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Case Study: Shaping School Culture

Anna Underhill

Department of Education, Grand Canyon University

EAD-520: Strengthening Curricular Programs to Promote Continuous School Improvement

Dr. Jesse Washington

August 24, 2022

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Case Study: Shaping School Culture

Part 1: Case Analysis

Brief Summary:

I am serving as a new principal in a middle school where I was previously the assistant principal.

The school received a grade letter of “D” for performance from the state. The school is not

known to be very prestigious and houses a lot of students that come from single-family

households. There needs to be more teachers hired within the school, and the student population

is approximately 700 students with many of them being of African American and Hispanic

descent. There have been at least fourteen administrators in which some of the teachers that are

still working here have seen come through the building. I am trying to find a way to influence

student achievement and the only way to do that is to target student discipline first.

Issues to be Resolved:

 Hiring of new staff

 Improving school to receive higher grade from the state

 Manage student discipline effectively

 Raise student achievement

Stakeholders Involved in the Issues:

 Students

 Parents

 Staff

 Board of Education

 State

 Community members
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Court Cases or Laws

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) "The purpose of this title is to provide all children

significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close

educational achievement gaps."

District Policies Related to the Issues

School officials shall limit the number and duration of expulsions and out-of-school suspensions

to the greatest extent practicable, and, where practicable and reasonable, shall consider forms of

non-exclusionary discipline before using out-of-school suspensions or expulsions. School

personnel shall not advise or encourage students to drop out of school voluntarily due to

behavioral or academic difficulties (2022).

Possible Solutions

 Increase parent involvement

 Offer positive behavior incentives to students

 Adequately train staff on restorative justice practices

 Boost staff morale

 Look into possible curriculum changes

Solutions Chosen to Resolve Issues

 Increase parent involvement through incentives provided to the families to build

relationship between families and school

 Create a team of teachers to work alongside administration to develop a positive behavior

system for the students

 Provide staff with professional development on restorative practice techniques

Action Steps
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1. Invite families in for a back-to-school family night to meet the teachers and provide the

incentive of raffles and a light dinner. Incentives would continue throughout the year to

get more parents to participate in school activities.

2. Ask for teacher volunteers to serve on the positive behavior team and begin meeting on a

bi-weekly basis to get the plans in motion with students.

3. Host a handful of professional developments pertaining to restorative practice techniques

for teachers to utilize in the classroom.

4. Review discipline data as the year progresses. If data has shown improvement, begin

looking at curriculum.

Potential Moral and Legal Consequences

There are essentially no moral or legal consequences based off the action steps above. If

anything, the only legal consequences that could happen is not focusing on the academic side of

things and not providing proper resources for students who need it.

Rationale

The case study explained that to improve student achievement, behavior must be

managed first. Within the action steps, I focused mostly on improving behavior. I felt this was

needed because if a classroom cannot be focused on academics because of behavior, there’s no

need to focus all my attention on academics first. I felt that parent involvement was needed

within the school. I’ve seen that when there’s more parent involvement, there are fewer negative

behaviors that happen. Since this is a middle school, I also felt that a positive behavior system

would work well with the age group (Center on PBIS). I also felt that teachers would be a good

fit to be the guides on providing these incentives since they are in the classroom with the

students, and I’d like for decisions to be made by teachers that they’d want to implement. I also
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felt that the collaboration among the teachers would help meet student needs better by allowing

everyone to work as a team. The entire plan helps maintain a positive relationship with the

school, staff, and families by inviting everyone into the school and have a helping hand in the

student’s education (Developing Stakeholder Relationships to Support School Programming).

Families can provide support by being there for their child. Staff provide support by being

present in the classroom and supporting the students, and the school provides support by

supporting the teachers and students positively.

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Resources

Developing stakeholder relationships to support school programming - ed. (n.d.). Retrieved

August 25, 2022, from

https://t4pacenter.ed.gov/docs/T4PAStakeholdRelationship508C.pdf

Every student succeeds act (ESSA). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). (2015). Retrieved

August 24, 2022, from https://www.everystudentsucceedsact.org/

Center on PBIS. (n.d.). Retrieved August 24, 2022, from https://www.pbis.org/