What is school improvement?
The answer you get will depend upon whom you ask.
Usually, when school administrators discuss school improvement they focus first on student test scores.
What needs to happen, what do they need to do so that their students’ test scores improve? How can their schools improve to support and maximize their students’ achievement?
What if you asked a school building maintenance engineer what school improvement means to them? It might surprise you when they made it clear that the school would be greatly improved with all of the teachers gone.
What? Oh yeah, teachers can be so demanding, inconsiderate of others’ time, and feel no need to follow procedures established to serve them.
A teacher may respond that school improvement would mean having fewer professional development trainings, in areas selected by school administrators, and more time to work in their classroom.
Can you anticipate the answer you’d receive from a student regarding school improvement?
I’d wager the majority of student responses would concern food; school improvement would mean completely changing the cafeteria menu, offer more choices and/or add chips and soda vending machines for their easy access.
Do you see our problem here?
School improvement can mean something different to each stakeholder. Please come back, we’ll be discussing school improvement, what it is, how to achieve it and keep it alive.
The link to teachers' Success...
Dr. Kathleen Salzano, Ed.D.
