Develop a mission statement with measurable outcomes. Mission statements should include items that can be evaluated through surveys, students' progress reports and standardized test results.
Determine what represents the success of your improvement plan. This should also be simple and measurable. This can be done by deciding how many of the objectives need to be met in order to deem the plan successful. For example, if you have five strategies for implementation, a passing grade for the plan would be three out of five objectives met. The ultimate goal would be to make some improvement in all areas, but a reasonable standard would be 80 percent achieved.
Decide what tools to use for implementation and measurement of each strategy. If the strategy is to improve communication between school and home, the improvement would be the increase in the amount of emails sent, newsletters produced, activities supported and parent/teacher conference attendance. If the strategy is to improve overall parent satisfaction, take a parent satisfaction survey at the beginning of the improvement plan implementation and do follow-up surveys midway and at the end of the process.
Encourage support of the improvement plan by getting the entire educational community involved. Improvement plans work best when everyone is excited and motivated to see the plan work. Parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, lunch room workers, custodians and students all need to feel like they are a part of the process and take ownership of the improvement plan.