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Continous Improvement is a process that has been put in place to respond to the achievement gap between Title One and non-Title One schools, and to increase student achievement on all measure across the district. Its foundation is built on Total Quality Management principles, Effective Schools Correlates and Eight Step Instructional Process. It incorporates the following elements:

Instructional Calendar: Based on district curriculum and state standards, calendars are designed to give scope and sequence of the most essential curricular concepts in reading and math.





Instructional Focus: The instructional focus is a key concept to be taught to mastery over a 1-3 week period. At the end of the period children are assessed to their level of mastery. Those that demonstrate mastery participate in enrichment activities during team time. Those that need further instruction participate in remediation/turtorial activities during team time.





Short Frequent Assessments (SFAs): The SFAs are short quizzes consisting of 4 or 5 questions that are designed to measure students' mastery of the instructional focuses. Assessments are given for reading and math, generally once every other week.





Team Time (Tutorial and Enrichment): Based on students' performance on the previous assessment, they participate in either tutorial or enrichment activities that reinforce the prior instructional focus. Teachers are encouraged to teach team time in a different learning style and/or use hand-ons activities. Seatwork is discouraged. Team time is a 30-minute period 4 or 5 days a week.



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Maintenance and Monitoring: Skill acquisition for each student is constantly checked and re-rechecked. Short maintenance activities are built in to the daily lesson plans. Maintenance and monitoring also keeps student who were not ready for the instructional focus skills "on the front burner" so teachers do not leave them behind.





Frequent Classroom Observations: According to the model, principals are expected to visit a minimum of four classrooms for 15 minutes each day. This schedule reinforces the concept of the principal as the instructional leader. It gives the principal the opportunity to know how the process is being implemented at each grade level and to help when roadblocks occurs.





Collaboration Planning Time:Principals are expected to design the school schedule to provide grade level teachers with at least one common planning (prep) time so they can discuss assessment data teaching strategies, and/or team time resources.

**Content for the Continous Improvement Model was furnished by the Boise School District

***Email your questions about CIMs***