The Design and Characteristics of School Improvement Plan Templates
Date
2023-04-29
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AERA Open
Abstract
Resources for school improvement efforts, such as school improvement plan (SIP) templates, can espouse governmental entities’ perspectives on and requirements and recommendations for the school improvement planning process. These resources, in turn, can influence how educators enact school improvement efforts generally and the school improvement planning process specifically. In this exploratory qualitative study, we leveraged a conventional content analysis to rigorously examine SIP templates used by schools in the United States before and after the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. We were particularly interested in learning how a sample of SIP templates espoused the school improvement planning process before and after ESSA’s passage. Findings suggest that SIP templates focused more on developing SIPs than implementing SIPs, raising concerns about SIPs continuing to be enacted out of compliance rather than as a mechanism for spurring and sustaining improvement efforts in schools.
Description
VanGronigen, B. A., Meyers, C. V., Adjei, R. A., Marianno, L., & Charris, L. (2023). The Design and Characteristics of School Improvement Plan Templates. AERA Open, 9 was originally published in AERA Open. The version of record is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584231168378. © The Author(s) 2023. https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero. Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions.
Keywords
accountability, content analysis, educational policy, educational reform, organization theory/change, planning, qualitative research, school improvement plan, school improvement planning, state education agency, template, theory-of-action
Citation
VanGronigen, B. A., Meyers, C. V., Adjei, R. A., Marianno, L., & Charris, L. (2023). The Design and Characteristics of School Improvement Plan Templates. AERA Open, 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584231168378