Design and Plan

Design and Plan

Center the design of the pilot around the intended outcome. Across relevant district and school teams involved in the pilot, collaboratively establish a success statement: At the end of the pilot, what would success look like for learning outcomes; student, teacher, and family experiences; and administrator priorities? Then, work together to determine how these outcomes will be measured. Identify team leads for the pilot, including district staff to support with outreach to the vendor; district and school staff to support with ongoing coaching, technical assistance, and implementation fidelity; and teacher leads to troubleshoot and brainstorm implementation challenges with their peers.

Strategies for Design and Plan

• Draft a statement that describes what success would look like at the end of the pilot and develop specific benchmarks for that success. Share the drafted language with all participating school leaders and educators to collaboratively iterate to the final statement that considers learning outcomes; student, educator, and family experiences; and administrative priorities.
• Using the co-created success statement, determine how each metric (learning, experiences, etc.) will be measured over the course of the pilot. Consider mixed methods approaches, such as formative and summative assessments, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations. Determine when these milestones will take place, who will lead the analysis to determine if the pilot needs modifications, and who will communicate pilot progress to key partners, such as school board members and the broader community.
• Reach out to the vendor team to understand dosage. Work with the vendor team to understand, in practice, what implementation needs to look like to best position the product to have the greatest impact on learning outcomes. Ask the vendor team how they determined dosage, including the grade levels and contexts of the learners involved in the research that drove dosage determination.
• Collaborate with the involved educators, school leaders, and vendor team to establish a professional learning plan that ensures classroom educators are prepared to effectively use the tool.
• Embrace flexibility and collaboration throughout this process. Anticipate that the pilot will not be linear as lessons are learned throughout, and build a pilot team prepared to pivot and collaborate. Clearly define who will be the point of contact for different activities, such as for technical issues at the school and district level, professional learning plans and ongoing, evolving professional learning needs, and for vendor communications.