Welcome to the Strong Plans Improvement Lab! At our kick-off meeting, we brought together improvement teams from seven schools to dive into continuous improvement and explore how we will work together throughout the year to strengthen postsecondary planning.

Key takeaways:

• Continuous Improvement Approach: Teams explored continuous Improvement and how this approach can help address systemic challenges in building strong plans by testing small changes.

• Strong Plans Reflection and Self-Assessment: Teams discussed what a strong postsecondary plan looks and feels like. They also examined the Career Navigation Roadmap to identify what their school does well and where they might need to improve. 

• Root Cause Analysis: We explored why all students aren't building strong postsecondary plans by creating Fishbone Diagrams.

• Empathy Interviews: Teams began planning empathy interviews to gather insights into student experiences.

NEXT: Teams will (1) Conduct empathy interviews with students, (2) Complete a capacity self-assessment to better understand their strengths and learning goals, and (3) Meet with coaches to plan next steps.

Slide Deck | Session Materials  [Improvement Team Access Only]

The Think Tank brought together Lab participants along with other network members and friends to share ideas with each other. After mini-presentations in our Practice Share, we followed a Huddle Protocol so that each school team could both get ideas from the network on their problems, and share their expertise at other tables. After some holidays snacks, team went back to their tables to consolidate the ideas they heard and start to move toward a decision for what change idea they might try. A change idea is not a strategic plan or year-long program, rather it's a small tweak to our work that might lead to meaningful change when scaled.

Thanks to all our volunteers for the Practice Share!

• Ben Carey, Cypress Hills LDC, spoke about connecting students with persistence programs on CUNY campuses before graduation

• Sam Maroshick, Urban Assembly, showed us CounselorGPT - a new tool you can pilot for free to supplement exploration and planning. 

  • Interested schools should reach out either directly to Sam or through our CounselorGPT Interest Form. There are flexible ways to try it out - big and small.

• Andrea Ferrero-Haggerty, Pockets Change, showed us the Money Personality quiz and a sneak peak of free resources for talking to young people about values, systems, and money. Here are her slides.

• Justina Sharrock, Goddard Riverside, spoke about her out-of-school programs in career readiness and planning. 

Next up: We'll land on a change idea and put it into a Plan for our first Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles!

In Session 4, teams moved from identifying challenges to actively designing solutions. Through an interactive improvement science exercise, participants experienced the core principles of Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles firsthand: trying a change, learning from results, adapting, and trying again. Teams refined their specific change ideas, gathered peer feedback through a gallery walk, and strengthened their plans using clear criteria for what makes a promising improvement strategy.

The session also focused on practical measurement. Rather than relying only on traditional accountability data, teams explored how to use quick, actionable measures to understand whether a change is actually leading to improvement. By the end of the day, each school team had a clearer improvement plan, stronger ideas informed by peer input, and a more concrete strategy for learning what works for students.

 Session 5 created space for teams to learn from one another while continuing their improvement cycles. Participants reflected on students who were on track to graduate with strong postsecondary plans, grounding the conversation in real examples of success. Teams also analyzed how digital tools can support postsecondary planning, hearing directly from a peer school about implementation lessons and the conditions that helped the work succeed.

A major focus of the session was collaborative problem-solving through tuning protocols, where teams shared their work, received structured feedback, and surfaced new ideas for strengthening their efforts. The session also introduced the concept of documenting, sharing, and scaling improvement work, helping teams think beyond isolated experiments toward broader systems change so successful practices can spread within and across schools.

The final session brought teams together to reflect on their improvement journey and share what they had learned. Participants revisited the continuous improvement process, discussing what felt different from their usual ways of working and identifying the conditions that made their teams effective. The session emphasized the importance of strong cross-functional teams, shared purpose, and structured routines in driving meaningful school improvement.

Through a gallery walk showcase, teams documented their change ideas, lessons learned, student stories, and plans for what comes next. This created an opportunity not only to celebrate progress, but to learn from peers’ approaches and spark ideas for future work. The session closed with recognition of each team’s efforts and a forward-looking conversation about sustaining and expanding this work to help more students graduate with strong postsecondary plans.