Strategic Planning and Continuous School Improvement: Needs Assessments and SWOT/Resource Analyses

by Howard M. Knoff, Ph.D. NEWLY UPDATED, Copyright 2019 158 pages   Strategic planning, organizational development, and progressive school improvement involve ongoing, interdependent, scaffolded, and articulated processes that have specific stages distributed across the school year.  Often tied to districts’ annual budget cycles, strategic planning and school improvement focus on the staff and skills, materials and resources, instruction and intervention, and formative and summative evaluations needed to educate a diverse and often complex student body.     This guide provides a brief history of school improvement, and discusses the most important requirements written into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  It then describes the essential elements of the strategic planning process at the district or school levels, and discusses the most-critical activities across its five phases.     The guide then discusses tools and processes that help Districts and their schools complete (