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

Section III
Planning Schoolwide Program Change

Step 1:
Establishing a Planning Team

Preplanning: Identifying the Right Planning Team

The principal, a school leader, or a district official usually convenes a small representative group from the school to begin preplanning. The team should include widely respected individuals who know and have the confidence of the school's various constituency groups. This group, and the planners it appoints, should be committed to the concept of whole-school reform and should recognize the possibilities for children that the schoolwide option offers. Usually, the preplanning group includes the principal or his or her designee; teachers; school staff familiar with Title I, Part A, and other federal programs; and parents or community leaders who have already been involved with ESEA programs and understand the changes created by the 1994 reauthorization. This group can convene as a steering committee to frame the basic planning issues and initiate the planning process. Tool #1: Schoolwide Programs: Considerations for Planning provides a starting point this preplanning group can use to reflect on options for its schoolwide program.

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A Checklist of Early Issues for the Preplanning Group to Consider

• Is there an existing team or committee (e.g., a school improvement team or site council) that can serve as a schoolwide planning team? Try to avoid duplicating ongoing planning activities; use the developed expertise of staff within the school.

• If a new team needs to be established, how will its members be recruited, selected, and replaced over time? Encourage volunteers or ask constituent groups—departments, teams, or classified staff—to elect representatives. In some cases, a nominating committee representing various school groups is in the best position to identify team members who reflect the range of talents, interests, and concerns in the school.

• How will the planning team develop a collaborative working relationship among its members? What activities will it use to transform team members from a collection of individuals into a true team? In some cases, consultants can train teams in consensus building, fostering learning communities, or agenda planning as part of the preliminary planning activities.
• How will the planning team coordinate with other committees or teams in the school and district?

• What autonomy will the schoolwide planning team have to make decisions or recommendations?

• How will the planning team communicate with the groups it represents and with community members who have a stake in the success of the school and its schoolwide program?

Selecting and supporting an effective planning team is important because its members will lead the comprehensive needs assessment (Step 2 of the planning process). Because total school reform is the goal, it is necessary to conduct a more methodical and extensive self-study than those undertaken in past ESEA programs. The planning strategies a school selects to meet this goal will depend on the judgment and experience of its planning team and school leaders. Tool #2: Establishing a Planning Team, located in the Tools Appendix, suggests team responsibilities and outlines the initial planning activities the team will likely undertake.

Selecting the Planning Team

The planning group should reflect the groups of school members who were represented in preplanning, plus paraprofessionals and pupil services personnel. Students in the upper grades of elementary schools and in secondary schools can also serve as partners in planning. Many schoolwides invite district-based federal program staff to work with their planning teams to keep the school informed about local and state procedures and to serve as liaisons to special experts and technical assistance providers.

If the school is combining certain ESEA program funds, the planning committee must include representatives of the students and families those programs serve. Using Migrant Education (Title I, Part C) funds means the team should include parents of migrant children or organizations representing those parents; using Indian Education (Title IX) funds means the team should include representatives from the LEA's Indian Education Parent Committee. The team might also include individuals from appropriate state and local government agencies, community-based organizations, business groups, parent and child advocates, social workers, psychologists, drug and alcohol treatment experts, and others with interests and expertise in drug abuse and violence prevention.

Planning goes most smoothly if it is carried out by respected community leaders with excellent organizing skills and reputations for getting things done. Rarely will the principal have time to lead the team, but the team leader should have the confidence and backing of the principal, and the principal should keep informed of the team's activities.

The actual number of members on the schoolwide planning team will vary from school to school, but interviews with team leaders indicate that a core group of 12 or fewer is easiest to coordinate and manage. This group can work most effectively by relying on the talents of many other people through a subcommittee structure.

The core planning team is responsible for creating a program that meets local, state, and federal educational requirements and community expectations. In time, this group will advocate the school plan to the school community as well as to district and state decision makers. Thus, a team should be sufficiently diverse to represent the school's key stakeholders. Such a group will likely have the credibility it needs to gain widespread support for the plan.

Starting the Planning Process

In early meetings, planning team members typically exchange ideas, build rapport, and develop a common understanding of personal and team goals. This is a time to assess the strengths of group members and determine the role(s) each individual will play. If the skills within the group are not well matched to some of the important activities to be conducted, the team can add members. The roles that various members will need to assume include: group process facilitator; data coordinator; technology specialist; logistics coordinator; assessment expert; and liaisons to various school groups including teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, parents, community organizations, and the central office.

Arranging for High-Quality Technical Assistance

At the beginning of the planning process, team members should consider where they will turn for help in creating the schoolwide plan. ESEA requires that schools have assistance available from state-designated school support teams. Depending on state requirements, a school may be able to select its assistance providers from the state's or district's distinguished educators or distinguished schools, Comprehensive Centers, universities, Regional Educational Laboratories, or other sources. Technical assistance services available to planning teams include:

• Schoolwide Reform: A New Outlook, available from WestEd, is a detailed guide to comprehensive, field-tested planning strategies for schoolwide programs. The materials can take a schoolwide team from team development, through needs assessment, to plan writing and implementation. Included are: illustrative survey instruments, analytical tools, lists of video, Web, and print research documents, and a detailed discussion of the rationale behind each planning component. A video tape and easy-to-use presenter's transparencies make the guide useful to both novices and experienced trainers. Web site: www.wested.org

• The School Leaders' Institute, available from the Region VI Comprehensive Center Consortium, offers a customized training program that supports beginning and continuing schoolwide programs through a combination of technical assistance and training activities. Institute participants are challenged to examine both how their school works and the effectiveness of their own leadership style. An issues paper called Reform Talk, by Kent Peterson, and the Center's newsletter, The Forum, are both available electronically and in print. Web site: www.wcer.wisc.edu/ccvi/

• Using Data for Decision Making to Raise Student Achievement, developed by the New England Comprehensive Center, provides a rationale and a systematic process for collecting and interpreting student performance and related data. It is a practical guide, including data analysis templates, that schoolwide programs can use in organizing and analyzing data for varied purposes. In addition, the New England Center hosts a national list serve on schoolwide programs. Web site: www2.edc.org/NECAC

• Pathways to School Improvement, by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), is available on-line. School teams can download "Trip Planner Inventories," which are questionnaires regarding school competence in math, science, leadership, student assessment, governance, and school-to-work. Additional questions are aimed at services for at-risk children and youth, standards, professional development, assessment strategies, and family involvement. Teams complete the inventories and submit them electronically to NCREL, which then receives the on-line survey responses, analyzes the data, and reports the results back to schools via the Internet. The analyses also direct school teams to additional information on specific program components on the Laboratory's Web site. Web site: www.ncrel.org.pathwayg.htm

• Customized technical assistance and evaluation planning are available from RMC Research (Portsmouth, NH; Denver, CO; Portland, OR; and Arlington, VA) and collaborators in the regional Comprehensive Centers. RMC uses its established planning tools, many of which are included in their widely distributed Schoolwide Programs: A Planning Guide, to tailor both assessment and school improvement processes for states and districts. Many of RMC's planning resources are also available on the Internet. Web site: www.rmcres.com or www.rmcdenver.com

Whomever the school selects, the assistance providers should be experienced in developing standards-based educational improvements in schools and communities that serve high concentrations of students in poverty. For more information on technical assistance, see Section IV.

Setting the Planning Agenda

The next step for the planning team will be to outline the year-long planning process. Reaching agreement on a draft agenda and timeline will set the team on a strong footing for the planning ahead. The agenda should allow the team to tackle hard issues that are limiting the school's potential. As research shows, the complex challenges schools face call for complex solutions (Fullan & Miles, 1992). The only way to make progress is by confronting the challenges candidly and immersing team members in the issues that halted previous reforms. There are no blueprints that work in each situation; the team's early plans are the guide. These plans can be flexible and they may change, but thinking them through and writing them down means they will be available at each stage of the school improvement process to keep the vision clear, goals in focus, and actions on track.

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Cross-cultural Planning through
Alaska's Onward to Excellence

The Chugach District in Anchorage, Alaska, turned to the technical assistance providers at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory/Comprehensive Region X Assistance Center to help facilitate districtwide school improvement. Using the Laboratory's successful cross-cultural planning process, Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE), the school system adopted its own original community-defined standards. The process, wherein people gathered to sample Chugach story-telling, dance, music, crafts, and foods, resulted in a dialogue between school officials and the community that merged village heritage and modern education practice to set the district's challenging standards. Together, representatives of all cultures in the community designed a program that adheres to the following universal principles:

Focus on Student Learning: It is important that all students learn to high standards without exception.

• All students can learn successfully

• What students learn is changing

• How well students learn must change

All Must Do Their Part: Partners are essential for success. Schools cannot do it alone.

• Community and schools share leadership

• Parents are full partners in the learning process

• Schools and communities are accountable for all students learning success

• Districts and communities are accountable for expecting, supporting, and monitoring school efforts

Everyone Will Learn Together: Everyone learning together is one step toward becoming a learning community.

• Improvement equals learning

• Learn first, then design

• Everyone is a learner and everyone is a teacher

Learning Success Will Be Measured: Data-based decision making results in increased student improvement.

• Learning will be measured in all goals areas

• New ways to think about measurement will be necessary

• Additional measures must be developed

Planning in Chugach continues, even after the implementation of the schoolwide plan. Each year, the system adds a new program component to connect families, children, and schools. "We reignite this AOTE process every year, and we work with each of the villages so they can take different roles with their kids," says assistant superintendent Richard DeLorenzo.

Web site: www.nwrel.org

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[Step 2 - Conducting a Comprehensive Needs Assessment]