Official DESE Communications

The strategic objectives and initiatives reflected in your sustainable improvement plan are the coherent group of overarching initiatives and key levers that your team identifies as most likely to lead to rapid improvement in your school. The specific strategic objectives and initiatives of the school's plan emerge from:

• Your school's vision of the future;
• The specific root causes your school hypothesizes that, if addressed, are most likely to lead to rapid improvement and will provide the strongest return on investment;
• A deep understanding of Massachusetts' Turnaround Practices research; and,
• A knowledge of evidence-based practices addressing the key root causes your school identified that have helped similar schools and student populations make and sustain gains.

While providing the most detail for year one of implementation, the strategies should outline a multi-year roadmap that will guide the work of the school for at least the next three years.

Approaches to Brainstorming and Narrowing Down Strategic Objectives and Initiatives

The overall process your school takes will depend on how the planning process is shaped. The initial steps of taking all the preliminary needs assessment and root cause analysis work, brainstorming strategic objectives and initiatives, and then narrowing these down to a small, coherent set of strategies can be challenging and messy. However the time spent defining a few high-leverage strategies can pay off later when the school is able to focus on implementing those few strategies well, rather than trying to implement several big (or small) strategies at once.

In choosing which strategies are best suited for your school's unique context, look for cross-cutting themes that emerged from visioning discussions with stakeholders and from the analysis of assets and challenges. What 'big buckets' stand out? Those buckets should be addressed by the key strategic objectives of your school's sustainable improvement plan.

Select Strategies for Implementation Aligned to the Turnaround Practices

As you work to identify your school's key strategic initiatives, consider them through the lens of the four Massachusetts Turnaround Practices . The sustainable improvement planning process recommends that schools categorize key strategies by each turnaround practice. This framework reflects DESE's research finding that schools that effectively addressed all four of these turnaround practices succeeded in improving educator, student, and school outcomes, and, ultimately, exited underperforming status. However,

• While the school's sustainable improvement plan should address all four turnaround practices, this does not mean that the plan should have completely different strategies under each turnaround practice. Ideally the school would identify just a few key strategies, and then address them in an integrated way using the lens of the four turnaround practices.
• It is acceptable for a sustainable improvement plan to place a stronger emphasis on two or three of the turnaround practices and less emphasis on the others, as long as it is clear from the analysis of assets and challenges why this approach is likely to accelerate gains for students.
• For schools that have one or more student groups among the lowest performing five percent of student groups statewide (as measured by the student group percentile) we recommend that you select strategies to support those specific student groups in response to your school's student group data analysis.
• Schools above the 10th percentile who have been identified for low performing student groups do not need to write a full comprehensive sustainable improvement plan. Your school's plan should primarily focus on strategies to support the identified student group(s), making sure to address how each of the turnaround practices are addressed in those strategies. Keep in mind that the "Low performing student group(s)" designation is based on a statewide comparison, and these student groups may not actually be the lowest performing in your school, and/or they may represent the majority of students and not just a subset. School Leader's Guide to the 2019 Accountability Determinations

Reflecting upon and addressing the ways in which your key strategies align with all four turnaround practices will give your school a solid sense of how the work it is doing within each practice intersects with and reinforces the other three. Used back in the assessment of assets and challenges stage, the Guiding Questions Aligned to the Turnaround Practices Guiding Questions Turnaround Practices can also be a great resource to support schools in identifying strategies for implementation. Also, DESE has developed the MA Tools for Schools website as a one-stop shop for access to resources and tools aligned to the turnaround practices, which can help schools learn about successful strategies in other schools.

For instance, a school may ask: Do any strategies fall squarely under one turnaround practice? Or does the strategy span multiple turnaround practices, requiring actions related to all four practices? Ensuring effective instruction for English learners, for example, would have implications for school leadership and professional collaboration (Turnaround Practice 1), instructional practice (Turnaround Practice 2), student-specific supports (Turnaround Practice 3), and also for school climate and culture (Turnaround Practice 4). As your team looks at your key strategic initiatives from this lens, it will be clear that the four Turnaround Practices are not mutually exclusive, and changes in one turnaround practice are interconnected with and/or have ripple effects across the other three practices.

Identify and Select Evidence-Based Programs and Practices

In order to meet both state and federal requirements, schools developing sustainable improvement plans must incorporate at least one strategy backed by evidence that meets the criteria from one of the top three evidence tiers as defined by ESSA :

• Tier 1: Strong evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented experimental study;
• Tier 2: Moderate evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented quasi-experimental study (confined to Regression Discontinuity Designs according to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), or
• Tier 3: Promising evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented correlational study with statistical controls for selection bias

DESE developed the How Do We Know? website to help schools and districts learn more about how to explore the research and evidence base to identify programs and practices that successfully address root causes similar to those they seek to address. See the Additional Resources section below for a more detailed description of the resources available on this site.

Curriculum Strategies

If your school chooses to select a new curriculum as a strategy to support sustainable improvement, DESE's Curriculum and Instruction team has generated several tools to assist schools in selecting high-quality, evidence-based curriculum.

Deeper Learning

In 2019's Our Way Forward Commissioner Riley launched a campaign to improve and expand deeper learning opportunities for students across the Commonwealth. As your school engages in the process of selecting strategies aligned to the turnaround practices, we recommend that your planning team visit DESE's deeper learning webpage. Statewide System of Support assistance staff are also available to help your school consider ways in which to incorporate deeper learning strategies in your sustainable improvement plan. Check back here frequently in the Additional Resources section for new resources as they are developed out by DESE.

Cultural Responsiveness in Education

As Massachusetts students become more diverse, and since diversity and inclusion is good for everyone, it is imperative that our schools and classrooms are inclusive of, responsive to, and reflective of all cultures and backgrounds. DESE has guidance that helps define cultural responsiveness, addresses its importance in our schools and classrooms, and provide resources to support this work. Schools should consider this resource while in the process of selecting strategies for plan implementation. Be sure strategies are selected that fully address challenges in student learning and school experience identified in your school's Assessment of Assets and Challenges & Root Cause Analysis process, especially for historically marginalized student groups.

Think Through What It Will Take to Implement Each Strategy/Initiative

As your school is identifying strategic objectives and initiatives, a critical step in the process is to assess what it will take to implement these specific approaches in your school. In addition to the evidence base, schools need to consider:

• Usability: whether the initiative can be adapted to meet the needs of your school context.
• Required Supports: identification of the supports required to train, staff and implement the initiative well. Required supports includes actions that may need to be taken at the district level, such as adjustments to policies, practices, and/or funding to address root challenges at the school.
• School Capacity: whether the school has enough resources to sustain staffing, coaching, training, monitoring, assessment, and funding to implement the initiative with fidelity.
• Congruity of Match: how well the initiative addresses the most critical needs identified.
• Integration: how well the initiative fits with other initiatives in the school/district.

Determine how your school can reasonably scaffold the implementation of its selected strategies across multiple years (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3…), taking into account different phases of implementation (e.g., buy-in/capacity development, pilot stage, scaling up, etc.). We offer the following sample graphic organizers as resources your team may find helpful as it considers when specific strategies should roll out based on school context and implementation phase.

• Sample Three-Year Implementation Plan Template

Anticipate Implementation Challenges

Sustainable improvement work is hard! Identifying challenges ahead of time can help your planning team proactively and strategically remove or reduce any anticipated barriers to implementation. Alternatively, reflecting on implementation challenges can help a school discern if a strategy is the right match for the context, or if another approach would be more effective. The 2014 Turnaround Practices Report includes side-by-side comparisons of strategies implemented in schools that made gains vs. schools that did not. Reviewing these comparisons can help schools anticipate challenges to implementation and make proactive plans to mitigate them. For the purposes of your school's sustainable improvement plan, focus on only the most significant challenges anticipated for each set of strategies and any initial thoughts on how your school might address them.

Think Ahead to Monitoring Progress

The challenges identified at this stage of the process can help inform the process for monitoring implementation and outcomes. Schools should reference the Goals & Benchmarks and Monitor Progress sections before finalizing the set of strategies for implementation.

Examples of some of the resources and protocols that SSoS Regional Assistance Teams frequently use with districts and schools they support appear in the Additional Resources at the end of this section.

Flexible Format Submission

• Describe how the set of strategies the school plans to implement will help it achieve its vision for the future
• Explain the rationale for selecting the strategies aligned to the turnaround practices. Be sure to include how the strategies:
• Build on assets and specifically address the root causes of the identified challenges, and are appropriate for the school's unique context
• Address the school's reasons for designation as a school requiring assistance or intervention. For example, if the school is identified for low-performing student groups, describe how the selected strategies will support those specific student groups
• Address the four turnaround practices
• Ensure equity, including racial equity, and the implementation of culturally proficient practices in the school.
• Identify which strategy (or strategies) in the sustainable improvement plan is backed by evidence that meets the criteria from one of the top three evidence tiers defined by ESSA and cite the research to support each evidence-based strategy. (Remember, the plan as a whole must include at least one strategy that meets ESSA evidence-based criteria)
• Provide details on how the strategies will be implemented. Be sure to:
• Indicate systems, structures, and processes that will be in place to ensure effective and coherent implementation
• Address challenges the school might encounter and how they would be handled
• Outline a brief multi-year timeline for what will be implemented in years one, two, and three, highlighting key aspects of each strategy that may be phased in over time

Additional Resources Relative to Strategic Objectives and Initiatives Aligned to Turnaround Practices

While not required, these resources may be helpful as you engage in this stage of the sustainable improvement planning process:

• Massachusetts Turnaround Practices research and evaluation reports highlight a number of promising practices observed in schools that made gains. For example:
• 2016 Turnaround Practices Field Guide
• 2014 Turnaround Practices in Action
• Turnaround Practices in Achievement Gain Schools Video Series
• Turnaround Practices Digital Resource
• Massachusetts Tools for Schools — a one-stop shop for access to resources and tools aligned to the turnaround practices.
• DESE's Planning for Success has a number of resources relevant to this step, including Identifying Strategic Objective and Initiatives that describes approaches that can be adapted for use with the school sustainable improvement planning team, your school's full staff, and/or your local stakeholder groups.
• DESE's District Data Team Toolkit:
• 2.2.1T: Inventory of District and School Initiatives helps identify current initiatives and provide data on the effectiveness of the implementation of those initiatives (page 20)
• 1.9.1T: Managing Change and Understanding Concerns Protocol can help a team gain a better understanding about the concerns of stakeholders as it engages in this work. (page 87)
• Selecting Evidence-Based Practices - Resources currently available on the How Do We Know? website include:
• DESE webinar on identifying and selecting evidence-based practices:
• School improvement practices in Massachusetts: Research, reports, videos, and a field guide describing the Massachusetts Turnaround Practices.
• Research summaries, literature reviews, and policy briefs: links to summaries of research, literature reviews, and policy briefs organized by DESE's overarching goal of supporting success after high school for all students, as well as the five agency priorities that support this goal.
• Clearinghouses of individual studies: This section includes a links to some of the clearinghouses currently available for educators' use in researching effective, evidence-based practices.

For any questions, suggestions, or additional assistance with evidence-based practices, please contact Kendra Winner at kwinner@doe.mass.edu or 781.338.3129.