Improvement Science is a disciplined approach to learning that leverages the contributions of everyone, redesigns systems, produces better results, and focuses on continual improvement.  It emphasizes deliberate, guided conversation informed by data. At its heart, it asks three key questions:

• What specifically are we trying to accomplish?

• What changes might we introduce?

• How will we know if a change is an improvement?

Your team will learn to use Improvement Science tools across a series of six 6-hour training sessions. During those sessions, your team will work independently to make decisions and complete action steps in advance of the next session. Improvement Science focuses on learning by doing. This training series will provide an opportunity to do the work and build your skills as you build your change ideas.

During the six sessions, your team will learn that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. How to investigate systems, identify opportunities for improvement, and use core improvement principles. That we cannot improve at scale what we cannot measure. How to create a balanced system of measurement to monitor improvement across your school or district. How to conduct small tests of change and determine whether those changes should be deployed at scale. That improvement demands disciplined inquiry and that we cannot improve at scale what we cannot measure. 

Teams are encouraged to bring any problem of practice. Possibilities may include:

• Attendance and re-engagement

• Academic Improvement for subgroups of students

• Student Engagement

• Improving processes or procedures

• School Improvement (SIP) Goals 

• District Improvement (L-CAP) Goals

Assembling your team
We encourage you to identify Improvement Teams that will guide your approach to system improvement. The ideal learning teams will be composed of staff who can put the plans for the identified problem into practice. We recommend 3-7 people per team; most of our collaborative time will be team-specific so be sure to choose members who can reliably attend and participate. NOTE: If you do not have a team, but still want to learn about the practices, you are strongly encouraged to attend and participate.