Monitoring, Reflecting on, and Evaluating Progress toward School and District Goals

Video Transcription

In site-based management, just like in any other planning process, a critical component is an ongoing cycle of reflection and evaluation of the protocols and practices along with ongoing reflection and review of your progress towards meeting your goals. In this tutorial, we'll take a closer look at this process of monitoring, reflecting, and evaluating. I'll also demonstrate how to use a plus/minus/delta chart to revise strategies or goals, and I'll show you how to use the SMART acronym to alter a SMART goal. Let's get started.

Let's begin by discussing the ongoing cycle of monitoring, reflecting, and evaluating, not only on protocols and practices but also on progress towards goals at the team, school, and district levels. This is an important cycle in the process of site-based management.

Any time that a team is engaging in a review of data being monitored for progress towards goals, that data review should include reflection on what's currently working, what's not currently working, and what changes might be made moving forward. As part of this reflection and review process, your team should ask whether the data is demonstrating progress towards meeting your identified goals and whether those goals are moving you closer to achieving the vision and mission of the team, the school, and the district. Engaging in this reflection process should help your team to determine whether the strategies you're employing are actually effective in helping you make progress towards your goals. So here are some pointers.

It's essential that you consider both qualitative and quantitative data in your reflection and review. Your team should evaluate the specific data that was identified in your goals. Often this will include student achievement data, but it may include other types of data as well. The team needs to determine whether this data is displaying movement towards the desired point that was established in the goals.

Here's another important thought for your team to consider. If the data does indeed demonstrate that you have achieved your goals, does this truly mean that you are moving towards achieving the vision and mission of the team? What about the vision and mission of the school or of the entire district? It's important to understand that if your answer to any of these questions is a no, then a revision of your goals is just as important as a potential revision of the strategies that you are implementing in order to reach your goals.

You might consider using a plus/minus/delta chart for your reflection since this tool allows you to simultaneously review both qualitative and quantitative data. Recall that a plus/minus/delta chart is a graphic organizer that allows an individual or team to reflect on strategies that are working, strategies that are getting in the way of progress, and ideas for strategies that might help in overcoming any barriers that are preventing the team or individual from meeting their goals.

Remember, delta is the symbol in mathematics and reasoning that represents the change in something. So that's why we use the delta symbol to represent this third column. So in this context, in the plus column, your team can record the strategies that are working to support your approach. Remember that this determination should be made based on the data.

In the minus column, you'll record the strategies that are not working or strategies that are getting in the way of progress towards your goals-- again, determined by the data. Finally, in the delta column, you'll ask yourselves what you might do differently in order to make better progress towards your goals or to remove barriers that might be hindering your progress.

Let me model for you the process of using a plus/minus/delta chart to revise your strategies and potentially your goals. Keep in mind that when you actually go through this process with your team, you will be able to assign specific roles and responsibilities to the members of the team for each of the action steps in the process. Each team member can be assigned one or more roles in the process of strategy review, strategy revision, and goal revision. One team member can also be assigned as project leader in order to monitor and facilitate progress.

The first step in the process is to review the SMART goal or strategy as a team. For example, let's say my team is addressing a goal focused on increasing student achievement on a school-developed common assessment through the use of Marzano's high-yield instructional strategies. In the plus column, the team will list strategies that are supporting their progress towards the goal. In the minus column, the team will list the strategies that might be getting in the way of making progress towards the goal. In the delta column, the team will brainstorm some possible strategies that will address the problem areas and move the team closer to their goals.

After brainstorming, the team will review the suggestions in the delta column. If there are several suggestions that are similar, the team can group these suggestions together. Team members will then rank the suggestions in order of their personally perceived value or importance. This will help the team to come to a consensus on the best approaches for addressing the issues.

Next, the team will agree-- once again, by consensus-- on the strategies that need to be replaced or revised. And finally, the team will revise the strategies using the agreed-upon suggestions. As always, it's important to consider whether the revisions you've made and hopefully the subsequent attainment of the goal will truly move your team towards reaching the vision and the mission of the team, the school, and the district. If not, your team will need to consider actually revising the SMART goal itself. So next, let me walk you through that process.

To begin altering a SMART goal, it's important to ensure that all team members are on the same page regarding the intent of the goal. If the data tells you that even adjusting your strategies and reaching your goal is not going to move you closer to the vision and mission of the team or of the school or of the district, then what should the focus of the goal actually be? You can use a SMART goal template to record your answers to the following questions.

For S from the SMART acronym, what specifically do we want to accomplish? You should answer this based on your current review of data, progress, and alignment to the vision and mission at the team, school, and district level. For M, how are we going to measure our progress towards the goal? For A, is the new goal attainable? For the letter R, how can we be sure that this new goal is more relevant or more appropriate to the situation? And finally, for the letter T, what is the new timeline for the goal?

After discussing the importance of a continuous cycle of review, reflection, and evaluation, I walked you through the process of revising strategies and SMART goals to ensure that your team is consistently moving towards achieving the overarching vision and mission at the team, school, and district levels.

So now it's your turn to stop and reflect. If you're currently experiencing difficulties in achieving any of your individual or team goals, take some time to reflect and consider whether the problem might lie in the strategies being used to address the goal or whether the goal itself may need to be revised.

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 joining me. Have a great day.