As an Assistant Principal, I had the opportunity to participate in a state-sponsored school improvement program. I remember sitting in a principal’s office, watching her pull a thick binder from her shelf. “Here’s our school improvement plan,” she said, blowing dust off the cover. “Required it for our accreditation visit last year.” She opened it to reveal pages of detailed goals, action steps, and timelines; none of which her teachers could recall.
How many school improvement plans in your district are gathering dust rather than driving change?
The tragedy isn’t just wasted time creating these documents; it’s also a missed opportunity. School improvement planning, done right, can be the engine that transforms teaching and learning. Done wrong, it becomes one more compliance exercise that breeds cynicism and exhaustion.
What Mistakes Are We Making?
The first critical mistake is treating school improvement planning as an annual event rather than an ongoing cycle. We dedicate a few weeks in summer or fall to “complete the plan,” submit it to the district or state, then file it away. As John Kotter explains in Leading Change, this approach violates a fundamental principle: transformation requires sustained focus and continuous adjustment, not periodic bursts of activity.
Second, we confuse comprehensiveness with effectiveness. Many school improvement plans attempt to address a wide range of issues, including literacy, math, attendance, climate, technology integration, parent engagement, and more. The result is scattered effort and diluted impact. As Jim Collins reminds us in Good to Great, the Hedgehog Concept matters: doing a few things exceptionally well beats doing many things adequately.
Third, we plan for teachers rather than with them. Central office or administrative teams craft elaborate plans, then “roll them out” expecting buy-in and implementation. But as Michael Fullan’s research consistently demonstrates, ownership and understanding emerge from participation, not presentation. When teachers don’t help create the plan, they are less likely to commit to executing it.
Fourth, we separate planning from learning. We set goals but often fail to establish structured processes for inquiry, experimentation, and adaptation. The plan becomes static rather than dynamic, leaving no room for the iterative learning that improvement requires.
Shifting Our Thinking
Before discussing effective processes, we must shift our thinking about what school improvement planning actually is. It’s not a document; it’s a disciplined approach to collective learning and problem-solving.
Think systems, not symptoms: Peter Senge teaches us that today’s problems often come from yesterday’s solutions. Effective planning requires examining root causes and interconnections, not just addressing surface-level symptoms. Why are reading scores low? Is it curriculum, instruction, assessment literacy, student engagement, a combination of two or more issues, or something else entirely?
Embrace focused intensity over scattered activity: Robert Marzano’s research on school leadership emphasizes that improvement requires sustained attention to a limited number of high-leverage strategies. Better to make significant progress on two priorities than minimal progress on ten.
Value evidence over assumptions: Anthony Bryk’s improvement science framework reminds us to ask: “What specifically are we trying to accomplish? How will we know a change is an improvement? What changes might we introduce?” Evidence must drive both planning and adaptation.
What Effective School Improvement Planning Looks Like
Start with deep diagnosis, not quick solutions: Before writing goals, invest time in understanding your current reality. Analyze multiple data sources; not just test scores, but classroom observations, student work, surveys, and qualitative feedback. Engage teachers in identifying patterns and root causes.
Focus on the vital few priorities: Based on your diagnosis, identify 2-3 critical improvement goals that will have the most significant impact on student learning. Ensure that these goals align clearly with your district’s strategic priorities and your school’s specific context.
Build theories of action: For each goal, explicitly articulate your logic: “If we implement these specific strategies, then we expect these outcomes, because of these reasons.” This makes your assumptions testable and creates clarity about what success looks like.
Create rapid learning cycles: Rather than planning a full year in detail, use 90-day cycles to facilitate rapid learning and adaptation. Plan specific actions, implement them, collect evidence of their impact, reflect on the results together, and adjust accordingly. This rhythm keeps the plan alive and responsive.
Embed planning in existing structures: Don’t create separate “school improvement plan meetings.” Integrate improvement planning into your regular professional learning community time, leadership team meetings, and data review sessions. Make it the way you do your work, not something extra.
Make progress visible: Create simple, public displays showing your goals, current status, and next steps. When everyone can see where you are and where you’re going, accountability and momentum increase naturally.
Assess Your Improvement Plan & Process
This week, retrieve your current school improvement plan. Read it honestly and ask: Is this document driving our daily decisions and actions? Can teachers articulate our top priorities without needing to look them up? Do we have regular cycles for reviewing progress and adapting strategies?
If the answer is no, don’t wait until next year to start over. Begin now with one 90-day learning cycle focused on your single most important priority. Engage your teachers in planning it, testing it, learning from it, and refining it.
School improvement planning isn’t about creating perfect documents; it’s about creating effective processes for collective learning and focused action.
What will you do this month to shift from planning as compliance to planning as continuous improvement?
#EducationalLeader,
Kim
When Students are led well, they learn well.
References
- Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.
- Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t. HarperBusiness.
- Fullan, M. (2016). The new meaning of educational change (5th ed.). Teachers College Press.
- Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Harvard Business School Press.
- Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. ASCD.
- Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (Revised edition). Doubleday/Currency.
The views shared in the Educational Leadership Moment are solely those of Dr. Kim D. Moore and do not reflect the positions of her employer or any entity within the local, state, or federal government sector.
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