Choosing strategies
Action Checklist
- Collect successful strategies data from other communities
- Review research-based strategies that address your problem
- Choose strategies
- Develop evaluation design
- Identify activities that will support thestrategy
- Identify people responsible for implementing tasks
- Identify staff development needs
Planning Tools
Your communities has identified its priorities, clarified the problem, identified goals, and objectives you think is realistic to achieve. At this point, you are translating your plan into action. There are seven steps to consider when developing your action plan. Keep in mind, teams may need training in the change process, in benchmarking, in developing milestones, or in choosing the best practices for identified goal areas, or in distinguishing strategies from activities.
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Collect successful strategies data from other communities.
Your team members may have information on successful strategies used in other communities. -
Review research-based strategies that address your problem.
Check out the Best Practices page to review some of the databases for research-based strategies. -
Choose the strategies that you will implement to address your problem.
Use the 'Choosing Strategies' worksheet to select strategies that help you achieve your desired outcomes in the identified population, address identified problems, have been shown to be effective, and can be implemented. -
Develop evaluation design
Evaluation frameworks and models stress the importance of conducting evaluations consistently and integrating it within day-to-day program operations. Identify milestones of progress, and mechanism for collecting data. A milestone represents the completion of an activity that must occur in a program/project cycle to meet objectives. Milestones should accurately identify projected points in time that coincide with the completion of incremental steps or parts of work until the overall program/project or activity is completed. -
Identify activities that will support the strategy.
Develop a timeline, and identify specific tasks that need to be done in order to reach the objective. A timeline template is illustrated. -
Identify people responsible for implementing strategies, collecting the assessment data, and monitoring overall progress.
Complete a timeline chart to help you organize designating responsible people for carrying through the activities. A sample timeline for assessment activities is attached, as is a template for you to use for strategies identified by your team. -
Identify staff development needs
Team members designated to implement a strategy may need training and/or assistance. Assess the basic skills and information team members need, develop a survey or ask team members about their training needs based on this assessment.
-Adapted from Maryland School Improvement Project
