Helping Districts and Community Schools Implement the OIP

OLAC resources provide strong support for district and community school efforts to make use of the OIP. Implementation is a long-term project, however, and matching resources to each sequential implementation stage can help make the work comprehensible and manageable. Leadership teams might want to consider the following resources based on their stage of implementation (Fixsen et al., 2005). To learn more about these stages and related frameworks, see OLAC’s Implementation Science module.

Exploration. An overview of the Ohio Improvement Process makes sense for all district and school leaders and members of Ohio’s nested leadership teams. That’s because OIP is designed for use by every district and community school in Ohio. Widespread use is what OLAC means by systemic. It’s for the state as a whole, not just the minority of districts and schools identified with the greatest needs based on external accountability judgments. In reality, all schools and districts have deep improvement needs (Fullan et al., 2019).

Installation. Preparing for a significant change requires the adults involved to understand the nature of the change itself and to understand the change process. OLAC’s

Foundational Concept on Theories of Change provides important insights about the change process.

Initial Implementation. Once district or school personnel understand “the why” (i.e., why it’s important to adopt the OIP), their next concern will be with “the how.” Three modules seem particularly useful:

• Shared Accountability
• TBTs: Bottom-up and Top-down
• Teams Using Data Wisely

Full Implementation. With OIP in place, district or school personnel might want to pause to take stock of what they’ve accomplished. Comparing their own implementation of OIP with implementation in other districts might prove affirming as well as instructive. Cornerstone Connections articles provide one source of information about what’s going on with OIP in various Ohio districts. OLAC also offers examples through videos and podcasts. Both examples listed here feature the Pickerington Local School District. Other video and podcast examples can be found using the search engine on the OLAC site.

Innovation. Careful efforts to make adaptations to the OIP enable it to work well (though somewhat differently) in districts and schools with different characteristics. Presentations made at OLAC’s Action Forums provide examples of how districts fit the OIP to their unique circumstances and needs.

Sustainability. Several OLAC materials speak to the issue of sustaining improvement frameworks and practices. One example is the Leading Edge blog post, “How Do We Sustain Effective Practices in a Pandemic?” The Resource Management module also offers a variety of insights about ways to use resources to incentivize and then sustain the programs and practices that are most important to district performance and equity.