OIP The Ohio Improvement Process and the role of the BLT.

Shifts in practice FROMTO

Essential Practices of the BLT Established data teams (including course, grade level, department, etc.) and implement procedures for the effective use of data to assess the impact on student learning, and to make decisions about teaching & learning. Create a school culture that supports the effective use of data to improve students performance by organizing and presenting data in ways that identify gaps and trends in student performance and requiring intentional decisions regarding curriculum and instruction, interventions, and professional development.

Essential Practices of the BLT Support the use of current aggregated and disaggregated student data to establish measurable strategies aligned with district goals for instruction & achievement. Ensure data teams use building, course, and classroom data to constantly monitor progress in meeting performance targets for the building and at each grade level, planning for the success of all children and designed to close achievement and expectation gaps.

Essential Practices of the BLT Ensure the skillful and accurate use of data by providing ongoing training and support throughout the building. Monitor staff use of data to inform instructional decisions and organization for learning (e.g. schedules, grading, grade level configurations, interventions, etc.). Provide support to all building-level data teams and regularly review and analyze building level data to provide guidance for classroom level support actions.

Questions to Ask Which skills and concepts do students need to master to be successful in the future? Which research-based strategies will we use to ensure that each student has mastered these priority skills & concepts? How can we effectively engage students to be active participants or leaders in their own learning? How will we assess that each student has learned the targeted skills and concepts? What interventions will we establish to provide lifelines for students who are not proficient with essential skills and concepts? How will we enrich the learning of students who are already proficient before instruction begins?

Common Mistakes in Planning, Implementation & Monitoring Examining parts but not the whole: School personnel attempt to make sense of the data by proscribing their data analysis to only that which is produced by students (e.g. scores on tests, grades in class, measures of attendance and behavior, etc.). Missing from the analysis is an examination of what influenced those results, the corollary adult actions, structures, behaviors, and strategies. Districts and schools are awash in data: School districts fail to dramatically reduce the data on which they are focusing to essential data.

Common Mistakes in Planning, Implementation & Monitoring Ineffective goals: The goals contained within improvement planning documents tend to be vaguely written and only marginally realistic. Jumping to solutions: Leadership teams tend to prematurely jump to identifying solutions before clearly prioritizing their needs. Biting off more than one can chew: Most plans contain more action strategies than school could possibly begin to implement to high levels, let alone monitor.

Common Mistakes in Planning, Implementation & Monitoring Implementation by announcement: Assuming a common understanding exists when it really has yet to be established. Monitoring only half the data: Typically, improvement plans call for practitioners to monitor how well students are performing on large-scale tests (e.g., exams and state-wide assessments) but absent from this analysis is how well the adults are implementing hypothesized action steps.

Common Mistakes in Planning, Implementation & Monitoring Too little, too late: Practitioners monitor the impact of their efforts on student achievement too infrequently, which yields results that do not accurately detect the quality of real-time instruction. Checking for Compliance: Educators often monitor professional development by attendance or completed evaluation forms rather than any substantive application. Reporting as an end: Schools do not go back and evaluate results to modify goals and strategies, they see test scores as the final goal.