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analysis and the school improvement planning process.
When student academic data are shared with the community, strategies for
improvement are discussed and planned for the next school-improvement
cycle. The community is a partner in the improvement process and needs to
understand the instructional system and the results coming from that system.
Through this process of sharing, the faculty and community build mutual
respect and agree on future priorities in the academic program. This is the
method by which support for the academic program is achieved within the
community. (p. 111)
When leaders want to facilitate communication and collaboration, key leadership
skills include having defined structures and processes in place. For example, the
following action steps take place within a meeting structure that includes multiple
teams and provides opportunities for recommendations, feedback, and decision-
making regarding the school improvement plan. The process begins with the
instructional improvement team’s recommendations for priorities to be addressed
in the school improvement plan (Warwick, 2015). Then the following action steps
occur:
1. All faculty give feedback to the recommendations.
2. Parents and community members are invited to discuss recommendations
at the instructional-team level in small groups.
3. Revisions of the recommendations are addressed if needed.
4. Recommendations are submitted into [sic] the school-improvement
planning-process team for inclusion in next year’s plan.
5. Parent/community advisory team discusses recommendations and gives
feedback to the school-improvement-planning-process team. (p. 113)

Evidence from Research Literature and Decision-making
According to Hattie (2015), “A major task of school leaders is to lead discussions
about the nature and quality of the evidence that would convince everyone in the
school that a given practice, program, or initiative had above-average impacts
on student learning” (p. 39). Evidence comes not only from analyzing student
achievement data but also from investigating research literature. Key leadership skills
thus include locating current, relevant research studies and writing clear and concise
summaries of the research findings regarding evidence-based practices. “Evidence-
based practices are personal and professional practices that have been shown to
be effective through research” (Plano Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 8). Providing a
summary of research findings helps build shared understanding of evidence-based
practices and enhances decision-making to improve the academic program. Fullan
(2016) wrote about “decisional capital,” which he defined as “the capacity to make
evidence-based decisions, and to display expert judgment about difficult learning
problems” (p. 135).
Discussing evidence-based practices and making evidence-based decisions
occurs in the meeting structures previously mentioned in this article (i.e., visioning
process meetings, instructional-improvement team meetings, parent and community
advisory meetings, community forums) with representatives from stakeholder groups.
When discussing continual improvement of the academic system, stakeholder groups
may have differing perspectives regarding the course of action that would be best,
and evidence from research literature can assist with collaborative decision-making.

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