Connecting the Mission, Vision and Goals to the School Improvement Plan

Video Transcription

In this tutorial, we'll take a look at the considerations that are necessary as you work to connect the vision, mission, and goals to your school improvement plan. After talking about the alignment of a school improvement plan to the vision, mission, and goals, we'll then take a closer look at the components of a school improvement plan. Let's get started.

Let's begin by talking about the mission, vision, and goals and how they can be connected to the development of a site-based school improvement plan. School improvement plan development should be an inclusive process that involves all of the school and district stakeholders. The PLC that is responsible for developing the school improvement plan is generally the school improvement team. This team usually includes, at the very least, the principal, some teacher leaders, a parent representative, a student representative, and a community representative.

As is the case with any other PLC, the school improvement team should develop norms before they begin working on the school improvement plan. After those norms are established, then the team can begin their work by examining the vision and mission of the school district. This will allow them to align the vision and mission and goals of the school improvement plan with those of the district.

A key idea to remember here, though, is that the vision and mission and goals of the district can indeed be personalized based on the unique student and community characteristics of the school as evidenced in various types of assessment data. This assessment data may include state assessments that tell us whether schools are making adequate progress in the annual yearly progress requirements at the federal level. Remember, these state assessments aim to measure proficiency as it's defined by the requirements in No Child Left Behind. But the team is not limited to just looking at statewide assessment data. There are all sorts of other types of data that the team can look at in order to help them make the best possible decisions for the school improvement plan.

There are many different templates and formats that can be used to create a school improvement plan, but no matter what format is used, there are some elements that all school improvement plans should have. First, every school improvement plan should include a vision and a mission. The plan should include a list of all of the team members, and it should include a timeline for the actions and goals that are going to be part of the plan.

The school improvement plan should also include the action plans and the SMART goals for the plan organized into areas of focus for the school year. It should outline the systems of support and professional development that are going to be necessary to reach the goals outlined in the plan, and it should also include a process and a mechanism for regularly reporting progress. This progress might be reported every quarter or every trimester, for example.

So let's look at a sample school improvement plan so that we can see what these components might look like in the context of an actual plan. Here is a sample two-year school improvement plan. The plan includes the mission and vision of the school improvement plan, and it also includes a list of the members of the school improvement team. It includes a timeline for school improvement initiatives, and each area of focus includes an action plan and a SMART goal. The plan outlines the support and professional development that will be included, and it also includes details about how progress will be monitored and reported.

Remember, no matter what template or format you use to create your school improvement plan, any well-developed school improvement plan is going to effectively guide site-based management because it will be aligned to the district's vision and mission and goals while also being personalized so that it meets the unique needs of the school. This means that a school improvement plan can be a very effective tool to guide site-based management initiatives. Furthermore, since the goals in a school improvement plan are written in adherence to the SMART acronym, the school improvement plan actually includes all of the necessary metrics and accountability features that are going to be able to tell us whether our site-based management is actually meeting its objective of continuous improvement in terms of teaching and learning and school culture and environment alike. In order to make sure that there is ongoing alignment and ongoing support, every school improvement team should be reporting on its goals, its needs, and its progress to the overarching district administrative team.

So now, it's your turn to stop and reflect. If there is currently a school improvement plan in place for your school, take a few moments to review that plan and see if it includes all of the necessary components that we outlined in this tutorial. To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.