Evidence Based Decision Making
Barbara McSwain
Aug 24, 2009
We are living in very challenging times. The Economic Stimulus Package or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) mission is to jumpstart our economy, create or save jobs, and place a down payment on addressing challenges. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education is not just focusing on schools implementing research-based instruction, but evidence based practices. Every challenge that we are facing involves decision making for educational leaders. How do you make evidence based decisions?
There are several questions that good leaders must ask as they prepare to make decisions.
Here are a few that you may want to consider:
1. How do I identify needs? What is the difference between a want and a need? What are the gaps?
2. How can I use research to help me to decide which strategies will best help me with identified needs?
3. How do I know that the strategy/practice that I choose is effective?
4. How do I address the daily and weekly restraints that affect my school or district that inhibit me from solving long term problems?
5. How do I gather information to evaluate the outcomes of the strategies that have been implemented?
As we continue to work together to make good decisions for our schools and districts, we must continue to ask ourselves: Is what we are doing working? What needs to be adjusted? Am I willing to have those difficult conversations? Are leaders, teachers and students goal setting? Is there a sense of urgency in our community? Is a culture of failure acceptable? Are we building a culture of success?
Years ago, I visited a school that was mired in a culture of failure. They had a large minority population and a large Special Education population. No one felt that this was a school that could succeed. I was only t! here for a few minutes before the Superintendent called to ask me what I thought about this school. I told him that this is a school that will make great progress this year. He was stunned and wanted to know how that would be possible? I knew then, as I know now, that having high quality principals or school leaders are an important pre-condition for the success of most complex school improvement initiatives. This school had a principal that had a heart for children and a willingness to learn the necessary skills and strategies to increase student achievement. Together, we picked a leadership team that immediately began the training process for common unit and lesson plans driven by state standards and instructional practices that address the top 5 research based instructional strategies. The leadership team also saw the importance of including Acceleration and an emphasis on reading comprehension strategies. As a result, 3 of the top 5 research based practices were addressed. No one was surprised when the school made AYP at the end of the first year! A few years later, this school was named a State Distinguished Title I School.
It is important to identify the resources that are available. This should be counted in terms of time as well as money. You need to know how other people will feel about this initiative. In order to move forward, it is not necessary to have 100% approval, but you do need 100% understanding of why this step is necessary. In every community there is also a political body. What are the political restraints of your community? In addition, you need to know some ways that the identified restraints may be overcome or changed.
Good leadership recognizes that monitoring the implementation of new initiatives is imperative. The collection of data informs administrator of the next steps that should be taken. Of course, monitoring allows leadership and teachers to identify what adaptations need to occur in the implementation phase. It is also important to evaluate the outcome. Questions regarding outcome might be:
- Did we get the desired effects?
- Did we get the increase in student achievement that we desired?
- Did we get the impact we expected?
- Did teacher and student attendance increase?
- Did the dropout rate drop?
- Did discipline problems decrease?
There are many variables to the answers that impact these questions. However, the one that is often repeated to me is that leadership is critical. In schools where the building level administrators are willing to monitor with support and hold everyone, including themselves, to a high standard of accountability and fidelity, student achievement does increase! Educators need to evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.
Once a school or district has evaluated the implementation process, it is important that revisions and ongoing reflection continue to occur. During the reflection phase, educators can note how the strategies are meeting their needs or if they need to be adapted to better meet their needs.
Reference:
http://www.serve.org/ebdm/EBDMCycle.php
