Unified Improvement
Planning:
Action Planning
(School Level)
Developed by the Center for Transforming Learning
and Teaching
www.ctlt.org
Session Purpose
Ensure planning teams are
prepared develop action plans
as part of unified improvement
planning.
Materials
Norms
The standards of behavior by
which we agree to operate
while we are engaged in
learning together.
Session Outcomes
Engage in handson learning
activities and
dialogue with
colleagues.
Access additional
resources.
Complete followup activities.
• Describe a major improvement
strategy that responds to the root
cause of a performance
challenge.
• Plan to identify additional major
improvement strategies and
associated action steps.
• Identify implementation
benchmarks.
Agenda
Major
Improvement
Strategies
Action Steps
Plan for
Progress
Monitoring
Implementation
Benchmarks
Unified Improvement Planning Processes
Gather and
Organize
Data
Review
Current
Performance
Describe
Significant
Trends
Prioritize
Performance
Challenges
Identify Root
Causes
Set
Performance
Targets
Identify Major
Improvement
Strategies
Identify
Interim
Measures
Identify
Implementation
Benchmarks
Action Planning
Major Improvement Strategies
• Work with a partner to review:
– Action Planning Form (UIP template, p. 11) and
– Action Planning Form: Identify Major Improvement Strategies
(UIP Handbook, p. 18)
– Unified Improvement Plan Quality Criteria: Major Improvement
Strategies (UIP Handbook, p. 50).
• Be prepared to answer these questions:
– To what must major improvement strategies respond?
– What information must be included about each major
improvement strategy?
Major Improvement Strategies
• Respond to root causes of the
performance problems the
school/district is attempting to remedy.
• Action steps are smaller activities that fit
within larger major improvement strategies.
• Improvement Strategies and Action Steps
must be associated with resources, people,
and time.
Turnaround Schools
• For Turnaround schools, Major Improvement
Strategies must include one of the seven
Turnaround Options.
• Some school with Turnaround Plans may be in
the second or third year of implementing one of
these options.
Reviewing Turnaround Options
• Work with a partner. Consider Turnaround Options.
• Silently read one row in the chart (individually).
• When each partner has completed a row, look up
and “say something.” Something might be a
question, a brief summary, a key point, an interesting
idea or personal connection to the text.
• Continue until you complete all of the rows in the
chart.
How to Identify Major Improvement Strategies
1. Focus on a priority performance challenge and
the root cause(s).
2. Consider research.
3. Identify a desired future (if action is taken to
dissolve root cause(s), from the perspective of
various local stakeholders).
4. Identify strategies to get to the desired future.
5. Articulate a Theory of Action (If, then, and then).
6. Re-write as a major improvement strategy.
Developing Major Improvement
Strategies
• Consider “Developing Major Improvement
Strategies,”
• This is both a note-catcher and job aide for
developing major improvement strategies.
Focusing Major Improvement
Strategies
• Dissolving root causes of performance
challenges
• Performance challenge(s) and associated
root cause.
• Frame the development of major
improvement strategies.
Contextualize with Research
• Research should provide the context
within which schools and districts choose
major improvement strategies.
• Consider:
– Failed Turnaround Strategies
– What Rural Districts are Doing
– Breaking the Habit of Low Performance Case
Studies
How to Identify Major Improvement Strategies
1. Focus on a priority performance challenge and
the root cause(s).
2. Consider research.
3. Identify a desired future (if action is taken to
dissolve root cause(s), from the perspective of
various local stakeholders).
4. Identify strategies to get to the desired future.
5. Articulate a Theory of Action (If, then, and then).
6. Re-write as a major improvement strategy.
Describe your Desired Future
• If root causes are eliminated . . .
• What will these different groups be doing differently?
–
–
–
–
Students
Staff members
Leadership team
Parents / Community
• Examples:
– All students monitor the progress of their learning towards grade level
expectations on a weekly basis and set personal learning goals.
– Teachers daily use data about learning formatively to refocus instruction
on their students’ needs.
– Staff members consistently implement identified practices in effective
literacy instruction.
Describing the desired future
• Create “Desired Future.”
• Add details to describe the desired future.
• Consider the perspectives of the following
audiences:
–
–
–
–
Students
Staff members
Leadership team
Parents / Community
How to Identify Major Improvement Strategies
1. Focus on a priority performance challenge and
the root cause(s).
2. Consider research.
3. Identify a desired future (if action is taken to
dissolve root cause(s), from the perspective of
various local stakeholders).
4. Identify strategies to get to the desired future.
5. Articulate a Theory of Action (If, then, and then).
6. Re-write as a major improvement strategy.
Research
Brainstorm major
improvement strategies in
this outer circle
Desired
Future
Root Cause
Case Studies
Turnaround
Options
Flow maps used with permission from Thinking Maps, Inc. Specific training required before implementing Thinking Maps.
For more information, visit www.thinkingmaps.com.
Brainstorm potential STRATEGIES
• Focus on one root cause. Create a circle map with “Root
Cause(s) ____in the middle.
• Include the preferred future in the frame.
• Brainstorm major strategies that would dissolve the root
cause(s)
– One strategy per post-it note.
– Stay at the major strategy level.
– Post all ideas on the circle map.
• Prioritize your strategies (indicate highest priority
strategies by underlining or circling them).
How to Identify Major Improvement Strategies
1. Focus on a priority performance challenge and
the root cause(s).
2. Consider research.
3. Identify a desired future (if action is taken to
dissolve root cause(s), from the perspective of
various local stakeholders).
4. Identify strategies to get to the desired future.
5. Articulate a Theory of Action (If, then, and then).
6. Re-write as a major improvement strategy.
Articulate a THEORY of ACTION
• For your priority improvement strategies,
articulate a theory of action.
• Format:
– … [teacher / adult actions]
– Then … [student behaviors / student learning
/ etc.]
– And … [measures for assessing growth
THEORY of ACTION example
If…
Then…
And…
This converts an
explanation or
process into an
essential
instructional practice.
This describes what
students will be able to
do as a result.
This identifies how to
assess the
implementation of teacher
practices and student
learning.
If teachers fully
…Then students will
teach and assess the have common, spiraling
new K-5 year-end
expectations and
writing outcomes and vocabulary, which will
share them with
improve their
students…
achievement…
…And ongoing teacher
records will show the
progress students are
making towards meeting
year-end writing
outcomes.
Theory of Action
• Articulate your Theory of Action
• Make sure to include If. . ., Then. . ., And. .
• Write your theory of action as a major
improvement strategy.
Agenda
Major
Improvement
Strategies
Action Steps
Plan for
Progress
Monitoring
Implementation
Benchmarks
Action Steps
Action
Steps
Timeline
Key
Personnel
Resources
Implementation
Benchmarks
Action steps must be defined for each
major improvement strategy.
Implementing all of the action steps =
implementing the major improvement
strategy.
What are Action Steps?
• A number of criteria for action steps are program
specific.
• Review Unified Improvement Plan Quality Criteria:
Action Steps, (UIP Handbook, p. 51).
• Consider: Based on state accountability plan type and
program designations, what action step criteria apply to
my district?
• CDE is developing UIP Addenda to facilitate
school and district efforts to meet federal
requirements through the UIP (UIP Handbook, p.
23)
External Vendors
• If the school/district will employ external vendors
(see for example turnaround option iii), the plan
should include:
– Major activity undertaken by the external vendor,
– Timeline for those activities,
– Resources that will pay for the external vendor, and
– Implementation benchmarks for the activities of the
external vendor.
How to develop Action Steps
• Do a force field analysis in reference to your
major improvement strategy
– Identify driving forces
– Identify restraining forces
– Prioritize restraining forces.
• Identify action steps that would eliminate or
weaken your restraining forces (in priority order).
• Take out “Force Field Analysis”
Force-Field Analysis: Mind-set
• Change is a dynamic process that generates energy and
movement in individuals and in organizations.
• Change can be viewed as a dynamic between forces
seeking to maintain a status quo, and forces seeking to
drive the status quo to change.
• When driving forces are the stronger force, change
moves forward. When restraining forces are stronger
or equal to the driving forces, movement can be blocked
or stalled.
– Ken Lewin (Force Field Analysis developer).
Page 47
What does a Force-Field Analysis do?
1. helps people to think together about all the facets of a desired
change;
2. develops consensus as an environmental scan, enabling
participants to articulate key dynamics relevant to an upcoming
change
3. aids in comparing the positives and negatives of a situation;
4. encourages creative thinking;
5. promotes agreement about the relative priority of restraining versus
driving factors; and it
6. provides a starting point for the selection of action steps.
Page 47
When should a force field analysis be used?
• after major improvement strategies have been
identified
• when it is unclear which actions to prioritize
• when planners want to put new actions into the
existing context
• when a team wants to maximize the success of
a new venture either by approaching change
from the perspective of strengthening driving
forces or by reducing restraining forces.
How is a force field analysis conducted?
1.
Select a major improvement strategy.
2.
Brainstorm and list on the left side of a T-chart the existing
forces/factors that support or are driving the school TOWARD the
strategy.
3.
Brainstorm and list on the right the existing forces/factors that are
holding the school back or driving it AWAY from the strategy.
4.
Clarify, explain, reach agreement on the items that have been
charted.
5.
Eliminate duplications and combine items as needed.
6.
Rank the “restraining forces” from most to least important (can be
done individually and combined, or as a group)
7.
Begin identifying action steps by addressing the items with the
highest ranking numbers.
Activity: Force Field Analysis
• Review Force Field Analysis, section titled “How
to engage in force field analysis”
• Use the force field analysis note catcher
• Write your major improvement strategy at the
top of the page.
• Brainstorm driving forces and restraining forces
(15 min).
• Prioritize the restraining forces (5 min).
Develop Action Steps
• Start with the highest priority restraining forces
(work towards the lowest priority)
• For each, identify action steps to reduce or
eliminate the restraining force.
• For each action step, to determine:
– Timing (when it will be implemented)
– Person responsible
– Resources (that will be used)
• Capture in the UIP Template, Action Planning
Form
Activity: Action Steps
• Select your top two priority restraining
forces.
• Identify at least two action steps to
counteract your restraining forces.
• Capture your action steps on a flip chart.
Agenda
Major
Improvement
Strategies
Action Steps
Plan for
Progress
Monitoring
Implementation
Benchmarks
Implementation Benchmarks
• Implementation Benchmarks are. . .
– How schools will know major improvement strategies
are being implemented;
– Measures of the fidelity with which action steps are
implemented;
– What will be monitored;
– Relate to adult actions.
• Implementation Benchmarks are NOT:
– Performance measures (assessment results).
Implementation Benchmarks
• Directly correspond to the action steps.
• Are something that a school/district
leadership team could review periodically.
• Should help teams adjust their plans –
critical to a cycle of continuous
improvement.
Selecting Implementation Benchmarks
• Review the Unified Improvement Planning
Quality Criteria: Implementation
Benchmarks (UIP Handbook, p. 52)
• Table Dialogue (5 min):
– Do any of the criteria need clarification?
– What do you anticipate will be the most difficult
criteria to meet? Understand?
– What is the difference between interim measures and
implementation benchmarks?
Practice: Implementation
Benchmarks
• Work with your team.
Use a flip chart page.
• For at least 2 action
steps, brainstorm
possible implementation
benchmarks.
• Apply the UIP Quality
Criteria for
Implementation
Benchmarks to your list.
Action Step
Implementation
Benchmark (s)
Agenda
Major
Improvement
Strategies
Action Steps
Plan for
Progress
Monitoring
Implementation
Benchmarks
Unified Improvement Planning Processes
Gather and
Organize
Data
Review
Performance
Summary
Describe
Significant
Trends
Progress
Monitoring
Prioritize
Performance
Challenges
Identify
Root
Causes
Set
Performance
Targets
Identify Major
Improvement
Strategies
Identify
Interim
Measures
Identify
Implementation
Benchmarks
Progress Monitoring
• Read Monitoring Progress, (UIP Handbook, p.
19)
• Consider the Progress Monitoring Calendars
• Table discussion:
– Why is progress monitoring a critical component of
unified improvement planning?
– How can the progress monitoring calendars support
local efforts to monitor their progress over time?
When will you monitor implementation
of your action steps?
• Consider the Progress Monitoring Calendar: Action
Steps and Implementation Benchmarks
• When will data be available for each of your
implementation benchmarks?
• What metrics will you consider?
• Who will monitor progress? When?
• Make notes for the implementation benchmarks you
have identified.
Tools you can Use
Tool
Turnaround Options
Use
Failed Turnaround Strategies
Required approaches turnaround schools must
choose from among.
Suggestions for Major Improvement Strategies
What Rural Districts are Doing
Suggestions for Major Improvement Strategies
Breaking the Habit of Low
Performance Cases
Developing Major Improvement
Strategies
Force Field Analysis
Examples of schools that have dramatically
improved their performance
Progress Monitoring Calendar
Provide a template for planning progress
monitoring.
Provide sa process for developing a theory of
action
Provide sa process for identifying critical action
steps
Completing the Action Plan
• Take out “Planning for Action Planning” handout.
• Consider the chart on Completing the Action
Plan.
• Make notes about how you will facilitate the
development of the rest of your action plan.
• Indicate what tools you will use.
Plan Review
• Consider “Planning Requirements and
State Review of Plans” (UIP Handbook, p.
20.)
Give us Feedback!!
• Written: Use sticky notes
– + the aspects of this session that you liked or
worked for you.
– The things you will change in your practice or
that you would change about this session.
– ? Question that you still have or things we didn’t
get to today
–
Ideas, ah-has, innovations
• Oral: Share one ah ha!