School Improvement Cycle

The school improvement cycle involves a team effort. Representatives from the local communities and local schools, including individual administrators and teachers, engage in continuous cycles of improvement. It is a self-regulating cycle - the team decides for itself what its schools should be, how they should operate, and in what ways they should change and improve their approaches to teaching and learning. We envision the school improvement cycle working in the following way:

Pathways can support school community teams as they move through the problem definition, decision making, implementation and action, and evaluation phases of the improvement process by providing:

• Research-based knowledge
• Expert advice
• Demonstrations of successful practice
• Resources in key educational areas
• Critical issues to stimulate and inform the improvement process
• Indicators of engaged learning
• Self-study tools

All of these resources are designed to guide teams as they design models of teaching and learning grounded in the belief that all students can learn. It is our belief that school community teams that engage in a continuous, self-regulating cycle of school improvement, supported by Pathways, will be better able to "think globally but act locally" to achieve real and lasting educational reform.