achievement gap in public schools

Action Plan Steps

The first step will be to gather two sets of information. One is a full review of the literature on the best practices for closing the achievement gap. The other is the information about the gap in Broward County specifically. We can only close the gap if we correctly identify it. Information about educational outcomes will need to be compared with income, race and gender data. The next phase of the action plan will be to identify key interventions, using the best practices identified in the literature. The third phase of the action plan will be to identify and engage with the relevant stakeholders, as defined by those action plans.

Strategies

There will first need to be adequate resources to execute the action plan. This will involve re-allocating parts of the budget at both the school board level and the individual school level for the programs recommended. If there is an anticipated shortfall of funding, then a proposal will have to be made for whatever grants, tax increases or other funding methods might be required to close the gap. The correct human resources will also need to be identified. If this necessitates hiring, then positions will need to be created and authorized. If people need to be redeployed, than that will require thinking about how to cover their former roles to ensure that there is no degradation of the quality of education as the result of creating these programs.

Material is going to be produced to support the different endeavors. In addition to the need for a budget and human resources to produce this material – or buy it – there will need to be a correct identification of the material needed to specifically meet the goals of overcoming the achievement gap.

Student achievement and curriculum designed to maximize it are the most important factors in the action plan – the goals of the plan should be based around the same student outcomes that identify the gap in the first place. The curriculum and instruction should be directly targeted towards closing the gap. Rewards for students, and the teachers responsible for helping to close the gap – even in the form of added recognition – will be a good start.

Stakeholders

There are a number of different stakeholders - parents, teachers, school administrators, civic leaders and students. Staff of the school board will be engaged in the research process through the creation of task force dedicated to identifying best practices and critical resources for the achievement gap program. Teachers will be consulted, to ensure that the practices identified are feasible in Broward County, and to identify any potential issues that might not have been considered in the initial research phase. We believe that town halls with the teachers, followed by the creation of a teacher task force, will help engage the teachers in this project, and incorporate their valuable input into the process.

Where conflicts arise, they are unlikely to be the result of goal conflict, but rather disagreements on how to achieve the goals. Empathy and understanding will be important, but we will also have a decision-making heuristic rooted in evidence, rather than ideology. It is important to hear voices, but to have a specific pathway to making decisions even in the face of apparent conflict.

Managing Resources

A budget is one of the key means of exerting control over a project (Thibodeaux, 2018), so the budget will be used to govern the allocation of resources. The budget will be weighed against results as well, to ensure that the funds we are spending , and the other resources that are being used, are being put to effective use. The second type of control will to be have a strategic planning document, so that there is full transparency and the different stakeholders understand clearly what the objectives of the project are, and what their role in the project is. Having a document that is visible to everybody typically results in a higher level of buy-in. Furthermore, victories will be celebrated – people need to know that what they are doing is working, and the best way to do that is by communicating regularly about the results and outcomes of that work (Amabile & Kramer, 2011).