Success Through Continuous Improvement

I was recently honored and excited to be invited to join my neighborhood school’s Building Leadership Team. This dedicated group of educators and parent leaders design and monitor school programs and their impact on student learning and well-being. I learned that this school has been identified for Tier II support through the Washington School Improvement Framework and was curious to learn what that meant.

I learned schools across the state are identified for support based on various measures of student performance and school quality using Washington State Improvement Framework (WSIF) measures. Our Tier II school takes advantage of additional iGrant funds, professional learning, and collaboration with regional and state educators. Our principal, and leader of the Building Leadership Team, shared the most impacting support has been collaboration from the Northwest Educational Service District’s (NWESD) Continuous Improvement Team in their partnership with the state Office of Systems and School Success (OSSI).

I remembered all organizations have room to grow and learn and that effective schools use a process of continuous improvement. OSSI and NWESD Continuous improvement staff bring additional resources (both fiscal and partnerships) to our schools as we work intentionally to increase the social, emotional, and academic learning and well-being of all students. The NWESD Continuous Improvement (CI) team members attend our leadership meetings, provide data, and the skillset to effectively analyze data in order to plan effective action.

An important role the NWESD staff members play in helping us integrate and focus multiple initiatives into a coherent and actionable plan. The NWESD helped to organize meetings with their Content and Initiative Coordinators in order to plan and integrate our improvement efforts. For example, my school’s participation in the Inclusionary Practices Project is a strong action step to increase learning for all student groups. With their guidance, we narrowed our School Improvement Plan to focus on two main goals and then developed action steps. The NWESD educators and coordinators customize professional learning, coaching, and collaboration to meet our teams’ needs.  

The NWESD  helped our school team discover that the CI process supports educators in implementing and studying small changes with the goal of making lasting improvements. The OSSI template for School Improvement Plans utilizes the Plan-Do-Study-Adjust (PDSA) cycle. This process helps us monitor or test a small change to determine whether or not the change had the desired results.  I noticed that this series of iterative changes developed the growth we were seeking. 

I applaud schools that are embracing the change process and feel assured that this school is becoming a better place for our children to grow and learn.

NWESD Continuous Improvement 

The NWESD School Improvement Team in partnership with the Office of System and School Improvement (OSSI) are committed to closing the opportunity gap by working collaboratively with educational partners, researchers, districts and community leaders to create a coordinated, regionalized, and responsive support and improvement model for schools in our region.

Continuous Improvement Team Contacts