Making Data-driven K-12 School Improvement Plans

Creating and executing a K-12 school improvement plan can feel ambiguous without a clear implementation roadmap in place. In the past, school improvement plans have relied heavily on instincts or anecdotal evidence. Unsurprisingly, schools often fall short of their improvement goals without a firm grounding in data that is tied to measurable benchmarks. 

This blog will discuss creating and executing a K-12 school improvement plan, including: 

• School data collection 
• Examples of multiple measures of data for school improvement 
• 4 steps to making K-12 school improvement plans actionable 

School Data Collection 

Evidence-based school improvement plans rely on multiple measures of data. Therefore, creating school improvement plans will involve more time and energy, more stakeholders, more big ideas, and much more data.

Data helps schools and districts identify precisely where improvements are needed. When they adopt a data-driven approach to planning, it can ultimately result in plans that deliver end-to-end improvement in student outcomes.  

Multiple measures of data used for school improvement can include:  

• Demographics  
• Perceptions  
• Student Learning  
• School Processes  

4 Steps to Making K-12 School Improvement Plans Actionable  

For most schools, a data-driven approach to school improvement plans begins with adhering to four core principles of effective improvement planning. Here are four main steps to make school improvement plans actionable.  

It’s important that principals formulate school improvement plans with clear and quantifiable goals in mind. They should begin this process by inviting a cross-section of stakeholders—including students, parents, and teachers —to contribute to a comprehensive needs assessment (which should be formatted as a quantifiable rubric).  

It’s vital for administrators to use the data from these self-assessments as perception data alongside other multiple measures, like student learning, school processes, and demographics to shape the overarching vision for their improvement plans. It can be tempting to sketch the contours of a plan prior to considering all the facts, but stakeholder voices should be considered and factored into a school’s goals. Without many voices, an improvement plan’s chances of success can be hampered.  

Fortunately, with the abundance of digital technologies in schools and in people’s day-to-day lives, principals can easily implement surveys, integrate them with other data sources, visualize the multiple measures of data, and ensure that the whole picture is informing school goals.

After a principal has a set of data-informed goals, the next step is to create an action plan of concrete steps that lead to the success of those goals. To start, they should assemble a task force of different stakeholders who are assigned specific action items related to their individual specialties. For example, one group of ELA teachers may research best practices in reading instruction, while others may look into current trends in ELL education.  

Typically, these small teams will bring their findings back to the larger group to talk through what they’ve learned and explain the strategies they recommend.  

The research and development step of school improvement planning should almost always involve more parties than just the principal and their leadership staff because this step requires more time, resources, and energy than the average administrative team can provide. Additionally, diversity of voices, perspectives, and multiple data points are all necessary for an effective action plan.  

Once the team has created an action plan, the principal must act as their school’s lead metrics communicator. A school improvement plan should be a living document, meaning that it’s at the core of decision making and all invested parties frequently reference it.  

The principal should act as the key player in keeping the document “alive,” working with the school improvement team to track the plan’s progress and adjust it when necessary. While in the past, this step of school improvement planning was largely about gut feelings, by harnessing insights from an integrated education-data platform, principals can now track key performance indicators in real time, taking the guesswork out of school improvement plan evaluations.

Keeping a school improvement plan alive requires constant check-ins, and one of the most impactful ways to facilitate them is to ensure certain stakeholders are responsible for certain key data points. Meanwhile, an administrator should always be monitoring the entire plan’s progress at a high level.  

The shorter the increments between check-ins, the more motivating the data can be and the more relevant it stays to the school’s progress. For this reason, it’s important for schools to have access to integrated data dashboards that can display weekly, daily, and real-time progress.  

Ultimately, effectively executing a school improvement plan means doing everything in one’s power to keep the plan relevant to on-the-ground realities. When a school improvement plan remains relevant, it’s much more likely to produce the elevated student outcomes every school aims to achieve.  

A Successful School Improvement Plan with Multiple Measures of Data 

Schools should establish clear goals, create careful plans, monitor their progress, and make sure their specific plan is relevant and based on multiple measures of data. When they do this, they can formulate a plan for improvement that has wide-reaching benefits. Adding PowerSchool Analytics & Insights to your school’s technology solutions brings all your data together securely into clear, powerful dashboards that enable data-driven decision-making and creates the most comprehensive K-12 education data analysis process.