North Star Project Update: District Services

Name of Project: District Services
Name of Initiative: Initiative Two: Partnerships and Stakeholder Loyalty

Team members:
Greg Carenza
Connor Hood
Dee Horning
Mary Montgomery
Berrett Rice
Nikki Roorda
Steve Smith
Maureen Taylor

Give the gist of what your project is about including the long-term goal.
The District Services Project is developing a consistent planning process for districts to determine their professional development and resource needs. The planning process will include screening level and diagnostic data analysis, joint planning between the AEA and LEA, with a long-term goal of proactively meeting districts’ data-based needs.

What are the things that your team has been working on?
The team has been working on creating a vision of the short-, mid- and long-term goals for district services. In the short-term, we have created documents that Partnership Directors will use when having data conversations with districts, including a district profile that will accessible to both AEA and LEA staff. The profile will outline student achievement trends, district administration, information on professional development foci and information on curriculum, instruction and assessment.

The group has also developed a protocol for tiered district service conversations based on district need. For example, if a district is out-of-compliance with regard to AYP or State Performance Plan indicators, there is now a common set of tools that AEA staff and LEA staff can work through to ensure that services provided by the AEA are correlated to the area(s) of discrepancy or need. These conversations will help the AEA determine district needs and impact staffing allocations.

The group is also working on a service report that districts will receive at the end of the school year outlining the services/resources they partnered with Heartland to receive over the course of the year. The long-term goal for this project is to have a Web-based interface where continuous improvement planning tools and templates will be available for both AEA and LEA staffs to use.

What has your team accomplished?
Our team has developed prototypes of a district profile, planning conversations tool, a planning conversation protocol with coaching questions and a district services report. We have conducted trainings with the Partnership Directors on the analysis of AYP and State Performance Plan data, as well as a future planning on using the HEART database.

Why are these important to the Agency’s goal of increasing student achievement?
Through the development of a consistent planning process with districts that includes data-based decision making, we should be able to better align the services we provide to increase student achievement.

What can the staff expect in the future?
As the Partnership Directors begin to implement the consistent data conversations, staff will have the opportunity to be involved in the districts’ planning processes at an early stage, thereby giving them opportunity to explore how they can support the districts’ needs.