What is the school improvement plan?

If the student achievement results are not satisfactory and change must occur, a systematic study should be done on what impacts student achievement positively. All constituent groups should be involved.

Teaching all students to high standards requires careful planning on the part of the school and the teacher. Effective school improvement plans are continuous improvement plans that begin with data analysis, establishing improvement targets, developing a plan to achieve those targets, allocating resources to fund the plan, implementing the plan, analyzing the data from the implementation, and continuing through the cycle again and again.. Continuous improvement plans are used daily in the school—not shelved and brought out in a flurry of activity designed to meet a central office deadline for turning in the plan. They are meant to guide the daily work of the school and the use of resources available to the school. (Odden & Archibald, 2000)

A system designed to educate all students requires that academic standards be established, that a common means of measuring students' proficiency in those standards be used at benchmark points, and that teachers intervene immediately when a student doesn't learn. Students must be assessed frequently and then regrouped for re-teaching so that learning is the focus of the work—not teaching.

A significant amount of research has been done on how to improve student achievement. Since this topic is so broad and deep, it won't be addressed in this booklet. Refer to Learning Points Associates? School Improvement Web page, specifically Pathways to School Improvement. The point here is that the school must determine what research-based approach it wants to take to improve its achievement.