Who Do You Want To Be?
The first task in SIMPL’s™ improvement process is to help our users prepare Statements of Vision, Mission, Value, and Motto as a way to describe, ideally, who they want their organizations to be. We provide a template and a number of helpful references to guide this step of the process. These Statements are essential guides in the derivation of specific Goals and Objectives in the planning process described in step 3, below.
Who Are You Right Now?
The second task in the SIMPL™ improvement process is data gathering and reporting. SIMPL™ automatically captures data from a variety of sources and compiles the data into forms appropriate to establish a fact based picture of who you currently are. The following is a sampling of SIMPL’s™ online data sources:
- Student assessment (in Texas, TAKS/Benchmarks /AEIS),
- Demographic and behavioral data (PEIMS in Texas), and
- SIMPL™ Opinion surveys, parental and community involvement, At Risk Students, Highly Qualified Staff Reports (all from SIMPL™ Internally gathered and maintained databases)
The data is gathered into forms most appropriate for Campus Improvement planning. Some of these forms are defined by NCLB, others by TEC, and still other aggregations are locally defined. All are designed to provide visibility into and quantification of your organization’s performance for the school year just past. The following is a sampling of the reports that SIMPL’s™ Campus Improvement Planner provides for Needs Assessment activities:
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State Student Assessments (custom analysis by grade level, subject, demographic, and organizational level) - Attendance (customized Analysis, as above),
- Staff and Student Demographic Report
- Highly Qualified Teacher Report
- SIMPL™ Opinion Survey Analysis
- Adequate Yearly Progress Report
- Student Transitions, At Risk, Behavioral and Student Growth Reports
- Summary of Comprehensive Needs
- Parental and Community Involvement Report
Closing the Gap
The third task of SIMPL’s™ improvement process is deriving a plan to erase the differences between “Who you want to be,” and “Who you are right now,” per steps one and two above. SIMPL’s Campus Improvement Planner provides interactive forms to assist in developing Goals, (with Objectives for each goal) which are derived directly from the elements of “Who you want to be.”
At the core of the SIMPL™ system is its support for the definition and execution of Strategic Actions. We help you to tie your Strategic Actions to Objectives, to state mandated “Subject” areas, to NCLB’s eight “Improvement Areas,” and to specific funding sources. We also include the specification of “Formative” and “Summative” Benchmarks (with dates) that define how to assess the impact of the Strategy. SIMPL™ treats these benchmark dates as events which can trigger notification emails to responsible persons. Further, SIMPL™ distinguishes between Improvement Strategies versus Standard Practice Strategies.
Standard Practice Strategies are programs that you’ve tried with proven positive results in previous years and have incorporated into your school’s educational system. They are still working for you and can be shared with other schools. If you continue to do these Standard things well, you can expect to perform at least as well as you did last year.
Improvement Strategies are those that are being tried for the first time this year. These are the only strategies that can affect a different performance outcome from what you experienced last year.
Our client’s realize significantly reduced overall costs of improvement planning by using SIMPL’s™ easy to use, on-line, interactive, data driven approach to continuous improvement. Most importantly, steadily improving student assessments that result from your continuous improvements are benefits that will accrue to every administrator, teacher, parent, curriculum, accounting, grant managers and every person involved at your schools.
