Strategic Plan Guidance
STRATEGIC DESIGN &
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
The best summer programs are intentionally designed to focus on a set of explicit skills, competencies, and experiences that supplement and reinforce school-year instruction and goals for students. Programs that use data to design and improve learning and instruction are best positioned to benefit students.
Establish your vision for summer learning
Best Practice: Draft a vision statement to describe the program’s goals, the values it promotes, and its approach to teaching and learning.
Summer is a time to amplify and extend the impact of school-year learning. For students who are behind, summer learning offers a chance to catch up before the next school year. For students who may not have access to many enriching resources or experiences, summer is a time for expanding horizons. Summer is also a valuable time to invest in teachers and provide them with additional professional learning opportunities and equip them to test out new evidence-based instructional approaches or structures. Finally, summer may be a great time to build deeper relationships with families.
Planning Tip
Use one of your first Steering Committee meetings to collaboratively brainstorm a vision statement. Then, tap an author to write a few drafts for consideration based on the results.
Resources
Example Vision Statements
By providing innovative programs that are differentiated based on student outcomes, Cityscape’s Foresight program aims to strengthen partnerships with families to prepare children and young people to fulfill productive leadership roles in society. (Cityscape Schools, ADSY PEP Cycle 2)
Every eligible GISD student has equal access to the summer learning program and is continuously challenged to advance his or her knowledge and ability while engaging in discovery and enrichment activities. (Goliad ISD, ADSY PEP Cycle 2)
Marlin ISD will prepare students with the academic and life skills necessary to ensure that their potential turns into performance. Student voice, creativity, and SEL are all as essential as academic progress in the growth of our students. (Marlin ISD, ADSY PEP Cycle 2)
Example
Determine who the program will serve, and why
Best Practice: Prioritize students for participation based on specific needs or characteristics.
By prioritizing certain student profiles, you will be able to better tailor the program to their needs and ensure they benefit. Consider which students are prioritized for the program and what data you used to make that decision. It can also be helpful to break down enrollment goals by grade level, campus, and special populations to help with student recruitment and staffing.
Planning Tip
Create lists of eligible students based on different criteria (test scores, attendance, household income, etc.) to understand how they compare to program capacity.
Set goals to drive programming
Best Practice: Set SMARTIE goals for program quality, stakeholder satisfaction, student growth, and student attendance. SMARTIE means Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Time-Limited, Inclusive, and Equitable.
The Program Goals, Metrics, and Outcomes tool includes two exercises to help you draft those goals, based on targeted questions:
Indicators of success exercise:
What are some things you can see, count, or measure that will tell you if the program achieved its vision?
Goal-setting exercise:
What would our school or district like to see change/occur as a result of the summer program? Changes may include skill, knowledge, behavior, or attitude.
How will you know a change has occurred? What will you be able to see, count, or measure?
How much change is expected? (If it's a yes/no indicator, what percent of the population will make the change?)
When will the change occur? (typically over the course of the summer or the next school year)
How will the process or outcomes support equity and inclusion? Are there patterns or disparities in current outcomes along lines of race/ethnicity, disability status, English learner status, or other markers of identity? Can this goal invite traditionally excluded individuals to make decisions and contribute in a way that shares power?
Setting Student Academic Growth Goals
Examples of pre/post summer academic outcome goals might include: X% of students gain X months of grade-level skills in math or literacy; or X% of students show improvement from pre-test to post-test on X subject. Other pre/post test metrics might include X% of students show X% of growth in overall scores, scaled scores, percentile ranks, or Lexiles, etc.
Examples of other academic outcome goals (not pre/post summer) may include: use of a rubric tool where a classroom educator rates the perceived growth of their students at the end of the program in various areas such as academics, SEL, behavior, engagement, etc. A sample prompt might read: Please rate the degree of growth student Joe Smith made in math from teh start to the end of the program using a scale of 1-5 (1 = got much worse, 3 = no change, 5 = much better); a staff survey asking educators to rate in aggregate the perceived growh of the students in their respective classroom.
Planning Tip
Consider taking these exercises to your Steering Committee for either a group brainstorm or independent thinking.
Examples
Use data to support real-time improvement
Best Practice: Make a plan to observe and provide feedback to all staff prior to the program’s midpoint.
RAND recommends that summer programs engage in a continuous improvement process that includes evaluation of a site’s culture and climate, use of time, and academic quality in classrooms. RAND also recommends that site leaders periodically observe instruction to understand which teachers or enrichment partners may need additional support. Classroom observation can be a useful way to collect site and classroom information to use in continuous improvement.
Planning Tips
Use the program’s vision statement and SMARTIE goals to establish some criteria for classroom observation. What can you observe that will tell you if the program is on track or off track? Share those criteria with all staff during professional development so everyone has the same view of what success looks like in action.
Ensure teachers know when they will be observed and have the chance to ask questions in advance.
After observations are complete, discuss data with teachers in a timely manner through in-person coaching sessions.
Equip coaches or site leaders to use data to provide ongoing support to teachers. Identify common areas of need to inform in-service PD and pre-program training for the following summer.
Share progress with stakeholders (Building Broad Support)
Summer will be over before you know it! That’s why it’s important to plan to capture and share all of the exciting learning and growth well before the program starts.
Best Practice: Share analyzed data in the fall with a broad group of stakeholders, including district leadership, campus principals, school board members, students, and families.
Planning Tips
Plan for sharing a piece of positive feedback with each family prior the program’s midpoint: This could be a phone call, a handwritten note, a conversation, or an email, depending on your population.
Host a Site Visit: This is truly the best way to make an impact on any stakeholders whose support is essential to the program’s sustainability. Treat your visitors like program participants: offer signature practices like a warm welcome, program culture traditions, brain breaks, and social-emotional learning experiences. Create opportunities for student leadership and plan a short debrief and intentional, optimistic group reflection for closing activity.
Create and share a well-designed impact report with district leadership, campus principals, school board members, students, and families in the fall. Infuse data on student outcomes and staff and family satisfaction with positive quotes and lots of photos.
Best Practice: Reflect on the program's sustainability assets and challenges, and make a plan for the future.
Use the linked Sustainability Toolkit to assess internal organizational readiness, strengths, and weaknesses in the following areas: project management and leadership; human resources and staffing; program quality and data; organizational setting and culture; project champions; policies and procedures; broad community support and partnerships; financial resources and financial strategies; and laws, regulations, and policies. Then, use included tools to develop an action plan for sustainability.
Example
Grand Prairie ISD MyCamp Summer 2021 Results
My Camp GPISD Summer 2021 Results.pdfUse data to drive continuous improvement
Programs that use data to design and improve learning and instruction are best positioned to benefit students. While outcomes data can tell a program how well it did, continuous improvement data can tell it why, illuminating program strengths and growth opportunities across planning, management, and implementation.
Best Practice: Use data from previous summer to make improvements this summer, if available.
If your school/district held summer learning during the most recent summer, gather data to inform your planning for next summer. Data may include:
Stakeholder feedback (teachers, parents, students, partners)
Attendance data (including rate of no-shows, attrition)
Student outcomes data (academic, non-academic)
Planning Tips
Begin the reflection and planning process as soon as possible after the conclusion of the summer learning program, when personal accounts of successes and challenges are still fresh in the minds of program personnel. Use the Summer Program Reflection Tool.
Present relevant data reports from the previous summer at your first Steering Committee meeting.
Best Practice: Use summer program student outcome data to improve the program next summer.
Planning Tips
Identify and regularly use data sources to monitor and influence quality and instructional practices.
Academic assessments embedded in HQIM
SEL or non-academic assessments
Classroom or Program Observations:
Summer Learning Toolkit (click on Engaging in Continuous Improvement)
Surveys
Focus Groups
Attendance data
Retention data
Other administrative data, logs
Track no-show rates and attendance, loss of instructional time, instructional practices in academics and enrichment, site climate, and teacher and student satisfaction to inform strategies for continuous improvement.
