Task 1

Leigh Ann Hudson NELA VI

Dr. Champion
3.17.18
“Monitoring frequency is associated with gains in student
achievement”

Yearly School Improvement Plans are created as a guide to focus the leadership teams
attention on specific strategies for improving student performance in the current year. While
the goals may have a longer-term aspect to them (for example a 3, 5 or even 10 year vision
and mission) the yearly plans are largely focused on the work of the teachers, students, and
leaders for just that one year, and therefore, have a very short implementation time. As such,
improvement plans should be based on the SMART goal system, and by nature, the SMART
goal system requires that goals be frequently monitored for effectiveness in implementation.
When a school creates a schedule that requires frequent monitoring it is important to be
intentional about that work. For example, I’ve worked in schools where the School
Improvement Team met on a regular basis- twice a month- but the school improvement plan
was typically not even brought out for examination. The goals were created during the first
few meetings but some of the staff members didn’t even know what the goals were.
Another type of goals that should be monitored frequently are the teachers individual goals
on their PDP’s. They shouldn’t be just examined at the beginning, middle, and end of the
year.

All of these efforts with monitoring are directly correlated to gains in student achievement
because if the goal isn’t analyzed and monitored on an continuous basis, it is impossible to
identify gaps in instruction and teacher/leadership performance. When working with school
improvement plans and goals, expectations should be communicated clearly throughout
the school to assist with aligning efforts towards achieving the goals. When goals aren’t
implemented and monitored with fidelity teachers lose trust in the process. They fail to see
value in creating school improvement plans that truly guide improvement- they become
paperwork that has to be completed to keep the district/state ‘off their back’.

Some implementations for practice: This is an example of how ineffective leaders can
destroy a school and create lasting and significant issues for a new leader. When a leader
isn’t doing the right thing for school improvement by setting SMART goals and implementing
and monitoring as appropriate, a new principal will have an uphill battle to get a team to
even write good goals, much less support them and monitor them as needed for increases in
student achievement.