School Improvement Training and Auditing Services

The Grant Experts' team of highly qualified and experienced (10-30 years) Education Specialists can offer your school a variety of training and consulting opportunities geared towards school improvement. The strategies we use have been successfully implemented in hundreds other school districts throughout the country and are backed by scientific research. Our intervention services include...

CURRICULUM AUDITING AND IMPROVEMENT

The Grant Experts' Curriculum Auditing and Improvement Service is completely customized for each and every school and district that we have the opportunity to support. The service is designed to help K-12 education agencies identify areas where their curriculum might not be aligned to state standards as well as areas where teaching staff might not be using the most appropriate instructional strategies and approaches to helping students achieve high levels of academic success. The audit, which includes a thorough assessment of the curricular scope and sequences adopted by your organization, is performed using the Grant Experts' pacing charts and content standards alignment matrices. Moreover, the audit concentrates on all four core curriculum areas. As a final part of the audit process, the Grant Experts' Education Specialists compile the information gathered and use it to develop a strategic plan of needed improvements. This plan of strategies and timelines then acts as your implementation roadmap as you push your schools, students, and staff towards academic and performance excellence.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)
  • Plus $1,000 per each developed plan for each content area at each grade level

ASSESSMENT GROWTH COACHING

Assessment Growth Coaching is a proven strategy that leads to major improvements in the test scores of students from elementary to secondary levels in all core subject areas. For this unique service, the Grant Experts' Education Specialists will come to your school and work with your students - showing them how to chart and track their academic success as well as set academic goals. Each student will build a matrix of success and a plan for future achievement based on his or her own scores from the state curriculum assessments. Using the scores that have been aligned to each of the major standards/objectives, students are guided as they build a spreadsheet that incorporates personalized bar charts showing them trends of academic growth or regression over time. These tools will become a permanent fixture in your classroom as children are supported in taking control over their academic achievement levels and goals.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

STAFF DEVELOPMENT ASSESSMENT

For the Grant Experts' Staff Development Assessment Service, your school's process for assessing and addressing teachers' staff development needs will be audited for its strengths and weaknesses. The audit is guided by scientifically-based research on effective staff development programs and is extremely effective at streamlining and maximizing our clients' professional development outcomes. The Grant Experts' Education Specialists will work closely with you to identify the areas of staff development most needed by your personnel in context to student achievement levels and instructional practices. The Specialists will also analyze how you have provided training and assistance in the past. A plan for improvement and success is then developed by our Specialists in conjunction with the administrative and/or teaching staff of your education agency.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

SCHOOL VISION DEVELOPMENT AND RESTRUCTURING

If your school does not involve multiple staff members and stakeholders in collective decision-making on a regular basis in a coordinated effort to move your school towards a shared vision, then the Grant Experts' School Vision Development and Restructuring Service will be perfect for your school. The service is designed to offer schools with guidance and a plan for making this happen. Our Education Specialists will work closely with you to create a plan of shared vision development and decision-making that can be put into place so that all stakeholders feel they have a voice in the decisions, progress, and success of your school. Included in this service is assistance in developing a five (or ten) year plan of school success which incorporates goals, objectives, strategies, and timelines.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

VISUAL MEDIA AND CURRENT TECHNOLOGY USE ASSESSMENT

Several of our Education Specialists are trained and nationally recognized experts in the field of integrating visual and technology media into classrooms. For the Visual Media and Current Technology Use Assessment Service, our Specialists will assess the level of use (and the effectiveness of use) of these vital strategies by your teaching staff. The assessment is based on best practices and research-based approaches to technology integration in K-12 classrooms. The Specialists will also develop a detailed report of their findings along with an action plan that you can use for addressing the areas of need specific to your school.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

NEW TEACHER MENTORING PROGRAM ASSESSMENT

If you are currently implementing a new teacher mentoring program, but have not assessed the validity or effectiveness of your program, the Grant Experts' New Teacher Mentoring Program Assessment will be an ideal service for your school or district. Our Education Specialists use validated tools, rubrics, and observation techniques to pinpoint the most useful strategies of your program as well as those strategies that are not effective. The Specialists will then develop a detailed report of their findings along with an action plan that you can use for moving your program to exemplary.

If you are not currently implementing a teacher mentoring program, the Grant Experts can also help tailor a program to meet the unique needs of your staff. This service includes a needs assessment of your staff, development (or identification of) a customized teacher mentoring program and curriculum (including tools that you can use to assess the effectiveness of the program), and an action plan with timelines and benchmarks to guide implementation.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

STUDENT ASSESSMENT IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Does your school want to improve its student assessment scores? If so, the Grant Experts' Education Specialists can help you identify areas of need and assist you in creating a structured plan for addressing those needs guided by research-based strategies that have helped other US schools improve. The Grant Experts' Student Assessment Improvement Plan Service is custom-designed to address the core content areas evaluated on your state curriculum assessments. The Grant Experts' auditing process will help you, as an administrator, pinpoint the exact areas that are causing academic weaknesses. Our experienced and successful Education Specialists (who have 30 plus years experience as education administrators) will use this information to assist you in creating a plan to address and improve those areas and raise the bar on student achievement in your school.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

ASSESSMENT OF BEST PRACTICES IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

The Grant Experts' Elementary Classroom Assessment Service is perfect for administrators and teachers who need help identifying the use of scientifically-based teaching strategies in the elementary classroom. The Grant Experts' team of successful Education Specialists will provide you with objective classroom observations - documenting the use of effective teaching strategies by your staff. These observations are not "judgmental" or "evaluative" but rather documentation of what is seen and heard during an observed 45 minute lesson of any of the core academic subjects. Our team will then develop a detailed report of its findings along with an action plan that you can use for addressing the areas of need specific to your classrooms.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

ASSESSMENT OF BEST PRACTICE IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM

Secondary teaching strategies vary from core subject to core subject but the use of best practice in the classroom can be identified by the trained eye. This service will provide you with objective observations by experienced administrators and practitioners who will document exactly what was observed during a regular class period. The documentation can then be used to address areas of strength and weakness to help your teachers improve and raise student achievement.

Read about the backgrounds and qualifications of our Education Specialists here

COST

  • $2,800 per Specialist per day (plus travel)

Approach

THE DREAM TEAM APPROACH

If you believe your school could benefit from a combination of the above mentioned services, we will send a team of two or more experienced Education Specialists to provide you with a comprehensive scope of services. You can request this approach and receive an assessment and improvement plan of action that will equip you with the tools you will need to move your school towards excellence. The Grant Experts' staff will work with you to design a Dream Team Approach that will best meet your needs and create a timeline the team will use to provide you with the services.

The Dream Team approach will be developed in a strategic planning session with you, your administrators and our administrative team. We will send you a quote of the cost of having the Dream Team in your district for your planning needs.

APPROACHES
Some of the additional approaches we use in these trainings include:

TIMED WALK-THROUGHS
Using one or more of our Education Specialists, 5 to 45 minute walk-through classroom observations are conducted where various classrooms are observed. The team then collaborates about what they saw in the "beginning," "middle" and "end" of each class. Documentation of their observations (compared against rubrics of best practices and competency ranking tools) is then used to enrich and support teachers' professional growth and instructional improvement.

INSTRUCTIONAL UNIT/CLASSROOM LESSON ALIGNMENT AND ASSESSMENT
Randomly chosen lessons and/or lesson plans are assessed by our Education Specialists to determine whether or not they are accurately aligned with your district scope and sequence as well as your curriculum documents. Quality control for each lesson may also be assessed by our Specialists to help your teachers identify their instructional strengths and weaknesses. This approach helps to ensure quality, equity, and the use of best practices in each classroom.

TEACHER SELF ASSESSMENT
It is difficult for most teachers to objectively identify their own areas of strength and weakness - and sometimes it is unfortunately true that an educator can represent a weak link in the school improvement process. The Grant Experts' experienced Education Specialists have developed the skill of sensitively working with teachers to show them how to rate themselves against a rubric of research-based and evidence-based exemplary teaching characteristics. Our team will work with groups of your teachers to help them develop personal improvement plans that provide them with authentic strategies that will help them become better teachers.

ACCOUNTABILITY TOOLS TO STRENGTHEN ADMINISTRATIVE SKILLS
Administrators today can take advantage of a variety of free online tools that can be custom designed to strengthen their administrative skills. Our experienced Education Specialists can assist you in creating online documents your teachers will be able to access daily to record any data you would like to see from them on a regular basis. An example of this would be an online spreadsheet with students listed by class where reading intervention teachers could record daily progress made on a particular reading program by each student. These online documents allow administrators to monitor what is going on in their school from their desktop as well as in the halls.

ONGOING MONITORING
Our Dream Team of Education Specialists can be contracted to return to your school over the course of multiple school years to research and document the changes in "school improvement" in the areas you desire. This objective group of experienced school administrators and pedagogical specialists has honed the skill of working with school administrators to provide assistance in a "non-threatening" manner. This kind of formative assessment will provide you with meaningful quantitative and qualitative data that you can use to monitor and adjust your school improvement process.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES
Benchmark testing is used widely in schools today but what are your teachers doing with the data once the tests are given? The Grant Experts' Education Specialists can help you devise a plan where your teachers will actually use these data to address student academic weaknesses as aligned to the content standards - as well as ensure that areas of need are made stronger. During this process, teachers are taught and mentored on how to use data in the ongoing school improvement process.

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