Key Work Processes
The key work processes of a school organization are the steps taken or tasks done repeatedly to reach a goal and create a productive and efficient workplace where student achievement is the goal. This information about the work processes of a school organization were gathered from an interview with Andrea Williams, principal of Theresa Bunker Elementary. The first key work process discussed was the one that keeps the school moving in the right direction and making decisions based on real evidence of student work instead of just arbitrary, subjective guessing on the part of the teacher and that is the PLC process, or Professional Learning Communities. The PLC process is something that takes place in this school each Monday
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The rest of the Monday time is dedicated to teams of teachers, principal, counselor, and Title I instructional coach who work together in their respective grade levels to look over data and discuss ways they could intervene or enrich for students based on real data from standardized tests, universal screeners, or common formative assessments.
Another work process discussed is the way teachers and support staff such as special education teachers, Title I aides, and administration all meet together 3 distinct times of the year to go over and strategize together what interventions to plan out for all students and how to better meet the needs of all the students. This process is called Data Board Meetings. After teachers have completed the required universal screeners during the open assessment window the first month of school, teachers work together to aggregate the data they collected and record it on a small colored index card based on the scores the students received. The colors red, yellow, green, and blue are used to indicate where students are achieving whether below the 10th percentile (red), 11th – 25th percentile (yellow), 26th – 74th percentile (green), or above the 75th
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Williams pointed out that all of the key work processes that are in place at this school are researched-based processes that have been proven effective in other districts. There was much time and thought put into making the decision to put these processes in place (Williams, personal communication, 8/17/2016). Some of the processes come as directives or initiatives from the district such as the PLC process. While others come as innovative thinking on the part of the teachers and leaders of the school such as standards-based grading. These key work processes were all agreed upon by the faculty as a necessary processes to help move the school forward. Previous to the three years Mrs. Williams has been principal, there were other processes in place that were not as effective and needed to be replaced. The faculty are committed to these new processes and are seeing much more positive results. The majority of the faculty have determined together that these are the processes they want to use as they prepare for another school year
I had the pleasure of being able to shadow Superintendent Shirley Hall of the Maplewood School District. Ms. Hall took the reins of the district over in 2012 from a very popular superintendent who was credited with making great strides within the district. Although Ms. Hall had very large shoes to fill, she seems to be doing it with grace and enthusiasm. She credits the previous superintendent with making systemic changes and establishing the overall forward momentum of the district, but recognizes that she cannot rest on past success. Her goal is to take the district to the next level of educational excellence by focusing her and her administrative team's efforts on the P.E.L.P. coherence model from Harvard University. This model focuses the leadership's attention on the interdependence of the various aspects of their school district and how they reinforce one another to support the implementation of an improvement strategy. One of Ms. Hall's mantras was change, but not just for change sake, deep change for sustained improvement. Therefore, although Ms. Hall's predecessor was able to put the district on the right path, Ms. Hall has taken the baton and run with it; establishing her own style and path to excellence.
In School Leadership that Works Marzano introduces twenty-one responsibilities of a school leader (see Appendix A). These leadership responsibilities are used in the two change orders discussed by Marzano, McNulty and Waters (2005). “Some innovations require changes that are gradual and subtle; others require changes that are dra...
The district is now making all teachers use an assessment tool called iReady. It is a website that assesses students in math and reading. They are first tested on a kindergarten through fifth grade range to find out what they know. Then the program takes that score and determines the right level for the child and they are tested again on the level. Once all students have been assessed the program orders the students from highest to lowest and by average grade level skill they are on: early second grade, middle second grade, late second grade or any other grade. The teacher uses those scores to create her reading groups, math groups and the students she will give extra assistance to. They haven’t officially established how many times and when they will do this iReady assessment but for now they are doing it once a week for forty five minutes. The test also flags if they spent too long or too little time on a question. The ones that spent less than 15 seconds per problem are to go back and do the assessment again.
This essay aims to give an in-depth analysis of strategies by applying Kotter’s Eight Stage process framework on how change can be implemented successfully. It will further discuss reactions and resistance to the planned changes that one may encounter from staff and parents.
...ased on the job or actions of a person, and not because their title (Waite, 1995). It will be imperative that the leader could take in consideration how to facilitate any changes and the action to research. These two will help in identify best practices and goal setting for the school improvement.
My three year plan is called the Strive for Excellence plan. For the first two year I will be focusing on the decline of test scores for the last three years. By making all staff views all 2,800 students that were below average for all three years. Requiring mandatory training for all teachers and staff should be complete upon reviewing data. So they are able to identify their student’s specific strengths and weakness. The teacher will know where they need to concentrate their attention. (Sue W. Astley, 2016) School improvement is an evolving process that takes constant progress monitoring and constant input. A special computer-based program is needed in Rocky Road School District to pull up records of any student or classroom more efficiently. This will also assist with the monitoring progress over the two years. A committee of parents and staff will be created to better understand the data, come up with methods to increase scores and to maintain the...
An effective school leader possesses skills to create, implement, evaluate, improve and share a staff development plan. I met with Ben Rhodes, Sandy Creek Middle School’s principal, to interview him on the specific elements of his yearly staff development plan. We began with the design process focusing on the district and school goals. District goals include improving literacy across the content areas in reading and writing, Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum (GVC). Guaranteed and Viable Technology (GVT), and Closing the Achievement Gap (Equity in Excellence). Using a variety of assessments to focus on specific needs, Ben Rhodes and Mary Sonya, our Pupil Achievement Specialist, examined CSAP, Explore, MAP, and RAD data. They use the Colorado Growth Model to help guide them to determine if students have made adequate yearly progress. Together, they created the plan that included the district goals mentioned above as well as continuing to include new technology skills, information on special education changes with Response to Intervention (RTI), maintaining current staff implementation of literacy goals and a new goal of raising achievement in math.
The case study, The New Principal: Managing Human Resources by Jane A. MacDonald (2006) brings to light many issues a first-year principal could face. For this analysis, I am going to focus on three main ideas: school readiness for change, integrating technology, and human resource needs. All of concerns and tasks that Ms. Zola identified during her brief visit to Roma Elementary fall into one of those overarching ideas.
The steps involved in the process of making a strategic plan for the school in the district begins first with the district infrastructure receiving information about the requirements from the state department of education. The district then passes this information on to the principals at planning meetings at the end of each school year. These m...
The CIP plan is separated into specific sections, and the AIT team reviews and the CIP plan to determine PD topics. The purpose of this Continuous Improvement Plan (CIP) is to communicate the goals, strategies, and actions a school is taking to improve academic achievement and school climate. The plan is written to inform a variety of stakeholder audiences including, district and school leadership, family and community members, state and federal education agencies. The intention of the school’s CIP is to show progress on the level of teaching and learning of the students in the school. The school’s CIP provides an outline for examining instructional concerns in the school that has not made adequate progress in student’s achievement. Consequently, the school’s continuous improvement plan emphasizes the achievement in the core academic subjects and the strategies used to teach them, followed by professional developments to ensure that students are accomplishing
When all stakeholders share similar core values and agree on the aims of education, reform efforts stand a better chance for success. Knowledge, skills, critical thinking, and citizenship are core values found at the heart of my beliefs for education. I also believe it is the aim of education to prepare students as contributing members of society. In schools where core values and education aims are revisited due to reform implementation, strategies are identified along with a plan for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The federal government, state, districts, school leadership, teachers, students and parents all have significant responsibilities to make reform efforts a success.
In order to be an effective school, all school personnel must work together in a friendly, caring, polite, and respectful manner. There are a number of positions and employees in a school. “A school is a complex social system, and all the people in it contribute to making it run smoothly” (Kauchak & Eggen, 2014, p. 182). It’s important to acknowledge the contributions of all staff and faculty members. The principal, leader of the school is the ...
Before such things can be implemented, there is some specific ground work and strategies that must be done within the schools before situations or dealt with and handled. In this groundwork, principals are vital in the success of the program they implement in their schools (Ballard, Argus & Remley, 1999). They are the conductors of each category needed in a successful program. Principals must hold students and staff accountable for their roles in changing the climate of the school and they must allow for the time and manpower implementing a new program will take. Gil (2002, p. 73) explains that first a solid code of conduct must be in place and operating smoothly. These clearly stated rules are to be communicated to all students and staff what the expectation is for behavior and they must be “enforced without
As teachers, we have to monitor the progress our students make each day, week, quarter and year. Classroom assessments are one of the most crucial educational tools for teachers. When assessments are properly developed and interpreted, they can help teachers better understand their students learning progress and needs, by providing the resources to collect evidence that indicates what information their students know and what skills they can perform. Assessments help teachers to not only identify and monitor learners’ strengths, weaknesses, learning and progress but also help them to better plan and conduct instruction. For these reasons, ongoing classroom assessment is the glue that binds teaching and learning together and allows educators to monitor their efficacy and student learning.
Learning is the essence of education and serves as the catalyst in all decision-making for academic communities. School systems serve students, families, and the community and have the responsibility of providing learning opportunities that allow students to grow academically and socially as they prepare for adult life. Embedded in this undertaking is a responsibility for establishing the right “fit” between the school system’s goals and its people. Forming meaningful relationships and investing in deeper levels of understanding assist in providing a structure that embraces empowerment, support, open dialogue, and collaborative decision-making. Aligned with this structure is what Bolman and Deal (2013) referred to as the human resource frame that “centers on what organizations and people do to and for one another” (p.113). Grounded in this relationship between the organization and its people are core assumptions outlining that systems exist to serve people’s needs and that people and organizations need one another.