How can school personnel identify and select evidence-based practices or programs?

Commonly Used Methods for Collecting Information

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Examples of Needs Assessment Surveys

Outlined below are two methods for collecting information. The first survey—which asks respondents to rate each item—is general enough to be used by teachers, parents, and students. The second survey was specifically designed for teachers and asks them to rank-order a list of items.

Disagree No Opinion Agree 1. The school climate at DHS is welcoming and promotes academic success for its students. 1 2 3 2. DHS does not adequately prepare students for college.* 1 2 3 3. DHS offers ample extracurricular opportunities. 1 2 3 4. DHS adequately prepares students for the workplace. 1 2 3 5. DHS maintains appropriate discipline and safety standards for its students. 1 2 3 6. DHS needs to improve its graduation rate.* 1 2 3 7. DHS meets the technology needs of its students. 1 2 3 8. DHS is prepared to meet the needs of students who lack the necessary academic/ social skills to succeed. 1 2 3 * Because items 2 and 6 are stated negatively (that is, choosing “Disagree” indicates positive endorsement of the item, whereas choosing “Agree” indicates negative endorsement), when school staff compile the data from the completed surveys, they will need to reverse-code items 2 and 6. Because these items are stated negatively, “Disagree” should get the highest score (i.e., “Disagree” = 3) and “Agree” the lowest score (i.e., “Agree” = 1).

Grafton Middle School Teacher Survey

Rank-order the following items from most in need of improvement (1) to least in need of improvement (9): ____ Math instruction ____ Reading instruction ____ Writing instruction ____ Behavior management ____ Availability of computers ____ Social skills ____ Parental involvement ____ Teacher planning time ____ Professional development opportunities

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baseline

The level at which students, school personnel, or other individuals are performing before a new practice or program is implemented.

Data Sources

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Transcript: Mel Riddile, EdD

It’s really important for leaders to know the needs of their school before they purchase a practice or program. A major proportion of, like, 70–80 percent of school-change efforts failed. In fact, only 10 percent actually reached their goals. We used to think that activity equaled success, and that if we just did a lot of things it would somehow work out to be more successful, but today leaders have to really be in tune with their school, what the needs of their school are. There has to be a sense of urgency and a clear focus for the staff. So we really need to tie everything right into what the needs of the school are, and it really all starts with data. And that is data on our student performance, operational data, and that’s what really needs to drive it, so we really need to know our school inside and out, and make sure that whatever we do matches the needs of what our school’s needs are. And sometimes packaged programs don’t do that.

Transcript: Brenda Williams, EdD

Generally, there are several ways for school leaders to approach data collection. In this age of accountability, certainly student performance data is very important to identify and determine the educational gaps between groups of students. Of course, the traditional approaches of data collection—such as well-constructed surveys and report card formats—are helpful, but caution should be exercised given the low return-rate on these strategies, and often some incentive is needed to get some of those back. One major recommendation that I would make is that this process should be ongoing rather than once or twice annual snapshots, as we typically engage in when we do a needs-assessment. Leaders should build in environmental-scanning strategies, such as a periodic SWOT analysis to facilitate dialog between the representative groups of teachers and other staff members. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats or challenges. For internal constituents as well as external, the traditional grade- or subject-level representation should not be the only consideration informing such groups. To ensure diverse perspective leaders should include individuals who vary according to their years of experience in the field, gender, ethnicity, teaching styles, and so forth.

With parents and family members, we should consider SES, gender, ethnicity, education levels, grade levels represented, and other factors. We should ask for feedback from honor roll parents as well as the parents of students with academic and behavioral challenges. Family nights with movies for kids and times to dialog for parents is a fairly low-cost strategy for encouraging parents to assist the school with assessing what’s working and what’s not. For community members, strategies such as business roundtables have promise for use with business leaders, particularly at the district level, to gain insight from their vantage point on what schools need to do better and what strengths they see in our graduates that they hire. So, generally, these are some of the strategies that I think work across diverse constituent groups in terms of helping with needs assessment. But it is helpful, once again, that this not be a one-time-only event and that our constituents get use to us asking them these kinds of questions so that they will volunteer or participate in focus groups or other opportunities, which should be multiple things like Websites, suggestion boxes, brainstorming sessions. All have promise for giving us the kind of feedback that we are looking toward.

Transcript: Cynthia Alexander, EdD

We do a lot of formal and informal data. We utilize the data that’s provided by the district, but we also do in-house data. We do a SWOT analysis, which is part of the strategic planning process, which is a corporate model but it works in education as well. We take an honest look at the year prior, even the semester prior, and we look at the things that are in place, we look at what’s working, what’s not working, what could be better with more training, and we make decisions based on that. So we look at a very strategic process and be totally honest about the findings and try to build on the strengths, look at our opportunities for growth, and eliminate any weaknesses that will prevent a successful implementation. I do have a very high ELL population, high special ed population, and we did a survey and it amazed me how many students we had whose parents had not graduated from high school. Our approach when it comes to data and information is always given in a non-threatening way. It is never our intention to make the parent feel like they don’t understand. Our goal is to always put it in a way that, no matter how it is interpreted, it’s interpreted in a way where these are the steps that are necessary in order to make sure that your child succeeds. It’s very user-friendly. There’s some parents that we call—you know, the ones who can’t come to the PTA meeting or can’t come to the meetings—we send information home, and it’s at a point where even the child knows some of the major things going on in the school as far as data, and we put it in a digestible form that even the students can explain to the parents what’s going on at the school. And I think when you reach the students, by default you reach the parents. The goal of the school is never to isolate or intimidate the parents with data information. It’s to inform them.

Determine School Needs

Paige Elementary School

The district is strongly encouraging all schools to adopt an RTI approach for reading. RTI is an approach composed of several components: high-quality instruction, frequent progress monitoring, increasingly intense levels of instruction, and data-based decision making. Paige Elementary’s principal and school improvement team believe that they should begin by implementing either high-quality instruction or frequent progress monitoring and gradually adding the other components. To determine which aspect of RTI to begin implementing this year, they survey the teachers during a staff meeting. The results indicate that the teachers prefer to begin with progress monitoring.

Now that their needs assessment is complete, the school improvement team collects baseline data to use to evaluate program effectiveness and student outcomes after implementation. For this reason, the principal and the rest of the school improvement team examine:

• Standardized test scores for the last year
  • Overall scores, reading scores
  • Achievement of subgroups (e.g., sped, EL) on this test
• Number of referrals to special education assessment because of poor reading performance

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Determine School Needs

Grafton Middle School

The school improvement team at Grafton Middle is working to identify areas that need to be addressed during the upcoming school year. As such, they decide to survey teachers and parents to determine their issues of greatest concern. Below are the brief surveys that were passed out to each group. Although the surveys are quite similar, the last item or two on each addresses issues more relevant to a specific target group.

Grafton Middle School Teacher Survey

Grafton Middle School strives to create a safe and nurturing school environment in which students can experience academic success. To help us to achieve this goal, we want to know how you think we can make Grafton Middle a better school. Please rank-order the following items from most in need of improvement (1) to least in need of improvement (9): ____ Math instruction ____ Reading instruction ____ Writing instruction ____ Behavior management ____ Availability of computers ____ Social skills ____ Parental involvement ____ Teacher planning time ____ Professional development opportunities

Grafton Middle School Parent Survey

Grafton Middle School strives to create a safe and nurturing school environment in which your child can experience academic success. To help us with this goal, we want to know how you think we can make Grafton Middle a better school. Please rank-order the following items from most in need of improvement(1) to least in need of improvement (7): ____ Math instruction ____ Reading instruction ____ Writing instruction ____ Behavior management ____ Availability of computers ____ Social skills ____ Teacher availability   **Please return by next Friday.**

Once the teachers and parents have returned their surveys, the administrative staff will compile the data by tallying the number of respondents who ranked each item as the area of most concern (see survey results below). The surveys reveal that both teachers and parents identify reading as the area of greatest concern, while both groups rank math as the area of second-most concern.

Now that the primary areas (i.e., reading and math) have been identified, the school improvement team examines existing sources of data related to those areas of need:

• Standardized test scores for the last two years
  • Reading scores, math scores
  • Achievement of subgroups (e.g., sped, EL, at-risk)
• Report card grades

The school improvement team examines the standardized test scores for reading and math. The percentage of students that attained low scores during the past two years confirms that these areas, especially reading, do in fact warrant attention.

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Determine School Needs

DuBois High School

As they plan for the upcoming year, the school improvement team at DuBois High School creates and distributes the following survey to teachers, parents, and students in order to identify potential areas of school improvement.

Disagree No Opinion Agree 1. The school climate at DHS is welcoming and promotes academic success for its students. 1 2 3 2. DHS does not adequately prepare students for college.* 1 2 3 3. DHS offers ample extracurricular opportunities. 1 2 3 4. DHS adequately prepares students for the workplace. 1 2 3 5. DHS maintains appropriate discipline and safety standards for its students. 1 2 3 6. DHS needs to improve its graduation rate.* 1 2 3 7. DHS meets the technology needs of its students. 1 2 3 8. DHS is prepared to meet the needs of students who lack the necessary academic/ social skills to succeed. 1 2 3 * Because items 2 and 6 are stated negatively (that is, choosing “Disagree” indicates positive endorsement of the item, whereas choosing “Agree” indicates negative endorsement), when school staff compile the data from the completed surveys, they will need to reverse-code items 2 and 6. Because these items are stated negatively, “Disagree” should get the highest score (i.e., “Disagree” = 3) and “Agree” the lowest score (i.e., “Agree” = 1).

Parents Teachers Students 1. The school climate at DHS is welcoming and promotes academic success for its students. 2.1 1.9 1.7 2. DHS does not adequately prepare students for college.* 2.2 2.5 2.0 3. DHS offers ample extracurricular opportunities. 2.8 2.7 2.5 4. DHS adequately prepares students for the workplace. 2.5 2.3 2.4 5. DHS maintains appropriate discipline and safety standards for its students. 1.7 1.3 1.2 6. DHS needs to improve its graduation rate.* 2.1 2.3 2.1 7. DHS meets the technology needs of its students. 2.7 2.8 2.6 8. DHS is prepared to meet the needs of students who lack the necessary academic/ social skills to succeed. 2.6 2.5 2.3

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