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Lakeview High School Strategic Plan Analysis

Nicholas Galullo

Post University

EDU515 Measurement & Metrics

Dr. Amy Carroll

December 3, 2020
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Lakeview Overview Strategic: Identification of Specific Issues

In one way or another, any high school education's goal is to prepare its students for

college, career, service, or citizenship. Lakeview High School in Waterbury, Connecticut, is not

different. Like many schools, its mission is clear, but its path difficult. To best traverse its planned

route, Lakeview must evaluate its strengths and weaknesses as an educational organization. By

performing a SWOT analysis on the limited information available in Lakeview's 2014-15 school

profile, Lakeview’s most considerable problems are its graduation rate of 19% and its attendance

rate of 55%.

SWOT Analysis

To analyze Lakeview’s most pressing problems, the organization must assess its strengths,

weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The combined effort of such a process is known as a

SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis allows organizations to better "make decisions about the best

path for" their initiatives (Renault, 2016). By analyzing available and relevant data points from the

school profile and organizing them into the SWOT matrix, we can better understand the actors

affecting their ability to achieve their goals and objectives. As identified in the previous report,

Lakeview wants 50% of its students to meet state graduation test requirements, aligned their

curriculum with CCSS standards, increase their mathematics proficiency by 15% and lastly,

increase the graduation rate to 70%. Taking these goals into consideration, a SWOT matrix, as

seen below, was developed. Once the SWOT matrix is created, it's essential to extract the "major

strategic themes" (Figliuolo, 2015). Aligning strategic themes with the school goals, as expressed

earlier, we can see that many of the strategic pieces paint a picture of a lack of goal alignment and

support.
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Internal External
Strengths Opportunities
 Course offerings
 Create better learning
 Staff education
environment
 Extracurricular opportunities
 Align expectations with goals
 Extracurricular participation
 Increase student achievement
and success

Weaknesses Threats

 Staff not buying in

 Unclear connection between
goals and areas of  Student motivation
improvement  Uncontrollable variables such
 Poor Staff-Student ratio as community poverty
 Low attendance rates  Budget
 Uneven academic
achievement

The SWOT analysis has given us the ability to see that Lakeview is held back by its

inability to promote academic achievement throughout all levels of its school system. This is

deduced because it's clear that student success opportunities are present but not seize upon by a

large majority of the school. It appears that only a fraction of the students that attend Lakeview are

taking advantage of the support and programs offered by the school. This is best evidenced by the

horrid attendance and graduation rates of Lakeview. The reason why this connection can be drawn

is by looking closely at the data. When looking at Lakeview's test scores, I.E., their performance on

Connecticut Academic Performance Test for 10th grade, Lakeview scores on average, several

points higher than the state averages in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, & Science. However, in

two years, these students, many of whom scored higher than the state average, will fail to graduate

60% less than the state average. The relationship between the two results has a low, if not zero

correlation coefficient (Ravid, 2015, p. 104). As a result, two possibilities start to appear. A
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minority of high achieving students inflates the test averages provided, or the school has failed to

continue to prepare these students from their sophomore year on.

Fishbone Strategic Analysis: Reasons for Specific Issues

In order to further get at the route of the problem, we must take the SWOT analysis one

step forward by creating two fishbone diagrams to find the root causes of this problem. A

Fishbone strategic analysis allows us to focus of the causes of the problem, rather than the

symptoms (Lin, 2018). Creating a fishbone diagram will allow us to see what might be causing the

low attendance and graduation rates.

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Through close examination of the fishbone diagram, what we can see what might be

happening. What appears to be the issue is a lack support in places for struggling students.

Throughout the progression of the diagrams, typically, a number of interventions would be put into

place to curb the identified causes. For example, in most situation that are occurring that might

explain our underline problems, certain stakeholders would be put in place to address these issues.

However, looking back at the data it may become clear that some students are not afforded these

interventions as they might be slipping through the cracks.

On average, Lakeview's class sizes are about one to two students larger than the state

average. So, in other terms, a teacher with five students has 5-10 more students in their caseload

over another teacher in the state. This is not enough to make a significant dedication based on this

data; the difference falls between the acceptable standard deviation df (Ravid, 2015, P. 34). Where

Lakeview has a considerable gap between their consoler population and student population. With a

population of 1,774 students, Lakeview has nearly a 445 to 1 balance of students to counselors

(assuming three positions listed along with the collected data are social workers and school

psychologists). This is far below the recommended 250 students per school counselor ratio

recommended by the American School Counselor Association (Bray, 2019). Many of the roles a

traditional school consoler plays might be negligence because of the immense student load under

their guidance.

Strategic Analysis: Missing Data

To create a proper strategic analysis, there are many unanswered questions left out of the

available school report. Most strategies for strategic analysis depend on four different steps.

Articulating the plan; deciding where the organization is going and why. Strategic Differentiation;
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determining what the organization does best and how they can use their strengths to improve their

weaknesses. Organization Alignment; getting everybody on board and moving toward a common

goal. Furthermore, lastly, Organization Transformation; executing the plan (Olsen, 2017).

Lakeview has articled its goals on a focus on academic achievement. However, after completing

the SWOT analysis, they should think about refocusing their goals to support more social and

emotional growth of their students. In doing so, many of their underline problems, which are

causing their larger problems, will be more clearly addressed. During the first step of the strategic

analysis, leadership should create a set of questionaries for the students and staff. These

questionnaires should be exploratory in nature and formatted mostly with Unstructured response

formats. This way, these responses allow the administration to "explore the respondents' feelings,

experiences, and perceptions" (Sincero, 2012). From there, leadership will move to the next phase

of the strategic analysis, strategic differentiation.

Based on the surveys' feedback, leadership will get a better understanding of their strengths

and weakness. One thing that might come to light is that some students do not feel value in their

current education. An interesting data point that could be used to formulate a starting position is the

high percentage of students bound for military service after graduation. Out of the 148 graduating

seniors, 36 went on to military service or 24%. That is an extraordinarily high percentage. The

available report does not mention any ROTC program or explanation of why so many of their

students choose a service branch after graduation. What the school might be able to do is tap into

that culture and use this civic pride to help other struggling students. The creation of an ROTC

program also comes with other benefits, such as scholarships and leadership experience (Montesi,

2018). ROTC programs have been demonstrated to increase students' attendance, behavior, and

responsibility, all shortcomings identified in the SWOT and fishbones analysis.

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Next, leadership will enter into a period of organizational alignment. Leadership should

work closely with available stakeholders to formulate a plan of action. For complex situations, like

aligning goals, "large group methods (LGMs)…are efficient approaches to initiating democratic,

interactive, multidirectional discussion sessions" (Snowen & Boone, 2007 p. 75). Leadership

should create several different heterogeneous committees focused on addressing the issues

identified in the before mentioned surveys. Lastly, after the brainstorming phase has ended, the

period of organizational transformation will start. During this process, leadership will take into

consideration all the recommendations made from the different committees. Here, they will start an

action plan that prioritizes needs and focus areas. For example, earlier, it was identified that the

consoler program was understaffed and most likely overwhelmed. It is possible that the social and

emotional survey that was conducted had students expressing this concern. From there, the

recommendation committee that was created determined the need to hire an additional consoler,

look to hire interns, or change the school schedule to allow for more time for these school

consoling services to occur. Based on budget constraints, time constraints, and community

support, leadership would recommend these changes to the board of education and superintendent.

Overall, what is missing is the data needed to draw a connection. It's easily understood that

problems like the graduation and attendance rates need to be fixed. What is not so quickly gleamed

is identifying the reasons for such discrepancies between test scores and graduation rates. In the

end, it must be something else. Hopefully, by issuing the recommended surveys, leadership can

begin a reformation cycle at Lakeview High School. As Sir Ken Robinson once said, "The role of

a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it's to create a culture where everyone can have ideas

and feel they're valued." Once Lakeview can identify its cultural strengths, it will begin to create a

valuable education for its students.

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References

Bray, B. (2019, May 10). One school counselor per 455 students: Nationwide average improves.

Counseling Today. https://ct.counseling.org/2019/05/one-school-counselor-per-455-

students-nationwide-average-improves/.
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Figliuolo, M. (May 5th, 2015). Conducting a SWOT analysis. LinkedIn Learning.

Figliuolo, M. (2015, May 5). Extracting insights from a SWOT analysis. LinkedIn Learning.

Lin, A. (2018, October 8). Fishbone Diagram for Root Cause Analysis: Free Template.

https://tulip.co/blog/lean-manufacturing/fishbone-ishikawa-diagram-for-root-cause-

analysis/.

Montesi, J. (2018, October 18). ROTC Benefits: The Financial and Personal Advantages of

Participation. Azusa Pacific University. https://www.apu.edu/articles/rotc-benefits-the-

financial-and-personal-advantages-of-participation/.

Olsen, E. (2017, September 7). What is Strategic Planning, Really?: OnStrategy Video:

OnStrategy. https://onstrategyhq.com/resources/video-what-is-strategic-planning-really/.

Ravid, R. (2015). Practical Statistics for Educators: Vol. Fifth edition. Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers.

Renault, T. (2016). SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Work

Group for Community Health and Development, University of Kansas

Sincero, S. M. (2012, July 9). Survey response formats. Explorable.

https://explorable.com/survey-response-formats 

Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making. (cover

story). Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76.

Ravid, R. (2015). Practical Statistics for Educators: Vol. Fifth edition. Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers.