Our School Climate Improvement Process is based on a cyclical five-stage breakdown of best practices and organizational tips, grounded in our own rich research and guidelines from the nation's leading educational organizations.
CSEE works with schools on a daily basis to help them assess and improve their climates for learning, and the formation of this process is also largely culled from direct feedback from school community members who are actively utilizing these guidelines in their own schools. At CSEE, we believe these stages form the foundation for successful and sustained whole-school improvement. Below are a few key guiding principles for implementing each stage effectively.
Create a leadership team that is truly representative of your school community and elect a School Climate Coordinator to oversee the assessment process.
Make sure you have adequate resources to best assess your school. Lack of time and energy will compromise the effectiveness of your campaign before it even begins.
Share your mission with your school community, then develop a plan for introducing and gathering input from these critical school groups.
Gather the data and evaluate over-arching strengths and weaknesses with a sound measurement tool that meets your community's needs.
An efficient way to assess school community perceptions is with the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI).
Examine your school group perceptions and make note of where these perceptions align and diverge.
Share the results with your school community.
Dig deeper to truly understand your survey findings. Ask specific questions, and consider focus group discussions, weekly leadership meetings and opportunities for anonymous comments and suggestions.
Develop an evidence-based action plan to promote social and emotional learning and start improving your school climate. This should grow from your survey findings.
Set a realistic and adequate time frame (3-5 years) for your improvement plan.
Ground your plan in the 2 essential processes that characterize school improvement efforts: promoting students' social, emotional and cognitive competencies; and creating safe, caring and participatory schools.
Involve members of your community, and make sure they feel part of the process.
Gather reliable and valid assessment data at 9-24 month intervals.
Many schools use the 1 or 2-year mark to re-assess their school climate using the CSCI or other preferred measurement tools.
Discover what has changed and how. Discover what has not changed, and learn more about barriers to school climate improvement in your school.
Celebrate your successes and integrate your learnings into your school improvement plans. Continue to re-evaluate, implement and reflect.