Page 14 - Comprehensive Needs Assessment Toolbook, By Deb Wahlstrom

The Toolbook and ESSA

SELECT EXAMPLES
Comprehensive Needs Assessment
• Provides a method of organizing data for required
comprehensive needs assessment.
• Includes data examples and templates for student
subgroups to help ensure staff learn to work with
subgroup data.
• Includes a full myriad of data and easily encompasses
ESSA’s requirements of a Comprehensive Needs
Assessment.
• Provides support for conducting interviews, focus
groups, and surveys.
• Includes Factors to Analyze, a unique method used in
this Toolbook, to help identify root causes. Also
includes the Digraph and Comparison Matrix – other
tools for root cause analysis.

School Improvement Plan
• Includes support for identifying and writing Evidences
of Need in SMART Sheets as part of the Comprehensive
Needs Assessment.
• Includes SMART Sheets, which show how to write
Evidences of Success (year-end goals).
• Includes different types of prioritization tools to give
schools a method to choose their focus activities, as
well as their action strategies.
• Encourages collaborative conversations that lead to
root causes – that lead to correct action strategies,
through the use of Factors to Analyze.
• Includes information about each Key Performance to
remind schools about the importance of the data with
which they work.
• Includes tools, such as calendars – and how to create
them, to help staff keep all of the pieces and parts of
the improvement model moving.

Yearly Evaluation
• Includes Evidences of Success, which are based on
Evidences of Need, are written in a manner that is easy
to review at the end of the year.
• Includes the range of data expected in the
Comprehensive Needs Assessment, and more.
• Includes the monitoring piece as built-in and a natural
part of working with data and keeping up with the work
of the school.