Teachers at Bright Elementary School are upset. The school’s budget has been cut and the teachers are concerned that funding will no longer be available to support the mathematics program they’ve been implementing for several years. They are worried that, once again, they’ve invested time and energy into a successful program only for it to disappear.
There are many factors that determine whether improvement efforts or their outcomes can be sustained. Some of these factors are tangible (e.g., policies, structures, resources). Other factors—including school culture, people’s perceptions, judgments about the quality of the program, and alignment of implementers’ beliefs and values with the beliefs and values that undergird the program—are intangible. These intangible factors are often overlooked, but they are as important as tangible factors and can make the difference between programs that continue and those that fade away.
Although it might seem counterintuitive, schools should plan for sustainability from the beginning of their improvement initiatives. The plan should address how the school will establish and maintain the structures, processes, and attitudes necessary to support their initiatives over time. Here are some actions Bright Elementary could have taken in the first years of implementing their math program to improve the likelihood that the program would be sustained even in the face of budget cuts. These actions help a program become embedded in the culture of a school and build support for it among various stakeholders.
- Provide professional development for teachers with support and feedback from instructional coaches. Include the principal in this professional development.
- Assess alignment of teachers’ beliefs with the philosophy of the new math program and provide information that helps teachers understand the program’s philosophy and how its approach benefits students.
- Provide time for teachers to meet bi-weekly in PLCs to share successes and challenges with teaching the new math curriculum, analyzing data, and looking at student work.
- Have school leaders visit math classes frequently and provide feedback to teachers.
- Conduct monthly data discussions to track program implementation and student progress.
- Administer student surveys to assess students’ confidence in their ability to do math and their interest in it.
- Provide families with information about the math program and its approach, ideas for math activities families can do at home, and the progress of implementation (including the effects on teacher and student learning).
School improvement consultants can help teams plan for sustainability by sharing information about the tangible and intangible factors that affect it, facilitating discussions about how to address these factors, and emphasizing that sustainability doesn’t mean nothing changes. In fact, knowing how and when to make adaptations to programs while staying true to the beliefs and values that undergird them is one key to sustainability.
Many educators have had experience with improvement efforts that come and go despite significant investments of time, money, and human capacity. It’s not surprising then that some educators are reluctant to put much effort into change initiatives. After all, in their experience, “this too shall pass.” School improvement consultants can use our fillable Developing a Sustainability Plan tool to help implementation teams ensure that participating in improvement efforts is worth the involved people’s time and the improvements that result are around for the long term.
