Study of an online school improvement implementation and monitoring tool for schools

ROCKMAN ET AL (REA), an independent research, evaluation and consulting firm in San Francisco proposes to collaborate with WestEd, a nonprofit research, development, and service agency, to conduct a feasibility study of an online school improvement planning tool designed for use by schools and districts. WestEd developed the tool to support continuous school improvement in response to their work in support of schools that were developing and implementing school reform plans. WestEd and REA staff found that school reform plans, no matter how well crafted, were not dynamic and quickly became outdated. The online database tool allows school teams (and the service providers who support them) to monitor and update plans, develop evaluation plans, manage the school improvement process, and prepare reports for various groups of stakeholders. WestEd was able to apply multiple faces to the database to meet the planning needs of different constituent groups. The tool has already been expanded to a broader planning environment for schools’under the title, SchoolsMovingUp. Although many schools are using this version resources have not been available to assess its usability and the feasibility of scaling up for use by many more schools.