School Improvement Plans (SIP)

Abstract

Since the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation was passed into law, school improvement plans are formally defined in the United States. No Child Left Behind is a policy that seek to ensure that schools are educating students effectively. It attempts to measure this by using standardized tests and by setting annual progress goals for each school. If a school’s standardized test scores do not meet the annual progress goals for two years in a row, then under the requirements of NCLB, that school must, within three months, prepare a school improvement plan.

Overview

The No Child Left Behind legislation that shaped the landscape of American education for over a decade has often been the subject of controversy, with critics stating that it focused too much on setting goals and giving tests, and not enough on reinventing instruction and funding schools. One of the core premises underlying NCLB was that schools that were not functioning well only needed to have a plan to follow. For this reason, NCLB established standards for schools to meet, and set annual goals for each school to reach on the way to meeting the standards. Many educators complained that the annual goals which were set were often unrealistic given a particular school’s challenges, but the fact remained that schools either met the goals or they didn’t. Those that did not meet their annual goals for two years in a row were placed on "academic status," meaning that they were under a heightened level of scrutiny and had to demonstrate how they would improve their performance. One of the requirements of schools in academic status was to create a school improvement plan (SIP), describing the steps that the school would take to improve instructional effectiveness and help students perform better (Tirozzi, 2013).

The purpose of requiring schools to create an (SIP) is to give all stakeholders—administrators, teachers, students, parents, school board members—a framework with which to define what the problems are and what some potential solutions might be. Like any framework, the SIP must contain certain elements to be considered complete (Walker, Cheney & Horner, 2012). Among the required elements of the SIP are:

• Provisions for teacher mentoring
• Descriptions of how parental involvement in the school improvement process will be incentivized
• Explicit discussion of the problems with academic achievement that were the main cause of the school failing to meet its annual progress goals
• Strategies based on scientific research that will improve the school’s standardized test scores on reading and math (these are the main subjects of interest in NCLB)
• Establish a time line of objectives that will enable the school to meet its objectives, as well as defining which constituency (local education agencies, state education agencies, administration, etc.) will be responsible for each specific part of the SIP.

Further Insights

At first blush, the purpose of school improvement plans seems straightforward enough: defining a roadmap for improving a school that has gradually found itself off course. As often happens, however, unexpected difficulties can arise when it comes time to work with the school staff, students, and parents. This is because the changes embodied in an SIP are more than just abstract ideas written into a report and then filed away in a binder and forgotten. Changes in curriculum and instructional practices can be huge disruptions to the routines teachers have established over many years, even decades. Getting teachers to understand the need to change what they are doing can be an uphill battle because some teachers take the attitude that if change is necessary then it must be because the teachers are doing something wrong. In other words, the teachers, when told about the need for an SIP, may become personally offended.

When teachers believe they are being blamed for student underperformance, they may react as if the school’s failure to meet annual progress goals is a personal failure on their part. They can become extremely defensive, feeling that they are being attacked and their professional qualifications called into question (Hirsh & Foster, 2013). For this reason, the creation and implementation of an SIP can be an extremely difficult test of the school administration’s leadership abilities.

The principal or the principal’s designees must very carefully educate the entire school community about which areas of performance the school is strong at, and which ones are weaker and need to be improved as part of the SIP. Ideally, prior to approaching the entire school community about these issues, the school leadership will have private consultations with those teachers whose subjects have been identified as underperforming. This way, these teachers will be less likely to feel blindsided by a school-wide announcement that could be interpreted as pointing the finger at them, and they will be able to brainstorm with the school leaders about different strategies that could be incorporated into the SIP (Carter, 2013). When the school-wide announcement is made, these teachers will feel that they are part of the solution to the school’s problems, instead of feeling that they are being accused of being the problem. Overall, the most important thing school leaders can do when developing an SIP is to find ways to get everyone working together toward a common goal, namely the need to raise the school’s performance up to the level required by the annual progress goals. If the leadership can make this happen and sustain it, then it is less likely that the various members of the school community will fall back into old behaviors or begin pointing fingers at one another to find someone to blame for the state of the school (Lick, Clauset & Murphy, 2013).

One strategy frequently included in school improvement plans, in part because of its effectiveness and in part due to its low cost, is that of teachers at the school observing one another during the course of instruction. The theory behind this approach is that it can help teachers trust the school improvement process more because they are learning from colleagues whom they know instead of learning from strangers. This process is successful in schools where faculty are on good terms; in schools where there are difficult personal relationships among colleagues, classroom observation can be challenging or even counterproductive (Feeney, Moravcik & Nolte, 2013). Many teachers also report that it can be very challenging to even schedule such classroom observations, since all teachers at a school tend to teach all day long, so the only way one teacher can go observe another is by obtaining a substitute, which directly impacts instruction in the observing teacher’s own classroom.

Another frequently implemented strategy used in SIPs is the professional learning community (PLC). Establishing a PLC means providing time for teachers at a school to regularly meet together, discuss their curricula and problems, and work together to come up with ideas about new teaching methods to try out. PLCs are sometimes viewed by teachers as an imposition at first, but in most cases these attitudes change as the SIP progresses and teachers come to understand that the PLC means they no longer need to feel isolated as they try to figure out how to help their students learn (Tanner, 2014).

Viewpoints

Throughout the years that NCLB has been in effect, there has been debate about whether the legislation is designed to help students acquire a better grasp of the curriculum or to help them simply perform better on standardized tests (Dimmock, 2012). One of the positive results achieved by the use of SIPs is that it has the power to help teachers truly incorporate the academic standards into their day to day instruction, so that over time students learn the course content appropriate for their grade level and not simply the best strategies to use when taking standardized tests. Teachers who have been through the process of developing and implementing an SIP frequently comment that as worthwhile as their teacher preparation courses in college were, nothing has prepared them for the classroom like their regular participation in their PLC. This is because the PLC work they do is tied directly to their real work in the classroom.

Feedback such as this is often cited by supporters of SIP and of NCLB, as evidence of their success (Kowalski, 2012). They key to this success, they say, lies in the fact that bringing school accountability down to the level of the local school system is the best way of personalizing the problems that exist in the American education system in a way that state and national data simply cannot. SIPs are a way of getting a community to recommit to making its school successful by drawing attention to the challenges the school faces and then asking for the help of every group in the community to overcome those challenges.

NCLB presses school systems to produce disaggregated data so that it is possible to drill down all the way to the student level in order to discover what areas of instruction are working and which need support. SIPs are actually another means by which school reform champions can drill down to discover the problems confronting their local school system. When a state reports that its reading scores for the year are down 10 percent, parents do not have to be satisfied with that basic level of detail. If their local schools are subsequently identified as underperforming within this larger, statewide trend, then the specific problems being experienced at those schools will be revealed and analyzed, and will have solutions proposed, debated, and implemented. Most would agree that this is a much more effective response than simply lamenting the decline in scores (Tomal, 2015).

Terms & Concepts

Disaggregated Data: Disaggregated data is data that can be broken down into subgroupings and categories; it is the opposite of aggregated data, which lumps together data from many different groups. In the past, schools kept mostly aggregated data, which made it impossible to tell if the school was educating all students effectively. For example, if a school only recorded the average grade point average for all students in the school, this would hide the fact that (hypothetically) grade point averages for a particular minority group were a full point lower than for students from the dominant culture. To prevent schools from being able to hide situations like this, NCLB and other legislation has required schools to keep disaggregated data as well as aggregate data.

Academic Status: A NCLB implemented probationary status indicating a school has not met its annual goals for two years; as a result it must prepare an SIP.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB): Legislation passed into law in 2001 and signed by President George W. Bush. NCLB relied heavily on defining educational standards, creating progress goals for schools based on those standards, and using standardized tests to assess whether or not schools were meeting the goals that had been set for them. Schools unable to meet the annual progress goals for two years in a row were required to formulate an SIP outlining how the school would bring its performance up to expectations.

Professional Development: Professional development activities in the field of education are different forms of teacher training, which are required of teachers on an ongoing basis during their careers. They are usually opportunities for teachers to learn about new curricula, new teaching methods and projects, and to network with other educators for professional support. SIPs usually must include some provisions for professional development, on the theory that part of the reason for the school’s unsatisfactory performance may be that the school’s teachers need a refresher course in how to engage students with the material.

Scientifically Based Research: To help schools avoid being taken in by unsubstantiated products and curricula, SIPs are required to base themselves on scientifically based research. Thus, if a school wants to include a new package of math tutoring software as part of its SIP, there needs to be scientifically based research showing that the software produces a tangible benefit when students use it as it was designed.

State Education Agency: A state education agency is the state level counterpart to a local education agency; usually this means that the state education agency is the state’s department of education. Just as is the case with LEAs, when a school is required to develop an SIP, there are specific requirements that the state education agency must perform.

Bibliography

Caputo, A., & Rastelli, V. (2014). School improvement plans and student achievement: Preliminary evidence from the quality and merit project in Italy. Improving Schools, 17(1), 72–98. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=94891811&site=ehost-live

Carter, H. M. (2013). Creating effective community partnerships for school improvement: A guide for school leaders. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Dimmock, C. A. J. (2012). Leadership, capacity building and school improvement: Concepts, themes and impact. London, UK: Routledge.

Feeney, S., Moravcik, E., & Nolte, S. (2013). Who am I in the lives of children?: An introduction to early childhood education. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Hirsh, S., & Foster, A. (2013). A school board guide to leading successful schools: Focusing on learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Huber, D. J., & Conway, J. M. (2015). The effect of school improvement planning on student achievement. Planning & Changing, 46(1/2), 56–70. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=111061930&site=ehost-live

Kowalski, T. J. (2012). Case studies on educational administration. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Lick, D. W., Clauset, K. H., & Murphy, C. U. (2013). Schools can change: A step-by-step change creation system for building innovative schools and increasing student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Tanner, J. (2014). The pitfalls of reform: Its incompatibility with actual improvement. Lanham, MD: R&L Education.

Tirozzi, G. N. (2013). Stop the school bus: Getting education reform back on track. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Tomal, D. R. (2015). Supervision and evaluation for learning and growth: Strategies for teacher and school leader improvement. London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

Van Der Voort, G., & Wood, L. (2014). Assisting school management teams to construct their school improvement plans: an action learning approach. South African Journal of Education, 34(3), 1–7. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=97585623&site=ehost-live

Walker, B. A., Cheney, D., & Horner, R. H. (2012). The SAPR-PBIS manual: A team-based approach to implementing effective school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Suggested Reading

Babbage, K. J. (2012). Reform doesn’t work: Grassroots efforts can provide answers to school improvement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Bauer, S. C., & Brazer, S. D. (2012). Using research to lead school improvement: Turning evidence into action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Duke, D. L. (2013). Are we pushing for greatness?. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(5), 45–49. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=85410302&site=ehost-live

Isernhagen, J. C. (2012). A portrait of administrator, teacher, and parent perceptions of Title I school improvement plans. Journal of At-Risk Issues, 17(1), 1–7. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=85997593&site=ehost-live

Sparks, S. O. (2013). School improvement: A citywide effort in Syracuse. Education Digest, 79(4), 16–21. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=92947680&site=ehost-live