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School districts invest significant time and resources in developing strategic plans, but turning those high-level visions into meaningful, day-to-day actions is often challenging.

The edLeader Panel “Transform Your District’s Strategic Plan into Action: From the Boardroom to the Classroom” guided district leaders, technology administrators, and educators through transforming strategic plans into actionable, measurable steps that drive real impact.

Big-Picture Vision

Districts have much to consider when mapping forward movement, including measuring educational return on investment and instruction (ROI), establishing teams to inform budgets, defining success indicators, identifying gaps, and setting accountability parameters. All help determine “the best bang for your buck” to ensure positive student outcomes.

Planning requires clear goals, objectives, metrics, and action-oriented strategies that drive impact. The starting point is a broad look at the factors influencing ROI and all that is at play, including fiscal accountability, performance-based data, and stakeholder expectations.

Financial Decision Making: A Collective Effort

Educators may not be finance or business minded, but they must understand that ROI requires dollars to match student achievement.

Analyzing impact is essential: It determines program usage and compares it to how much students grow academically, shows how many students are proficient on a particular assessment, and reveals what has practical classroom application.

Looking at finances from that perspective is a collective action. It calls for cross-functional teams across district divisions—academic services, IT, operations, procurement, and human resources. They can answer questions about critical financial areas, like duplicated purchases, monies spent on professional development, and data analysis.

All stakeholders that are part of the conversation, including families, should be informed about programs that work, their cost effectiveness, and how they relate to a district’s financial stewardship. A unified effort demands shared terminology and vision, so everyone is on the same page when contributing to and making decisions about a district’s financial direction.

Evaluation: Data to Inform Decision Making

Evaluation requires agreed-upon metrics, informed implementation post-decision making, and a tool that helps stakeholders with trackable data demonstrating how programs and services are used and their ultimate benefits.

Take, for instance, a digital math program. To see whether it’s “working,” the team would do a deep dive. Beyond logging in, are students completing the lessons and watching the videos? What is the level of their participation? Is the product doing enough to affect performance? Here, the team becomes accountable for outcomes: How is the implementation going? How much was spent? How well did it work?

An analysis of this type can take place across all efforts—tutoring, professional development, and career tech initiatives. To determine effectiveness, it is essential to collect data with fidelity, with an eye on what is not working, what works well, and where an initiative is subpar. The three tiers allow for varied insights.

Let’s say there is a K-8 ELA program. Compared with the Formative Assessment System for Teachers (FAST) results, the scores might indicate that students are not faring as expected. The district has spent $1.3 million on the program, but it is underutilized. Calculations based on these factors show a 30% ROI. However, using an evaluation tool for deeper analysis shows that students who used the tool made learning gains of 80%.

These findings invite further exploration. What contributed to non-usage? Could it be a teacher or a school? Is it a subgroup of students? Those non-users may have received Tier 1 interventions and did not participate in the digital initiative. The goal is to use data to improve usage and progress toward collective efficacy while maintaining fiscal responsibility.

Funding Awareness and Fiscal Responsibility

Staying on top of funding streams and where the money goes is critical to planning. Knowing what funding is available and drying up calls for reassessing existing tools and programs, thus evaluating impact and results.

When looking at investments, take stock of all funding sources, like state tax dollars and federal grants, to determine ROI related to student achievement. And finally, be sure to consider what happens when funding disappears.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, Transform Your District’s Strategic Plan into Action: From the Boardroom to the Classroom, sponsored by Level Data.

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Leadership Practices for Innovative Leaders is a free professional learning community where school and district leaders share and collaborate on personal leadership skills, professional learning and support for teachers and staff, student learning and well-being, communication with all stakeholders, and more.

Level Data is the leading provider of K-12 data management and workflow automation software. We empower schools, districts, and states to operate more efficiently and make smarter, data-driven decisions. Our flexible solutions help districts maximize funding, enhance educator effectiveness, and drive better educational outcomes while staying in compliance. With automated workflows and real-time insights, district leaders can shift from a reactive to a strategic approach, allowing them to focus more on what matters most: the students.

Article by Michele Israel, based on this edLeader Panel