STEERING COMMITTEE
NARRATIVE REPORT ON CAPACITY ASSESSMENT

The Laurel-Concord Public School High Performance Learning Process models the effectiveness of a consensual process for school improvement. This process promoted the identification and support of two primary school improvement goals. These goals included the improvement of reading and the improvement of student achievement in writing/language arts. Following the identification of these learning goals, the staff promoted the development of three sub-committees who would study best practice, identify strategies and related staff development, implement management systems, and assess the effectiveness of these systems on student achievement.

The steering committee’s role in this process was to provide the overview, organization, support, time, resources, and management systems. The instruction committee focused their work on alignment of curriculum, researching best practices, and providing staff development and developing information systems to manage and improve classroom instruction. The assessment committee concentrated their efforts on identifying, developing, adopting, and implementing quality assessments and management systems to promote the use of data for decision-making purposes. The communication committee focused their efforts on improving internal and external communication and support systems.
The strengths identified by the steering committee in the capacity assessment instrument reflected strong support for a continuous model where each of the sub-committees were given the autonomy to study, develop strategies, and assess progress toward meeting the identified school improvement goals. In addition, the identification and implementation of information systems, vision, leadership-governance, and school community relationships were also recognized as strengths to our school improvement process. Finally, the steering committee identified allocation of resources and dedication of time, people, materials, and instructional programs as strengths in support of the goals outlined in our school improvement process.

Areas of focus for the future include implementation of individual student and staff management systems to allow for better use of data to guide future decisions. They also identified an increased emphasis on best practices and expansion of multiple researched-based interventions based on individual student needs. While the steering committee identified time for staff to work within their sub-committees as a strength, they also believe additional time and resources will be necessary for continued improvement in the future.