Identify Yourself

Practical
Measurement
for Improvement

2. Identify Yourself

How will you use a practical measure?

Depending on your role, you might need practical measurement for different purposes, and hence focus on different characteristics.

HUB Member

To test my TOI and processes for consolidating the learning at local sites and the field

Foci:

  • Test your theory of improvement
  • Understand if your change is an improvement
  • Understanding variation in your network

Elements of Practical Measures

  1. PMs designed so other HUB members can be easily trained in their development, use and applicability
  2. Should be summative; uniform measures apply to all HUB members
  3. Emphasis on process formality to assure neutrality and objectivity
  4. School, district leaders and directors could be primary users

Improvement Practitioner

To understand if my change is an improvement (measure of fluency)

Foci:

  • Test your theory of improvement
  • Understand if your change is an improvement
  • Serve as a form of feedback

Elements of Practical Measures

  1. Should have formative value and signal actionable changes
  2. Data shared in a safe, low stakes environment
  3. Educators, mentors/coaches could be primary users

PRACTICAL MEASURE EX -2

Financial Aid Application Completion

BLOG

Practical measures aren’t necessarily about collecting more data or designing something totally new. Most school systems have more data than they know what to do with. Instead, what if we took…

Read

TECHNICAL PAPER

The Financial Aid Application Completion Measure is used as a driver measure to monitor shifts in financial access, which is one of the three drivers included in the CARPE College Access Network’s…

Read


Practical Measurement Research Briefs

Like continuous improvement, the development and use of practical measurement is a journey. It is rarely linear and often comes with opportunities and challenges. Check out these stories of improvers designing, iterating, and leveraging practical measures to create change in the system. Get ready to be inspired by their experience and lessons learned.

RESEARCH BRIEF

Developing Exit Tickets in an Improvement Network

Ms. Johnson, an English teacher at an urban middle school, was concerned that her students were not doing as well in her class as they could be. Her district had recently…

Read

RESEARCH BRIEF

Case Study of ORF as Practical Measure Brief

In this post we describe the identification and use of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), a common and widely used Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) measure, as a…

Read


Additional Resources