Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement

GLISI's Promising Practices

What is a GLISI Promising Practice?

A Promising Practice is a “story” that describes one school team’s success in setting and attaining an improvement goal. This site is a place for you to share your school improvement success, to find out how other schools have dealt with their challenges, and to learn from their successful strategies.

How can Promising Practices help your school?

Study the challenges, the work, and the results in the submissions linked below. They can be the beginning of a professional learning opportunity for your school or district team. Call the contact person for more information about how they worked through the process.

Through this study, you can:

See the challenges that other schools and districts are working on
Understand that schools have used different methods to address similar challenges
Affirm that school improvement risks can yield positive results
Develop case studies to organize and align your team
Bring non-GLISI-trained leaders into your work
Expand your networking opportunities

Have a Promising Practice to share? We know our leaders are committed to sharing their success in improving school achievement. Study the Submitting a Promising Practice page and work through the Promising Practices PowerPoint template, and you can take the next step toward researching, analyzing, and implementing your own Promising Practice.

Submitted By	School Challenge	School Level	Target Grade	Target Student Population	Target Content Area	What Was Implemented
NEW! W. Jackson	Prepare and implement a restructuring plan for standards-based learning	Elementary	2	All Students	Mathematics	New Core Math Program; Professional learning
D. Blizzard	Develop and implement a continuous improvement plan and Balanced Scorecard	Elementary	5	Students With Disabilities	Reading	Professional learning; School Improvement Plan; Balanced Scorecard
G. Hughes	Bored students; lack of technology alignment; achievements declining	Primary	1	Early Intervention Plan and Limited English Proficiency sub-groups	Reading	21st Century Model Classrooms
W. Hickman	Lack of focus and shared vision; little collaboration; lack of teacher leaders	High	9-11	All	Math	Better-seeking Team with focus on data, collaboration, and school and system-wide goals
D. Sturdivant	Poverty, not making AYP, low expectations, in-adequate professional learning	Middle	6-8	All students	All	Professional learning, alignment of curriculum with GPS, using data
F. Brown	Improve scores for LEP and SWD students	Middle	6-8	Limited English Proficiency/ Students W/ Disabilities	All	Professional learning, collaborative planning time, monitoring
M. Taylor	Changing the school culture	Elementary	4	Hispanic students	Reading	Better-seeking team
G. Taylor	Unifying school and faculty buy-in	Middle	6-8	All students	Reading	Enrichment block
P. Reaves	Change teacher mindset in terms of subpopulations	Middle	6-8	All students	LAR/reading & math	Professional learning focus
S. Smith	Changing math program, assessment, and instruction	Elementary	4	All students	Math	PDCA cycle to endorse ONE math program
T. DeLoach	Culture of the school; adopt "no excuses" attitude	Middle	6-8	All students	Math	Data analysis to influence all systems
N. Cook	Improve scores on GA High School Writing Test	High	9-12	All students	Writing	Write it Right Initiative
B. Brown	Dealing with the sudden change in population to reach all students	High	9-12	Hispanic students	Writing	Increased student & teacher ownership to raise cultural awareness
D. Rodriguez	Increase all student CRCT math scores by 2% each year	Elementary	K-5	All students	Math	For teachers: intensive prof. development; For students: weekly instructional focus & motivational "boot camp"
N. Greenwood	Improve district-level focus on student achievement; maintain consistency of achievement initiatives despite high turnover	District-level (All) Elementary Middle High	K-5 6-8 9-12	All students	Reading Math English	Strong leader- ship at all schools; school budget control; data rooms; common planning times; Better-seeking Teams at school level; teachers working together
V. Smith	Preparing a school improvement plan	Elementary	3-5	All students	Reading Math	Restructuring of school policies and processes
D. Williams	Changing culture of school & staff expectations of students	High	9-11	All students	English	Cardinal Creative Alliance (Better-seeking Team)
C. May	"Needs Improvement School" with high minority and poverty	Elementary	3-5	All students	Reading/ELA and Math	Improved practices and intervention for low-performing students