, professional development, collegial support, unity of purpose, and learrning partnership) of a school’s collaborative culture.

Culture Typology—A tool developed by Jerry Valentine to be used by a school staff to assess and describe their existing school culture. It engages the staff in conversations to determine the typology (Toxic, Fragmented, Balkanized, Contrived Collegiality, Comfortable Collaboration, Collaborative) that describes their school.

Data wall—Data management tool used to create a visual representation of student, grade level, teacher or school achievement. A private data wall would be found in a place that is secure and not open to the public. Individual student data are displayed and moved as consecutive assessments are given. Teachers can also track the success of their students with this method. A public data wall can be in a public space and tracks grade level or whole school progress on a series of academic or management data. They do not show personally identifiable information about students. The data walls can provide clear information, promote motivation and become the basis for discussions about causes and solutions.

Disaggregate data—Separate a whole set of data into its parts. As defined by NCLB Law, disaggregated data means that test scores can be sorted by categories such as all economically disadvantaged students, all racial or ethnic minorities, all disabled students or all limited English students.

DP21—Data Portal for 21st Century Success (DP-21) is an interactive data portal that seeks to provide key educators access to data that are indicative of school success and improving student achievement in a single, user-friendly location. DP-21 allows educators to examine key data in a single location for more efficient school-level data analysis. Through DP-21, schools will have the opportunity to identify any areas of success or concern. If there appears to be an item of interest, school leaders may then research it further by exploring their existing resources.

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DOK—Depth of knowledge is a reference to the complexity of mental processing that must occur to answer a question, perform a task, or generate a product. The four levels can be assigned to a test question, a verbal question, an activity or a task.

Focus teams—Teachers working together using protocols on a particular aspect of school management/improvement (e.g. Discipline Team, Attendance Team, Healthy Schools Team). It might be called a committee and participation is voluntary.

Instructional Rounds Process—A process intended to help practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high-quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to do to support it.

Intervention plans—Plans developed by a teacher or team of teachers to help a student or students master learning that has been shown to be deficient based on an assessment (might be classroom, formative, benchmark, or summative). Plans are targeted to specific content standards and are designed only for the period of time needed to bring the student to mastery of that learning. Plans may also be applied school wide based on goals/areas of focus adopted by an entire school (e.g. S3).

IPI (Instructional Practices Inventory)—A researched and proven method for gathering data on student engagement evidenced through higher order/deeper thinking. Faculty collaborative conversations about how to increase student engagement follow each data collection.

ISTP (Individual Student Transition Plans)—Formulated twice during a student’s public school career. During 8th grade, each student’s ISTP plan is developed for grades 9 and 10 based upon previous career awareness, exploration activities and a review of ACT EXPLORE results. At the end of the 10th grade year, each student develops the second phase of the ISTP based on the student’s ACT PLAN results in consultation with her/his parent/guardian(s) and school counselor or advisor.

Leading indicators—Measurable educational indicators that change before actual systemic educational change takes place. They can be used to make predictions about trends (e.g. When a school’s attendance drops, it can be predicted that achievement will drop).

West Virginia Department of Education Page 11 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement Mentor (adult to student)---A faculty or community member who is assigned to support one or more at-risk students who are showing evidence of failing a subject or major task important to success in school.

On-line Strategic Plan—On-line tool for annually recording each school’s or district’s strategic planning process.

School Leadership Team (SLT) –Uses a distributed leadership model (sharing leadership responsibilities across the organization) to support the work of teacher collaborative teams. The leadership team is made up of school administrators, one member from each teacher collaborative team and others at the principal’s discretion. The SLT meets on a regular basis staying focused on school-wide issues that have the greatest impact on student achievement through data analysis. The leadership team promotes a clear, consistent and compelling vision by cultivating trust through effective collaboration. The SLT monitors the effectiveness of the Strategic Plan. The work of the leadership team builds shared knowledge, develops common beliefs and establishes collective commitments shared through planned communication.

School SMART Goals—School-wide goals based on data analysis by the entire staff of a school. The school leadership team analyzes data and establishes school-wide goals. All other staff members drill down, analyze grade level or course data and establish team goals.

SMART Goals—Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Results-based, Time-bound goals stated in objective form. For West Virginia, goals are overarching goals and SMART Goals are traditionally what have been called objectives.

SSOS (State System of Support)—The West Virginia Department of Education’s system for providing broad-based support for schools that have been identified as low performing. It includes personnel from various departments working together to help schools focus on school improvement.

Student voice—Student participation in the determination of school policies, programs, rules and procedures to influence learning.

Team SMART goals—Collaborative team academic goals based on school-wide focus areas driven by summative and formative assessment.

Test talks—Discussions between an adult and a student or students about performance on a particular assessment. It leads students to analyzing results to learn what they know and don’t know and to formulate goals and a plan for learning what was missed. The adult

West Virginia Department of Education Page 12 HOW ARE WE DOING? Timeline for Continuous School Improvement can be a teacher, administrator, counselor or other knowledgeable educator. It could be about classroom, formative, benchmark or summative assessment.

WESTEST2 test talks—Discussions between an adult and a student or students specifically about WESTEST2 in order to help students identify their strengths and weaknesses, then formulate goals and plans to address those weaknesses. In addition, test talks can talk place about any other kind of assessment.

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