Comprehensive School Reform
CSR Planning and Evaluation Tools
Planning for comprehensive school reform requires signficant time and effort
on the part of school and district staff. Key aspects of school change efforts,
such as developing staff and community buy-in and ownership for planned reform
efforts, careful needs assessment and planning for school-wide change, and
the involvement of key stakeholders from the school community in the planning
process are each critical aspects of a successful and sustainable reform initiative
- but they take time and effort. Also, there is the difficult task of identifying
the appropriate models and/or strategies that are both research-based and
best meet your school's individual needs. While conducting research on appropriate
school reform strategies is a task that school and district staff must undertake
themselves, there are a variety of tools that have been used by district and
school staff and who have found them to be helpful. These tools, as well as links
to additional guidebooks and resources to help with planning, are provided
below:
Decision-Making Guidebooks
Decision-Making Tools
A variety of CSR specific assessment and model selection tools are available.
These tools are designed to assist school planning teams in identifying priority
areas for improvement and selecting appropriate intervention strategies from
the variety of different types of school reform models and strategies.
- The U.S. Department of Education's draft guidance on Scientifically Based
Research and the Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) Program (PDF
or MS Word)
discusses how scientifically based research will apply to the CSR program
and provides guidance for schools on how to review the research on strategies
and/or models considered for use.
- School Self-Assessment Tool (PDF):
This assessment tool lists the nine components of comprehensive school reform
and specific subcomponents, or elements of the nine components. Using this
assessment tool, your school leadership team, or your entire school staff,
can rate your school's current status or current level of practice
for each element, the evidence that your judgement is based upon,
and how important you feel each element is in supporting your school's
reform efforts.
- School Profile (PDF): This worksheet
provides a simple way to list your school's general curriculum and/or instructional
focus, target populations or grade levels, school goals, and other important
considerations for choosing a model. This School Profile can be used to
make your 'first cut' of reform models that may fit with your school and
district. (Model Selection Tool 1)
- Model Selection - Aligning school
needs with model characteristics (PDF): This worksheet is the companion
piece to the School Self-Assessment Tool (listed above). School leadership
teams can use this worksheet to rank order priority goals and begin research
on selected reform models to see which models truly address identified priority
areas for improvement. (Model Selection Tool 2)
- Model Selection - Identifying and
Aligning Resources (PDF): This chart provides a quick reference to the
variety of funding sources that a school and district can access to support
whole school reform. Using this chart, your school can quickly identify
how resources are being used and what areas need to be addressed. (Model
Selection Tool 3)
- Model Typology (PDF): School reform
models come in all shapes and sizes. Some reform models focus on curriculum
and provide scripted instructional strategies while others focus on building
a governance structure and changing the climate in your school. Being able
to identify the different characteristics in reform models is important
as your school continues to engage in school reform. This tool presents
one way of thinking about the differences among reform models. (Model Typology)
- The School CSR Self-Assessment
Tool, developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, can
assist schools in assessing their needs related to the nine program components
in the comprehensive school reform legislation.
- School Self-Evaluation
Tool (NCREL). The School Self-Evaluation tool, developed by the North
Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) allows schools to assess
themselves through four categories: 1) Learning and teaching, 2) Governance
and management, 3) School improvement and professional development, and
4) Parent and community involvement.
- Database of CSRD Schools.
The Southwest Regional Education Laboratory (SEDL) maintains a searchable
database of schools receiving CSRD subgrants. This database, updated
frequently, can help identify schools implementing particular reform models.
Evaluation Guidebooks
