Spotlight on Evidence-Based Practices for Improvement 

December 23, 2024

Measurable progress on specific problems is the promise of evidence-based practices for improvement, and research-supported educational initiatives such as continuous improvement/inquiry cycles can enact real and transformative change in many different aspects of education.

This Spotlight takes a look at how continuous improvement cycles can help schools select and evaluate attendance interventions, spark change for literary instructions, and enhance social-emotional learning programs even in times of great upheaval.

Using Evidence-Based Continuous Improvement Cycles

Chronic absenteeism is on the rise across the nation, and interventions intended to curb it are primary administrator and educator concerns. But choosing between interventions and projects intended to support attendance is not easy without data showing efficacy, leaving administrators unsure where to spend their time and energy. One possible solution, according to a report from WestEd’s Regional Educational Laboratory West, is continuous improvement cycles.

The report breaks the improvement cycle process down into five steps:

1. Identifying local needs, including the needs of the learner population being served
2. Selecting evidence-based project components that organizations (and any partners) have the capacity to implement
3. Planning for implementation
4. Supporting implementation of the project components
5. Examining and reflecting upon how the project components are working

Advice on each step urges educators to reflect on how they can best serve the unique nature of their own student population and community, while ensuring the goal of supporting attendance is primary.

Read the full report

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Boosting Instruction With Learning Huddles and Inquiry Cycles

When elementary teachers in the Washoe County School District (WCSD) in Reno, Nevada, found the need to improve the literacy performance outcomes of their students, the district enlisted the help of REL West to learn how to conduct inquiry cycles for its efforts: Choose a “change idea,” try it out in classrooms, collect data, examine the data in teams, and implement changes.

At WCSD, educators examine the data in “learning huddles.” These are 30-minute grade-level meetings held every other week during which teachers quickly review their agenda, check in, and then spend 20 minutes analyzing data and artifacts from their classrooms before deciding what they’ll try next to make instructional improvements.

The result was that teachers noted improvements in student writing, and administrators plan to continue the program: “Teachers are wonderful at analyzing student data,” said Susan Egloff, principal of WCSD’s Stead Elementary. “But what set the learning huddles apart from a typical professional learning community was the focus on teacher practices. This is when we saw instruction shift from a teacher-centered classroom to a more student-centered approach.”

Discover more about learning huddles

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Strengthening Social and Emotional Learning Through Improvement Science

Atlanta educators knew they had their work cut out for them when they decided to use improvement science to enhance the effectiveness of students’ social and emotional learning (SEL) with coaching from WestEd. What they didn’t know when they started their efforts at the end of 2019 was that in a few short months, the COVID-19 pandemic would throw education (and everything else) into disarray.

Participating schools shifted to less formal cycles of improvement. “Although we canceled some meetings,” said WestEd Improvement Specialist Corey Donahue, “we decided to continue with the liaisons of four middle schools, shifting from a heavily facilitated improvement science process to a much more flexible period where we began sessions by simply asking, ‘What are you facing this week?’”

The process helped schools weather the pandemic and strengthened SEL. Even after the grant that funded the partnership between WestEd and Atlanta Public Schools (APS) ended, APS insiders decided to keep it in place as an in-house program to “identify and unpack the most pressing challenges to their SEL implementation.”

Read more about SEL in Atlanta Public Schools

Explore these resources for assistance in promoting meaningful change and improvement.