Using a Readiness Assessment to Efficiently Structure Roll-Out

Overview

Challenge: How to determine sequencing for rolling out resources and supports to schools across the system.

Context: Some district leader have used readiness assessments to help individual schools determine how far along they were in personalizing learning and using technology to aid in other shifts, such as mastery learning or real-time data use.

Action Steps: In Fulton County Schools, GA, district leaders decided that the first step in a district-wide commitment to personalization was to understand the readiness of each of their 95 public schools to adapt new instructional practices using technology. Starting in 2014, all schools took a standardized “readiness assessment” that looked at schools’:

• Leadership
• Collaborative Readiness
• Use of Instructional Facilities/Space
• Transformational Instruction
• Alignment of School Strategic Plan to personalized learning

The IT department also did an assessment of the IT infrastructure of each school and performed upgrades before implementing PL for all schools.

In Dallas ISD, leaders have also been interested to determine where schools are in their journey to personalization. They use a readiness self-assessment to both strengthen their district definition of personalized learning and boost their ability to ensure more students in Dallas ISD are getting high-quality instruction that meets their needs. The Dallas assessment is a tool (in the form of a continuum) to identify proofpoint schools as well as schools that are ready, willing, and able to dive into PL.