Campus Improvement Plans - Let's Get Real

[cross posted at www.shannonprincipal.edublogs.org]

Let’s be honest, there are only two reasons we write Campus Improvement Plans.

Reason Number One, because we are required to by Central Administration. How many Campus Improvement Plans have been written in the past few years? How many reams of paper, administrative hours, even valuable teaching time has been lost meeting, reaching consensus, writing, and then publishing impressive looking documents with pages and pages of goals and objectives? Maybe you threw in a few color charts? Oh my, look at this impressive 4 color chart of reading scores comparing this year to the last 25 years.

Looked great on the bookshelf, didn’t it?…

“Do you have a Campus Plan?”

“Yep,” pointing to the 3” bright orange binder. “Right there. No wait…that’s 1998…THAT one,” pointing to the bright blue binder on the top shelf, “that’s this year’s.”

The only time it ever came off the bookshelf was to be dusted off and “updated” with “goals accomplished or continued” each May or June. I believe the longest Campus Improvement Plan I ever wrote was 24 pages. Too bad I never did anything with it because I seem to recall it contained 70+ goals which would have solved every problem known to modern education. We even had a goal to get rid of head lice in kindergarten!

Now THAT was a plan! Yessiree!

The real problem was that everyone in the system was ok with this process, in spite of all the research and anecdotal records…not to mention that most central administrators had done the same thing when they were at the campus level.

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Reason Number Two, we write Campus Improvement Plans because they really can – and do – help identify and correct areas of weakness within the system.

Thank goodness for the eventual advent and application of the “System Approach” to public school management. And voices in the wilderness like Michael Schmoker who broke through the noise and was heard loud and clear in our district arguing for realistic planning.

NOW, at last, we are beginning to write honest, realistic, “use-able” Campus Plans. We call them Continuous Improvement Plans now, but the title really isn’t important. The “revolutionary” idea that has made CIPs actual living plans is that we are at long last allowed to keep them short, honest, and to-the-point.

For those of you who may be preparing to write your CIPs (or whatever they’re called in your district), please allow me to share a simple – but realistic – outline for writing your plan this year. [It’s also referred to as the Plan Do Study Act format. (Jim Shipley and Baldrige)]:

Plan: Listen to the noise in your system. Stop, sit down, and review the past year. What was the biggest problem in the delivery and evaluation of instruction on your campus? Shhh. Listen. What did staff, parents, students, the community, or your supervisors give you the most grief about? THAT’s the noise. Test scores? AYP? Cheerleaders? Lack of materials? Backed up toilets? What was the loudest noise in the system? That’s where you start. Here’s the next – and hardest part…but BEST part of this process – you can only pick THREE of the noise makers to address in your Improvement Plan. [My last CIP had TWO GOALS.]

Do: Get serious about the goals you pick. Write specific objectives for each goal. Our last CIP had a total of 5 objectives (4 for one goal, 1 for the second goal). Map out the materials and personnel needed to address the issue. Make them a priority. Publish them…I gave every teacher a brochure (not a thick binder). It was a single page, tri-folded brochure that had our goals identified. Everyone knew our goals and objectives.

Study: Regularly evaluate your progress. Gather data and evaluate the system processes you are using to meet the goals. Are they working, are any adjustments needed?

Act: Revise your plan as needed according to your on-going assessment of the goals, celebrate completion of goals and objectives, and then – – – start the whole process over either with current goals that have been revised or totally new goals that have been identified.

But never place the entire campus focus on more than THREE goals at a time.

Here’s the brochure provided to staff, students, parents, visitors to campus…anyone who wanted one. SLC CIP You’ll notice two things: it’s short and to the point, and it’s brutally honest: We didn’t play the game of just stating “100% of 100% of the students will pass 100% of the tests with scores of 100%”. Hey, we really looked, and after data disaggregation and serious discussion, we knew that a 60% passing rate in one of the areas was honest, realistic, and doable. So that became our objective for everyone to see. Don’t write your Campus Goals as a document to impress people! Identify the loudest noise (problem) and go after THAT.

Who knows, if done properly, maybe we really can solve the problems one-by-one until we get down to those pesky head lice in kindergarten!