Districts, schools, and instructional teams engage in continuous learning through inquiry processes involving formative assessment, thoughtful reviews of data, and on-going monitoring of agreed-upon actions and their desired outcomes. In other words, they promote system-wide learning through assessment, data use, and monitoring.
| Characteristics of Effective Practice by Districts and Their Schools |
Acceptable Implementation |
Acceptable Scale |
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1. Develop focused improvement strategies
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- There is one district plan.
- At any point in time, it includes no more than three strategies.
- All of the strategies fit together coherently.
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- Each school has a plan that fits in a coherent way with the one district plan.
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2. Monitor the degree of implementation of focused improvement strategies across the system
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- There is a monitoring tool for each strategy (e.g., a practice profile or rubric).
- Acceptable levels of implementation (as measured on the monitoring tool) are set as fidelity benchmarks.
- Fidelity of implementation is measured according to a pre- determined schedule.
- The District Leadership Team reviews findings from measures of implementation fidelity.
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- All Teacher Teams use district monitoring tools to measure fidelity of implementation.
- All Teacher Teams follow the district schedule for measuring implementation fidelity.
- All Teacher Teams share their implementation fidelity data with the Building-level Team.
- All Teacher Teams use their implementation fidelity data to improve their use of evidence-based practices.
- All Building-level Teams use data from fidelity measures to plan for school-wide PD and other supports.
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3. Use data well
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- Action steps for using data are incorporated into the one district plan.
- Needs assessments are specified in the data use part of the district plan.
- Root cause analyses are specified in the data use part of the district plan.
- The plan specifies indicators for determining improvement in performance.
- The plan specifies indicators for determining improvement in promoting the learning of ALL students.
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- All Building-level Teams collect and use data in the ways specified in the one district plan.
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4. Select and implement evidence-based instructional practices and monitor their impact
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- The district monitors student progress according to plan.
- The District Leadership Team examines student progress data in consideration of fidelity of implementation data.
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- All Teacher Teams examine student progress data in consideration of fidelity of implementation data.
- All Building-level Teams monitor student progress according to plan.
- All Building-level Teams examine student progress data in consideration of fidelity of implementation data.
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5. Involve all educators in the use of a systematic and collaborative inquiry process
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- The district ensures that all educators understand the steps involved in using a systematic and collaborative inquiry process.
- The district holds regular meetings of the District Leadership Team.
- The District Leadership Team structures its meetings to follow the sequence of steps in the systematic and collaborative inquiry process.
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- All educators serve on one or more inquiry teams.
- All schools hold regular meetings of their Building-level Teams.
- All schools hold regular meetings of their Teacher Teams.
- The Building-level Team and Teacher Teams in all schools structure their meetings to follow the sequence of steps in the in the systematic and collaborative inquiry process.
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