Program Improvement Report

Hello Everyone!

I started drafting a post to you all because I have several random things I would like to share with you and it has been a while since I have contributed in this forum. And then it hit me.

I never did report back to you all on the outcome of the Program Improvement Workgroup! This was the group for which I solicited volunteers for the Leadership Excellence Academy professional development I am required to do.

I had to prepare a report to submit which you could all see if you are interested. What I thought I would do here is to give you the big conclusions we arrived at first. Then, I want to talk a little about the process we used to get there. Those of you with attention deficit issues can stop reading after the outcomes, and those of you with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can keep reading...

The purpose of this exercise was to survey staff to identify the top few things we need to do to improve our program. You all received an invitation to take the survey, and we had a 76% response rate!! (I confess, I totally forgot to actually take the assessment myself. Don't judge.)

So, without further ado, here are the top three things the workgroup identified we need to work on to improve our program:

1. Recruiting Students
2. Retaining Students
3. Providing access to technology in all classrooms

I believe there were two other items that came out that are also important but did not make the top three. These are preparing for GED 2014, and the necessity of streamlining the whole paperwork submission process. Frankly, I wasn't all that surprised by these outcomes. Are you surprised by them?

I wish to thank the following people for their participation in the workgroup:

April Amspaugh
Mary Colley
Michael Craig
Gary Felumlee
Susan Hyland
Roxanne Lewis
Heather Mazeroski
Carolyn Summers

Because I held the first meeting of this group in haste, not everyone listed above was involved in the first step. The main purpose of this meeting was to look at various example surveys and choose one that we could modify to fit our needs. I did not participate in this process because I felt it should be developed by staff and not by me. The sub-group came up with some very specific things. They took parts of one survey, the rating scale from another survey, and added some other things besides. They very specifically wanted everyone to be able to make general comments about each section, which turned out to be really great information to have later in the process.

I created the survey based on the suggestions given to me. The entire workgroup had an opportunity to review, and I fixed a few typos and some other small things. Then we distributed it to the entire staff. Please be assured that all answers were completely anonymous. The entire group listed above assembled to review the results.

When one fills out a survey like the one I sent out, responses are automatically compiled in a spreadsheet. With Google, you can also generate a summary page that makes colorful pie charts that gave us quick visual clues as to the questions where the majority of folks answered "unsatisfactory." By using that information along with the comments people made, it really didn't take us very long to see what we needed to address first.

So, I turned in my report. Now what?

The Leadership Academy is a 2-year program, so I will continue on with that. The plan is to take the things we have identified and then examine what the latest research tells us is an effective way to address the improvements we have identified. After that, we look at our program data and see what that tells us about the things we need to improve. By the time we are done, we have a clearer view of the steps we need to take to make improvements in our program.

I can also share with you that I met this week with Cathy Pastre for my evaluation, and together we set a couple of goals for me to be working on in the next year. Step 1 will be to conduct an inventory of technology at all of our sites. Step 2 is to figure out what we need so that everyone has adequate access to technology (and eventually the official GED Practice Tests which will only be online) and a connection to the Internet.

We'll keep working on the other things, too. Thanks to everyone for helping voice their opinions. Keep them coming!!