The Art of Improvement
"The Art of Improvement" provides tools and tips that you can apply as you work to design, market, improve and evaluate your programs and partnerships.
Inspiration for the title came from remarks by Professor Jessica Hoffmann Davis. During the NEA Institute for School Leaders 2004, held in Ohio, she advised school leaders to "think of school reform as an artistic process, not as a product-based approach that serves as an antidote for educational ineffectiveness." A cognitive psychologist and founding director of the Harvard School of Education's Arts in Education Program, Davis made the case that all schools would benefit from the themes she has observed in arts-focused schools—process and reflection, connection and community, difference and respect, and passion and industry.
Articles in "The Art of Improvement" are based on the Ohio Arts Council's series Focusing the Light: The Art and Practice of Planning and the Researched-Based Communication Toolkit published by National Association of State Arts Agencies. Recent workshops, presentations and publications by experts also inform some of the articles.
Latest Article: Using Facebook to Advocate for Your Organization or Cause
Designing Effective Strategies
Documentation: "Help Them Imagine!"
Online Advocacy Tools Make Taking Action Easy
Evaluating Needs by Michael Sikes. Ph.D.
Find out more about Focusing the Light.
Find out more about NASAA's Researched-Based Communication Toolkit.
Using Facebook to Advocate for Your Organization or Cause
Two Examples
The Ohio Arts Council and the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education both communicate via Facebook.
Visit the OAC on Facebook
Visit the OAEE at on Facebook
Select "Like" for each organization to get their news and updates.
While Facebook is best known for its social uses, increasing numbers of people now use it to stay informed about causes they support. If you are not currently using this free tool to increase the visibility of your program, organization, events or ideas, it's a) worth considering and b) probably easier than you think. But effective use of social media also requires some thought and planning.
Here are seven key decisions to make when you decide to use Facebook to promote your organization or cause.
1) Choose the right Facebook medium
Facebook profiles are intended for use by individuals, and each member of your team can set up a professional Facebook profile that aligns with the organization's image. Facebook pages are better suited to promoting organizations and groups.
An "official page" is the best option for increasing your organization's visibility and disseminating updates via Facebook. Pages look similar to the typical profile page used by individuals, but they are typically left open to the public without requiring the process of requesting and confirming friend status. Unlike personal pages, they provide a "Like" button viewers can use to show their support for the page. (This is known as becoming a "fan.") When someone clicks on "Like," he or she is added to the list of fans that appears on your page and that action will be reported on the person's Facebook profile with a link back to your page. Since that person's "likes" are also reported in the "news feeds" of his or her "friends," each person who likes your page informs additional people about your organization. Moreover, your connection to all who decided to like your page will continue since all the updates, events and other content you post on your page will appear in their news feeds—along with the option of selecting "Like" and commenting.
2) Choose a suitable name
When you set up a Facebook page, you can change any of its details at any time, but if you decide to change the name of the page, you must create a new page and delete the old one. If you do that after people have become fans, you would need to ask them to reaccess the new page and select "Like" all over again. Therefore, make sure you choose the right name before setting up your page.
When naming your Facebook page, use the name your target audience uses to refer to your organization. Also, think about whether you need to add a descriptor that points to what you do or where you are. For example, "Links & Threads: An Arts Learning Magazine" is more likely to be found and visited by arts educators who are not current readers. They might skip over a page called simply "Links & Threads" because they would not know its topic.
3) Plan type of content
Some types of information typically found on organizational pages include:
- Updates about the organization's events, programs, publications and activities
- News relevant to the organization's mission
- Links to online content relevant to the organization's mission
- Thought provoking items that help make the organization's case about its cause
As with any publication, the type of content on a Facebook page should match its target audience and purpose. Also consider your resources. Updates about your organization's events and activities take the least time: they do not need to be frequent and you can reuse text written for the organization's media releases, newsletters and Web site. Links to online content are relatively easy. You probably have many links already bookmarked, so adding one of those every few days would take only minutes. Thought-provoking items about your cause can be a mix of original content and quoted material.
Posting news relevant to your organization's mission may be a bigger commitment, especially if someone is not already monitoring other media for appropriate content. If news items are part of your plan, determine what kind of scope would be manageable and plan to stay within that scope. For example, publishing news about major education issues in your community would take less time than reporting on what every school is doing.
4) Think about process
Planning specifically who will be responsible, developing guidelines for content and deciding on frequency of postings will help you integrate the Facebook page with your other communication processes. The frequency of your postings depends upon your decision about type of content. If you are using your Facebook page solely for updates about your activities, posting once a month may be sufficient. If you are posting thought-provoking advocacy items, a weekly post is a good way to keep your organization visible. If you plan to publish a mix of several types of content, you may need to plan on posting at least three times a week.
5) Plan to promote your page
Before you launch your page, think about how you will lead people to it. Begin with your existing communication vehicles, such as your Web site and newsletter.
Create a customized Facebook badge to place on your Web site and any blogs or other online communications used by your organization. The Links & Threads badge on the right, for example, will take you directly to an accompanying Facebook page where links to new content are posted. (If you decide to "like" Links & Threads while you're there, links to new articles will be sent to your Facebook news feed.)
Facebook provides a tool that makes creating a badge easy, and information on the badge is updated automatically when you change it on the Facebook page.
Another path to promoting your page is the electronic version of word of mouth. If you and other members of your organization have Facebook profiles and have become fans, you can each suggest the page to your Facebook friends and ask them to visit.
6) Plan to Test
Before promoting the page on a wide scale, do a test run with some reviewers. Start with a few inhouse "fans" until you know how the posting process works. Look at every part of the page from a visitor's perspective. Try posting a few updates and observe what happens until you feel comfortable that everything will look and work the way you want it to. Then ask a few friends or associates outside the organization, including some who are new to Facebook, to become fans. Monitor your test group's entire experience to make sure that nothing about how you direct constituents to the page or communicate on the page itself is confusing. Remember that people may not return if their first experience is frustrating or confusing.
7) Plan to launch and grow
When you are ready to launch the page for a broader audience, make sure of the following:
- Your Web site is up to date since some visitors to your Facebook page also may decide to visit there.
- Everyone in your organization knows about the page, including what it's about and how to get there.
- A process for monitoring and updating the page is in place.
Finally, make the growth of your Facebook presence part of your communications plan.
- When you find similar Facebook pages, link to them from your page, become their fans, and "like" or comment on their posts. Their authors may return the favor, making your page visible to their fans.
- Periodically, refer to your Facebook page in your newsletter.
- Keep learning about the features available on Facebook and refining strategies for making your content more effective.
Designing Effective Strategies
Planning takes collaborating, building commitment, analyzing data, setting clear goals and designing measurements. But at the heart of any plan for improving student learning are the strategies—how the organization will meet the goals outlined in the plan.
Decisions about strategies affect how people's work will change, how resources will be reallocated and what the work environment will look like from day to day. In fact, effectively implementing the most important strategic actions of a plan will be the first concrete manifestation of the vision underlying that plan. Strategies are what make an organization unique. They will be the plot line of your team's success story.
But where will you find your strategies? What is the raw material out of which your successful strategic actions will be formed? Here are three rich points of origin:
1. The Existing Knowledge Base
In many areas of education, knowledge of best practices is plentiful. Universities and other research organizations are continually expanding knowledge of what works, and a number of clearinghouses are disseminating results and making it easier to review what the research says. Searching some of those sources of information, reading books and articles by practitioners who have met the goals you are pursuing, attending professional development gatherings and talking with colleagues about "lessons learned" all aid the process of identifying the best strategies for your plan. One excellent general resource is the U.S. Department of Education's "What Works Clearinghouse" and its companion site "Doing What Works." If you're interested in how arts learning can help you achieve your desired goals, download the report Critical Links from the Arts Education Partnership's Web site.
2. Existing Strengths, Opportunities and Relationships
Unique strengths, opportunities and relationships identified during earlier stages of the planning process through asset mapping, appreciative inquiry or other methods can be a starting point for designing powerful strategies. Building upon those assets can mean an easier learning process, a shorter path to full implementation and greater community support, as well as a new infusion of expertise, energy and resources.
3. New Ideas
Some situations call for venturing outside of familiar territory to find fresh new approaches. But even in those uncharted realms, we are not unprepared. The potential for creative, innovative strategies that will dramatically improve schools, organizations and communities is all around.
Although good ideas may emerge in all kinds of settings, effective strategies are more likely to emerge in environments where leaders encourage creative thinking and put systems in place for creating value from innovative ideas. Many tools and techniques are available to help teams approach problems more creatively, but some of the most important initial changes a leader can make are:
- Sharpening curiosity and asking questions.
- Listening and observing closely,
- Communicating the value of innovation.
Many of the practices provided in Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility by Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon can help develop those habits.
You can learn more about effective strategies and other elements of planning in Volume 4 of Focusing the Light: The Art and Practice of Planning. Read about Focusing the Light.
Partnerships among teams and organizations whose backgrounds, expertise and missions differ can be a way to maximize resources,
share costs and expand influence. Powerful insights and breakthrough ideas often emerge when organizations work together. But how do you find and evaluate potential partners? Begin by asking yourself: Volume 2 of The Ohio Arts Council's series Focusing the Light: The Art and Practice of Planning includes information on building successful partnerships and project teams. Arnold Aprill, founding and creative director of the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE), spoke at the Ohio Arts Council's yearly gathering of its artists in residence this October. He encouraged artists to produce more documentation of their residencies in Ohio's schools. "Too much important work just disappears," he said. "People sometimes oppose our work because they can't imagine what we are talking about." He suggested using digital cameras to capture images and video throughout the process. Most digital cameras allow capture of short video clips. "Just switch to video mode and ask students to talk about what they have learned," he said. After sharing examples from a school in Chicago, he then led the artists in a hands on demonstration with their own cameras. Aprill also urged the group to make their work more interdisciplinary and public. To illustrate, he shared documentation of a project that united a community—a solarpowered model of students' Chicago neighborhood. With help from teachers and parents, the students used artistry and engineering to design each little house. The work became a community sensation when they installed it outside the school. "One resident of the neighborhood called and said that she had never before seen art on display," reported Aprill. If you would like to become a more active advocate for high-quality arts learning in Ohio, help is available through the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education and Ohio Citizens for the Arts. Thanks to emails and online resources from these two organizations, you will need only modest time and effort to make your voice heard on behalf of arts education.Got Partners?
Documentation: "Help Them Imagine!"
Online Advocacy Tools Make Taking Action Easy
Data Matters
Only 3% of elementary schools, 6% of middle schools, and 14% of high schools in New Jersey offer arts education in all four arts disciplines as required by state standards. Such statistics from the New Jersey Arts Education Census Project, although disappointing to those who value arts learning, also represent a promise: More states and school districts are taking arts education seriously enough to collect quality data and publish results.
Through a partnership that includes the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New Jersey State Department of Education and nonprofit organizations, the project has detailed census findings in a report entitled Within Our Power. Report recommendations include increased professional development for administrators that focuses on the importance of the arts, expanded learning opportunities for arts educators and a clearinghouse to help schools locate certified arts specialists. As the Arts Education Partnership's imagine nation initiative illustrates, sharing data on current reality helps call attention to needs that may otherwise be overlooked.
Districts interested in collecting data on their own arts education programs may want to review the report and survey instruments, which can be downloaded from the project Web site.
Why Arts Advocacy?
Links & Threads often explores the "how" question of arts education advocacy: How can schools communicate the value of arts education? But as school board members, superintendents and principals search for ways to stretch already strained budgets, another question may arise: Why? With so many demands on resources, why are efforts to sustain and strengthen arts education important?
As a committed arts advocate, you regularly highlight the intrinsic value of arts learning—its role in preserving heritage, enriching culture and strengthening the human spirit. But in hard times, short-term thinking often rules. When decision makers are struggling with the realities of doing more with less, arts education advocates must portray arts learning not only as intrinsically valuable but also as integral to the overall improvement agenda.
Here are some points to help you.
Advocacy Strategies
Community partnerships, parent support and resource investments all make it more likely that your arts education programs and projects will survive and grow. Vital to strengthening all three areas are thoughtful, well-executed advocacy strategies.
Advocacy begins with connecting arts learning to public value. You must be prepared to speak about what the research says about the importance of arts learning to all students, as well as its long-term benefits in preparing students for a range of 21st century careers.
Strong advocacy also requires constant awareness. Continually look around your school for success stories and document them. Collect data and exemplary student work, ask participants for testimonials, and make sure that arts learning is photographed or videotaped. Display results to build excitement.
Finally, advocacy is about telling the story of your programs. Send media releases or brief news stories to the local media and be sure to include photos. Write letters to the editor or op-ed pieces. Develop relationships with reporters who cover the arts, education and community events. Get to know business leaders who understand the economic value of creativity. Take student art work and performances out into the community as a service.
In essence, advocacy is most effective when the work is done over time—before an opportunity arises.
Grants
Have you decided to apply for an OAC grant? Here is a "to do list" to help you get started. Taking these steps early can improve the quality of your application:
- Look at the OAC Web site to find out more about the programs. The grant guidelines are there and they even include examples of typical activities that are funded by each program.
- Discuss the most compelling assets, needs and interests of those you serve. Analyze gaps in arts programming and determine the impacts of those gaps. Review your community assets to determine potential long-term partners, as well as generate ideas about what might interest constituents.
- Talk with the people in your organization who have ideas about how arts learning experiences might benefit those you serve. Look for promising practices in the literature and locally. Go to the OAC's Arts Learning Artist Directory to read about what some of the OAC's artists in residence offer. Brainstorm with staff members. Develop a description of the activities that will be supported by the grant.
- Decide which grant fits your goals and activities. Arts Partnership grants support more systemic efforts that involve long-term arts partnerships among organizations. Artist in Residence grants support intensive arts learning experiences in which an OAC artist spends at least two weeks working in your location. A residency also can be a way to launch a new, more long-term aspect of your arts education program.
- Thoroughly analyze the criteria the OAC will use in reviewing the proposal. Determine what evidence you will need to cite in the narrative and begin organizing your ideas.
- Appoint a team and determine what materials you will need from other sources (bios of key personnel, for example). Create a checklist and deadlines for gathering those materials. Look at your budget and talk with partners to determine the amount and source of matching funds. For both programs, the OAC suggests submitting a draft application ahead of time using the agency's Online Grant Applications tool (OLGA).
Need to Start Smaller? Sooner?
The OAC's Artist Express Grants support one- or two-day artist visits for schools, arts organizations and other community organizations. This grant is a good first step if you have never conducted a residency. Applications are due no later than six weeks prior to the date of the visit. Funds are limited and will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. You must assume $50 per day of the $300 per day artist's fee.
Powerful New Planning Tool
Capturing ideas, refining decisions, and conveying results are familiar challenges for anyone who plans new programs or projects. To meet those challenges with more efficiency and clarity, download the Ohio Arts Council's iTool.
The iTool is part of a comprehensive planning toolkit called Focusing the Light: The Art and Practice of Planning.The Focusing the Light iTool provides planning teams with an easy and informative way to compile the pieces of a plan into a program logic model. Go to the Focusing the Light page and scroll down to find a download button for the iTool.
Evaluating Needs
By Michael Sikes, Ph.D.
Are you planning to give arts education a greater role in your district's plan for reform? Or are you still undecided? Either way, here are some ideas to help you get the most useful information from your available data.
Collecting Baseline Data
Making good decisions about your programs begins with an accurate picture of the current landscape—in other words, what is the baseline from which all future progress can be measured?
These three guidelines will assist you in collecting baseline data.
1. Let questions drive your data quest.
Good questions guide inquiry in ways that keep it on target. By asking focused and significant questions, you will get useful data. Significant questions are linked to key issues of teaching. For example: Are students meeting essential standards? What do we know about the effectiveness of instructional strategies in our schools? To what extent are parents involved in our district? What factors affect involvement?
2. Consider data broadly.
Data are more than numbers on bubble sheets or a computer screen. Your questions should guide you to a variety of data and information. For example, use results from performance-based assessments to complement standardized test data, or conduct interviews to enrich the information gained from survey data.
3. Collect data strategically.
If done strategically, collecting data need not be time-consuming. Consider using random or stratified sampling to obtain adequate data with efficiency. (Staff in your district that work with EMIS or a research group at a nearby university can help.) Also, review your initial questions frequently to determine whether they will provide the information you need, and begin analyzing data early.
Analyzing Data
An essential companion to data collection is data analysis. Timely analysis can ensure that you are collecting enough data, that the data you are collecting is useful, and that you will be able to formulate recommendations or plan actions based on the data.
These guidelines will assist your data analysis:
1. Select analytic tools appropriate to the type of data you are collecting.
For quantitative data, (e.g., results of surveys or student assessment scores), you might use a spreadsheet generated in Excel, Quattro Pro, or Lotus 1-2-3 to calculate simple frequencies, percentages, or averages. For larger data sets or more complex statistical operations, use a program like SPSS. For qualitative data, such as interviews, you can use content analysis to search for recurring ideas or themes that you can summarize.
2. Begin data analysis soon after you begin data collection and continue to do both together.
This can help you to monitor the quality and sufficiency of the data as it comes in.
3. Interpret the meaning of the data based on your initial questions. How are these questions answered by the data? What gaps remain?
As a final step in needs assessment, use your findings to make recommendations or decisions.
Go to the Evaluation Studio via the OAC Web site for sample scenarios and additional resources.
Tools and Resources
Focusing the Light for Arts Education: New OAC Resource Aids Program Improvement
