Redesigning School Improvement Planning to Support Educational Equity: A Case Study of Expansive Learning

• In Event: The Role of District in School Policy, Improvement, and Change

Abstract

Research has come to underscore the importance of continuous improvement to ensure an excellent and equitable education for all students, but the main improvement processes used in schools are state mandated “school improvement plans,” or SIPs, that are widely seen as compliance instruments. What if district leaders looked beyond their long-standing SIP process and sought to fundamentally redesign their SIPs with continuous improvement for equity at its core? This paper addresses that question with four years of data from a Research-Practice Partnership in a mid-sized urban school district. We find that using a redesign process based on the “expansive learning” process in CHAT, district leaders were able to fundamentally redesign their SIP process into one that supports all students’ learning.

Authors

• Lydia Rainey, University of Washington

• Meredith I. Honig, University of Washington

• Alyson Honsa, University of Washington - Seattle