State Support for School Identification and Improvement Community of Practice Resources

This Community of Practice (CoP) helped participating SEA teams to examine the alignment (or lack of alignment) between their school identification methodology and the systems of support they provide for identified schools. This CoP also aimed to improve the tools, protocols, and technical assistance that SEAs use to support the district and school improvement planning process.

Community of Practice: State Support for School Identification and Improvement

CoP Summary: The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) introduced new regulations for how state education agencies (SEAs) should identify and support low-performing schools designated for comprehensive support and improvement (CSI), targeted support and improvement (TSI), and additional targeted support and improvement (ATSI). States just beginning to implement their newly developed systems are grappling with how to handle high school identification rates and strategies for supporting and monitoring school and district improvement initiatives.

This Community of Practice (CoP) helped participating SEA teams to examine the alignment (or lack of alignment) between their school identification methodology and the systems of support they provide for identified schools. This CoP also aimed to improve the tools, protocols, and technical assistance that SEAs use to support the district and school improvement planning process. Specifically, the CoP members engaged in activities designed to increase states’ capacity to:

1. Monitor and evaluate school identification decisions and subsequent system dependencies.
2. Align accountability-based identification and improvement-based support structures within and outside of the SEA.
3. Support the use of district- and school-level needs assessment results, including data-driven root cause analyses of performance challenges.
4. Help districts focus on highest-priority improvement strategies that align resources and interventions, ensure implementation effectiveness, and promote sustainable improvements in low-performing schools.

The CoP consisted of five virtual learning cycle meetings, asynchronous activities through the Network portal, and a series of eight collaborative learning calls where small groups of state peers (~2–5 states per call) discussed discrete topics related to content from the broader learning cycle meetings.

The resources below were used during learning cycle virtual meetings and asynchronous activities. They are organized in two sections. The first set of resources were provided to CoP members from subject matter experts (SMEs), and are comprised of resources curated from other technical assistance providers. The second set of resources were those that CoP members shared during learning cycles.

Participating SEAs: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio

CoP Duration: June 2018 through November 2018

Resources