Co-Created Customizable School Improvement Services
Every school has unique conditions and needs. McREL prioritizes context and collaboration when working with our school and district clients. We don’t deliver one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf, prescribed programs. Before proposing any solutions or services, we first learn about your school community—your strengths and traditions, values and goals, culture, and areas of concern.
We then tailor our services to fit your specific needs, building contextualized solutions on a solid foundation of evidence-based best practices, forward-thinking concepts, an equity lens, and a systems approach to continuous improvement, including:
Capacity building of in-district expertise
Continuous improvement planning and implementation
Curriculum analysis and alignment with standards and assessments
Diagnostic review, needs assessment, program evaluation, and recommendations
Educator development and coaching
Leadership development and coaching
Professional learning
Turnaround and priority school improvement planning and implementation
Contact us today to learn more about our school improvement services and
see how we can help your school or district achieve its goals!
What Matters Most
What to Improve: What Matters Most®
McREL’s meta-analysis of decades of research on effective schools and districts revealed five high-leverage, high-payoff areas for school systems to invest in that are most likely to have positive effects on student success:
Challenging, engaging, and intentional instruction
Curricular pathways to success
Whole-child supports
High-performance school cultures
High-reliability district systems
Our team works with your educators to gain the knowledge, skills, and procedures needed to create and sustain these important conditions through our professional learning, coaching, analysis, and technical assistance services.
How to Improve: Curiosity Works® Improvement Phases
McREL’s analysis of improvement science, professional learning and curiosity, and the principles of high-reliability organizations led to our development of a six-phase process for school improvement. This approach, called Curiosity Works, works for schools of all performance levels and helps guide school leadership teams understand and move through each phase at their school, using our proven tools, strategies, and methods to support collaborative growth and collective efficacy.
Phase 1: Get Ready—Establish Shared Values, Moral Purpose, and Compelling Vision
Phase 2: Create Hopeful Urgency and Chart a Course
Phase 3: Focus on Teaching and Learning
Phase 4: Support Professional Learning and Collaboration
Phase 5: Embed Consistent, Deep Practices
Phase 6: Build a Purposeful Community
What our clients are saying . . .
“McREL has helped our staff to grow professionally and have a bigger impact on student learning.”
—Darrel Kohlman, superintendent, Kansas
“Our partnership with McREL has been extremely beneficial and is a
contributing factor toward the increase in our student achievement scores.”—Rik Devney, principal, Nebraska