Developing Buy-In for Schoolwide Approaches

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Preparing for an intervention implementation through developing buy-in can be essential for practitioners across various schoolwide approaches (link).  Recently, my friend and co-author, Lisa Caputo Love gave a presentation for the 7th Annual CAST Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Symposium about developing buy-in for UDL. While she focused on UDL in her presentation, the strategies she recommended for gaining buy-in can be used across different schoolwide interventions.

Here is her link to the presentation below, it’s only about 10 minutes, so it’s not too long.

We have also provided a summary of her talk here as well.

Summary – Gaining Buy-In

In this presentation, Lisa described ways to establish buy-in for schoolwide approaches to interventions. Schoolwide approaches in this presentation referred to UDL, however, they can include schoolwide positive behavior support, social and emotional learning, or other systematic instructional strategies. The end goal of establishing buy-in is to create specific and actionable goals using measurable data.

The goals for her presentation included:

• Conducting a Needs Assessment
  • Identifying the concerns/needs of the implementers
  • Identifying current strengths and next steps
• Organizing Your Data
  • Identifying data you already have related to your approach
• Presenting Data & Making Connections
  • Develop specific and actionable goals using measurable data

Needs Assessments

Stages of Concern

In the presentation, Lisa shared the Stage of Concern process, a resource for sharing new initiatives with stakeholders. It’s an excellent tool for seeing how your community feels about the need for a new strategy. The process for understanding the concerns of your community can include a brief survey, a short interview, or open-ended written responses during meetings. The goal of the Stages of Concern process is to better understand the thinking of your community as it relates to your intervention. These data help you identify the types of concerns (as presented in the example below) held by your constituents.

Here is the example she provided that includes the stages of concern with sample statements for each level.

Just like with instruction, once your know where your community members are in terms of readiness, you can differentiate your approaches to establishing buy-in among them.

Strengths and Areas for Improvement

Another strategy for developing buy-in for a schoolwide intervention is to help staff reflect on their current practices. Specifically, you can help staff see what they are already doing well regarding your recommended intervention, and identify possible areas for improvement. Using a rubric or self-assessment allows community members to self-identify areas of strength and need related to your intervention. There are many examples of self-assessments including the Team Implementation Checklist for schoolwide positive behavior support, the CASEL Implementation Rubric for social and emotional learning, the Self-Assessment of MTSS Implementation (SAM) for both academic and behavior support, and the Wisconsin School Mental Health Needs Assessment. In her presentation, Lisa discussed the UDL Implement Rubric, developed by Melissa Toland, that was adapted from the work of Dr. Katie Novak and Dr. Kristian Rodriguez. The three major components of UDL include: flexible means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. Staff can use this implementation guide to identify what they are doing well and areas of improvement related to UDL practices.

Organizing the Data for Reflection

Once the staff can reflect on their current practices using a self-assessment, you can organize their thinking about the approach using reflective questions. We adapted these questions from the work of Jim Knight and his Partnership Learning approach. The questions can be conducted in groups or with individual teachers. The prompts can guide you to understand the needs of your school related to your initiative. Specifically, you can identify strengths, pain points, and things to avoid when training and support begin. You can find a copy of these questions in our book, Systematic Interventions in Secondary Schools, on page 54, or you can download a sample Word version here (link). The sample we provided in the link was designed for developing buy-in around school-wide positive behavior support.

Sharing Your Data and Making Connections

Sometimes teams are overwhelmed with the amount of information that is shared with them at any one time. For example, handing multiple spreadsheets and reams of paper to a team might not be the most efficient way to connect with them about the need for your intervention. Lisa suggested four steps that can help you present data to the staff.

Avoid overwhelming audience with too much data

Process the data and find the specific pieces of information that are most relevant to your work. A excellent place to start is to look at data you already have related to early warning systems. The data from early warning systems focus on predictors of students’ future success or struggles.

Provide a graphic or summary of the data, along with questions or protocol for engagement

Provide the team with protocols or guiding questions as they reflect upon their data. For example, Attendance Works provides several tools that schools and districts can use to organize issues around attendance data. For example, they provide a classroom level attendance calculator to see the need for early intervention (link).

Below you will find Table 12.3 from our book adapted from Attendance Works Classroom Level Attendance Calculator. This chart can help you build a sense of urgency and need related to your schoolwide initiatives that address student engagement or include other attendance-related early warning systems.

Prepare for pushback

Be aware of areas where the staff might have concerns around the data or your intervention approach. Try to be prepared with responses that are based on the data. Here is a blog we wrote about preparing for the concerns of your staff before meeting with them (link).

Bring the conversation back to school/district vision, mission, and improvement plan

Connect the data and the initiative with the overall mission and vision for the school. It is a good idea to connect the intervention with one of the top three improvement goals for the school. Hopefully, this step will ensure that the intervention is tied to key priorities, resources, and evaluation data. If you need more information, here is a blog that can help you consider your school or team’s mission and vision (link).

Truth for Who

A good way to organize your thinking about the school’s data is to use a process called Truth for Who. This process was developed by Project Zero, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Lisa asks that you take time to reflect on the data using the matrix below. In the center of the tool, you can state your claim about why the intervention might be helpful to the school. Next, identify the multiple perspectives that the stakeholders might have, based on the data you have collected. For example, what might be the viewpoints of the teachers, staff, students, parents, guardians, and community members? These statements are your perspectives based on the data collected up to this point. By completing this grid, you will be able to understand better the needs and concerns around the intervention from the perspective of your community.

For practice, you can make a claim about the implementation of a schoolwide approach such as UDL in your school/district. Then, use the Truth for Who organizer to reflect on the various stances or “truths” that different stakeholders may have in response to the claim. For example, you can focus on the perspectives of students, parents, and guardians, staff, administration, and district leaders. This exercise can also help you differentiate your approaches to buy-in for these team members based on your data.

These strategies are a part of building readiness for a schoolwide intervention. Establishing buy-in is an important part of developing the urgency needed for your intervention in the exploration stage of implementation. Thanks, Lisa, for your very helpful presentation, and we hope this summary is helpful to you! We would love to know more about the processes and tools you use to establish buy-in and readiness with your teams. Please leave a comment below.