CACHS is a 400 pupil grade 9-12 high school affiliated with a college since 2005 in an inner city on the east coast. LeadershipEnergies (LE) was hired in 2015-2016 through 2017-2018 to transition the school to better performance through data-driven decision making, and from 2018 to 2020 to provide the diagnostic inventories to generate decision making data.

Industry: Education PK-12 Districts and Schools

Project Type: Transition to data-driven school performance and online diagnoses and prescriptions.

Challenge
Prepare school leaders, department heads, and faculty members to understand the value of performance data related to organization structures (teams) and adult performance that have an impact on student performance. Create confidence in using self-assessment and stakeholder assessment data and feedback to understand the impacts on student outcomes. Introduce a growing number of online diagnostic tools to help generate prescription options to save time in the development of effective improvement plans.

Solution
Instead of concentrating on the vertical aspects of curriculum content and standards within departments to gauge the effectiveness of programs and services, LE encouraged an examination of student and school interactions within and across each grade. LE and faculty members constructed survey instruments to assess two times per year student interest and commitment to success at school and in life. Subject content was a small part of the surveys; larger parts shed light on how students saw their personal goals and in and out-of-school behaviors influencing their performance at school. The “Ratcheting-Up Team” (the Data Team) with representatives from subject matter departments and from support services, special education, social work and counseling, technology, and administration was formed to review a variety of data and to recommend a combination of programs, services, and student experiences that help students be more productive and better prepared for life after high school.

Results
The faculty, administrators, and board have become familiar with the administration and use of diagnostic inventories and survey data and reports that reveal performance strengths that sustain the organization and improvement needs that are close to or actually the root causes of adult and student underperformance. The full package of assessment reports became available in 2017 for team review and decision making and for filing district and state reports. Last year the faculty started a peer observation program within their department. Findings were shared within departments and across the faculty. It appears that half of the departments are ready to conduct peer observations across departments. Starting in 2017-2018, the foundation has been established to use a variety of performance data for informed decisions within department teams, by the Ratcheting-Up Team, by administrators, and by the board to develop and implement strategies likely to produce better adult and student performance outcomes. The board is interested in the use of data reports to make cost-benefit decisions. Administrators developed in 2018-2019 cost-effective decision-making criteria and used them to make programmatic purchase recommendations to the board.

Customer Feedback
“LeadershipEnergies has guided us in the use of paper and pen and online diagnostic instruments to gather meaningful-data from students, faculty, administrators, board members, parents, and the community in order to support our performance improvement efforts. The ninth through twelfth grade survey work has been especially helpful in understanding what does and does not motivate our students. Recently, LeadershipEnergies prepared for us cost-effective decision-making criteria that our board was anxious for us to use with purchase recommendations.”
—Ms. Susanne Canal, Director of Curriculum
—Mr. Edward Lloyd, Jr. Dean and Principal

*The case study is real and positions of personnel are accurate. Names of districts, schools, and personnel have been changed.