TIPS
AND TRICKS BLOG POST
CATHERINE
DIAMOND
MPC
6150
WEBER
STATE UNIVERSITY
Catherine Diamond is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation
Specialist who works at McKay-Dee Hospital’s Summit Day Treatment Center. Her
passion to work with emotionally challenged adolescents has spanned three
decades, using recreation and leisure to promote wellbeing and improve the
quality of life for her patients. She is married with four children, and is
thrilled with her recent new title of “Grandma.” She is currently a student in
the Masters of Professional Communication program at Weber State
University. She walks the talk every
chance she gets and spends her free time skiing, hiking and spending time with
family.
School
Accreditation Executive Summary: “A
Story to Tell”
Every school has its own story to tell. This
story paints a picture of the teaching and learning that takes place within its
walls, and how the school makes an impact on its students. The story also tells
us the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Every four years, each school
is required to go through an external review for an accreditation board to tell
this story. The Executive Summary is an integral piece of this accreditation
process and is the way a school tells its story to make a memorable impression
on its intended audience. The audience? AdvancED.
AdvancED is the largest community of
education professionals in the world. They are a non-profit, non-partisan
organization that conducts rigorous, on-site external reviews of Pre-K-12
schools and school systems to ensure that all learners realize their full
potential. Their goal isn’t to certify that schools are good enough. Rather,
their commitment is to help schools improve. Nevertheless, they are the body of
experts that gets the say on whether or not your school “makes the grade,” so when
the AdvancED accrediting team arrives at your school, roll out the red carpet.
A concise and effective tool to describe
your school to the AdvancED reviewers is the Executive Summary, a required
portion of the written accreditation. This so-called “elevator pitch” is aptly
described by Wikipedia as: “a short
sales pitch that is a summary used to quickly and simply define a process,
product, service, organization, or event and its value proposition.” The
Executive Summary for AdvancED provides a school the opportunity to describe
its vision as well as strengths and challenges in narrative form, giving the
public and members of the school community a picture of how the school
perceives itself. This process provides schools an opportunity for self-reflection
for continuous improvement. The summary allows the school to write about how it
provides teaching and learning on a day-to-day basis.
The Executive Summary for AdvancED
accreditation is laid out in four specific areas to describe the school to the
reader. They are as follows: description of the school, school’s purpose,
notable achievements, and additional information. Let’s look at these areas
with some examples from each to help you through this process.
DESCRIPTION OF THE SCHOOL
This
is an opportunity to describe the school’s size, community/communities,
location and changes it has experienced in recent years. Areas of interest to include in this section
are:
·
District
and school descriptions
·
Demographics
of the community
·
Demographics
of the students
·
Socioeconomic
details of the students
·
School
personnel
·
Student
activities including athletics, clubs and special interest areas
·
Staff and the community the school serves
·
Academics
Areas
to address are the unique features and challenges associated with the
community/communities of the school. Remember that every school has its own
story, and with this in mind, identify those unique features of your school
that aptly describe it.
Examples:
South
Ogden Junior High School uses its description portion of the Executive Summary
to orient the reader to its district and location:
South
Ogden Junior High is located within Weber School District located in Northern
Utah in the heart of Weber County.
North
Brook Elementary School includes a descriptive narrative regarding landscape
and family names:
North
Brook Elementary School is located in western, rural Lincoln County, North
Carolina. Pastures and fields are giving way to housing. It remains an area of
little industry. Original settlers were primarily German, some having traveled
from Pennsylvania. Many families have lived in the area for generations, such
as Beams, Besses, Housers, Lingerfelts, Sains, and Wehunts, but many new faces
are joining us every
month
and we welcome them.
Primary
Children’s Hospital School describes its unique population it serves:
Primary
Children’s Hospital School is a private, psychiatric and chemical dependency, hospital-based
school program. We provide educational opportunities to students who are
admitted to either residential treatment or day treatment.
The elements of your school that make it
unique are the first items you want to include in your executive summary. This information is that “elevator pitch” to
give your reader an initial picture of your school.
Demographics are included in this section
to provide an understanding of the size of the school, as well as the amount of
diversity in the school.
Examples:
South Ogden Junior High School lists
their demographics in a bullet format:
· Asian – 17 students
· Black – 32 students
· Hispanic – 141 students
· Am Indian – 6 students
· Pacific Islander – 15 students
· White – 606 students
·
Total
– 817 students
Clayton High School uses narrative to
describe parts of their demographics:
The student population of Clayton High
School is quite diverse. Our resident student population accounts for
approximately 76% of our total student population. Resident students reside
within the city limits of Clayton and a portion of Richmond Heights. Approximately 16% of our student body resides
in the City of St. Louis and participates in the Voluntary Student Transfer
Program. The remaining 8% of our student body comes to us from across the St.
Louis region through a variety of avenues (children of faculty and staff,
personal tuition, statutory tuition and tax credits).
Identify those areas that will best
describe your school to accrediting personnel that knows nothing about your
school.
SCHOOL’S PURPOSE
This
section will outline the school’s purpose statement and ancillary content such
as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies
its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. Mission
statements are in and of themselves a writing project. Wikipedia defines the
mission statement as something that should guide the actions of an
organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide
decision-making. The following are
mission statements from Executive Summaries with examples of differing styles.
Examples:
South
Ogden Junior High School:
The
mission of South Ogden Junior High is to provide students with the skills,
knowledge, and strategies to excel now and in the future. We unite students,
teachers, and parents to create a community based on integrity and
accountability.
Primary
Children’s Hospital School draws from its “mothership” Primary Children’s
Hospital:
“The Child First and Always”
Clayton
High School:
We
inspire each student to love learning and embrace challenge within a rich and
rigorous academic culture.
Each
mission statement will embody the unique goals and vision a school sees for
itself.
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS AND
AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
This
is an opportunity to describe the school’s notable achievements and areas of
improvement in the last four years. Additionally, describe areas for
improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next four years.
Examples:
South
Ogden Junior High School uses a bulleted list to describe achievements and
improvements:
·
Chinese
Immersion Program
·
Project
Lead the Way
·
Spartan
Forum advisory period has been reworked
·
Special
Education Co-op classes have been incorporated
·
AP
Geography being taught for second year
·
“Do
the Write Thing” National Ambassador, student Payden Trujillo(2012)
North Brook
Elementary School uses narrative form to describe achievement:
North Brook Elementary School has
many notable achievements and areas of improvements in the last three years.
Three areas stand out: our recognition received from successfully implementing
PBIS, an intervention process in place that has improved our identification of
students' areas of need, and whole school guided reading instruction and
implementation
Primary Children’s Hospital School
has unique challenges and uses these areas to show growth and improvements:
Since our last on-site visit in June
2011, we have had several challenges within our educational domain. We have
incorporated two latency age classrooms and two new additional teachers. Since
these students are younger than our adolescents these classrooms are different
and focus more intensely on the behavioral aspects of classroom management and
remediation and acquisition of basic skills.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This section gives the school an
opportunity to provide any additional information to be shared with the public
and the community that were not prompted in the previous sections.
Examples:
South Ogden Junior High educates the
reader on the change in administration:
Our former principal, Don Tanner,
retired at the end of the 2015 school year. The new principal, Michele Parry,
took over in July 2015. Because of this administrative change, some of the
ratings on administrators may or may not apply; however all ratings and
comments are still being addressed for improvement.
North Brook Elementary School includes a section regarding
staff morale:
Another goal we had this year was to
improve staff morale. We have implemented many new ways to recognize our staff
this year. There is a "Thank You" board in our conference room. Staff
posts thank you notes acknowledging their coworkers for their acts of kindness.
Every staff meeting, one thank you note is drawn and read aloud to the staff.
The person who the note was written for is our "Employee of the Month".
He or she gets a $10 bill and a parking space at the front of the school.
Primary
Children’s Hospital School includes a passage to clarify the changes in length
of stay and acuity issues they are facing.
We have experienced many changes
during 23 years of service to our behavioral health population. Our length of
stay has significantly decreased while the acuity, severity, and complexity of
our students/patients have increased. At the same time, the availability of
services to our students/ patients who have completed treatment has decreased
at a time when most schools are filled to capacity or are overfilled. All of
these issues have presented challenges to our educational team, but we have
strived to meet each successfully and look forward to many more challenges in
the future.
It is not uncommon for the
information in this section to create powerful dialogue between schools and
their accreditors to address the issues facing their school. These four areas
comprise the bulk of the Executive Summary, which is your vehicle to educate
AdvancED about your school. To maximize
the power of this dialogue, the following are tips for the best outcome from
your executive summary.
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR A SUCCESSFUL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 1) Executive summaries should be short and concise.
It is a tall order to produce an executive summary that stands
alone in the overall description of your school, and still be as brief as
possible to keep your reader interested. And yet, this is what you are aiming
for. A Google search revealed that the average human attention span has fallen
from 12 seconds in 2000, or around the time the mobile revolution began, to
eight seconds. Goldfish, meanwhile, are believed to have an attention span of
nine seconds (www.telegraph.co.uk/). The lesson here is be brief. Your aim is to pack as much
information into a minimum to moderate amount of reading. Easier said than
done. “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”– Nathaniel Hawthorne
2) Executive summaries should make sense even if your reader knows
nothing about your school.
Great care should be taken to ensure you are including the essential
pieces of information regarding your school into your executive summary with
clarity and understanding to a first time reader. You’ve got to do your
homework before writing the executive summary, and become familiar with your
school’s overall purpose and plan in order to condense it down to a short and
informative version. Don’t assume that your accreditation reviewer understands the
particular components of your school. Review it carefully, and have someone
unfamiliar with your school proofread it, making sure they understand the key
components without the need for clarification
3) Executive summaries should be written in language that is
appropriate for the target audience.
An executive summary for school accreditation is directed
towards an education professional that is most likely an educator him/herself. However,
you should be aware that any interested party may read your executive summary,
and you will want to keep this in mind as you are writing your document. Some
questions to be asking are:
· Who will read my executive summary?
· What are the most important elements to communicate?
· What will they be looking for?
· How will they perceive
the information presented?
· Will they understand the language I’m using?
·
Am I conforming to the
policies and parameters the accreditor has outlined?
Keep the intended goal of the summary in mind: to pass the
accreditation.
4) Executive summaries should clearly define a problem.
4) Executive summaries should clearly define a problem.
Why, you may ask,
would I reveal a problem with my school to an accreditation board? At first
glance, revealing problems seems counterintuitive, but keep in mind the mission
statement of AdvancED is to help schools improve. There can be positive
outcomes when exposing areas of need for growth or understanding weak areas at
your school. Define the problem in clear, understandable terms that will create
intrigue for the reader concerning the complexities and challenges of your
school.
Primary Children’s
Hospital School described the following problem in their executive summary:
Since our students/patients are of
increasingly higher acuity, issues of risk and demands for safety have also
increased. Our teachers are required to be ever vigilant about the safety of
our students/patients. Part of the increased acuity also includes medically compromised
students/patients who may have a number of issues such as diabetes, eating
disorders, pseudo-seizures, and many other medical problems. This places
additional demands on teachers to help medical staff meet the nursing needs of
their students by following nursing protocols.
The problems identified were:
·
The students/patients
have increasingly higher acuity (level of care).
·
The issues of risk and
demands for safety with students/patients have increased.
·
The number of medical
problems with students/patients has increased.
This places additional demands on teachers.
These issues present unique challenges that
mainstream schools do not experience due to the specific nature of the students
being served at Primary Children’s Hospital School. Preventing students from self-harm is
oftentimes at the forefront of a teacher’s daily responsibilities and requires
unique training and experience. The reader should understand this, and be aware
of these distinctions.
5) Executive summaries should provide a
solution.
A problem is always in need of a solution. In
order for your accreditors to understand the challenges you face in your
school, you must not only explain your problem, but also follow up with
solutions. If your problem isn’t clearly written, your solution is likely to not
make sense. In the previous problem regarding acuity at Primary Children’s
Hospital, the following solutions are potential areas of discussion with your
accreditor:
·
Because of higher acuity
and increased risk, the teachers are required to be ever vigilant about the
safety of the students/patients. This may explain reasons for deficits in other
areas, and as well educates the reader on the level of expertise the teachers
must have to work with this population of students.
·
Because of medically
compromised students/patients, there is a need for increased training for
teachers and cooperation with medical staff to keep students safe.
These are the critical issues to be communicating as you
describe the problems your school faces. The summary should clearly define the
problems that occur in this unique setting, as well as solutions that best showcase
the efforts this school makes on a daily basis to best serve its students’
needs.
6) Executive summaries should use statistics based on data
collected about your school.
When reporting on
demographics, population growth, incomes, housing costs, to name a few, use
accurate statistics and numbers.
Examples:
·
Population: 16,852
·
Population Growth last
three years: 1.9%
·
Population Below
Poverty: 10.8%
·
Free and Reduced
Lunch: 42% (increased
form 34$ in 2010)
·
Minority Population: 26% (increased from
19% in 2010)
·
Special Education
Students: 86
These numbers require investigative research and data
collection, and they should be accurate and reflect realistic views of your
school.
7) Executive summaries for school accreditation should use bullet
points, and headings.
Your document will be easier to skim if you include these
helpful constructs. Bracken Business Communications Clinic states that the
purpose of bullet points:
Ø
Draws attention to
important information.
Ø Improves the ability of the reader to scan information easily.
Ø
Communicates
information efficiently.
Organize them in such a way to make the reading feel seamless
and easy. An executive summary is not an essay; it doesn’t need to have long
blocks of text.
Headings organize the themes of the summary, and helps orient
the reader as they dive into the summary.
8) Executive summaries should keep the writing fresh and
jargon-free.
Jargon is the enemy of understanding. Even though your
accreditor will most likely be an educator, you want to minimize the use of
language that attempts to impress the reader. The temptation to use well-known
words in your own profession to less familiar readers in an attempt to sound
knowledgeable and professional may have the opposite effect: a loss of interest. Rather, the language
chosen should be simple and straightforward, painting a clear picture of your
school.
9) Executive summaries should get to “WOW.”
· What sets our school apart from other schools?
· What kinds of services does our school provide that other
schools do not?
·
What makes our
school’s programs unique and special?
Reichert points out ‘the three C’s’ that help guide us through
this process:
·
Be clear
·
Be credible
·
Be compelling
Be clear in explaining what your school is all about. Avoid
beating around the bush, or being vague to avoid confrontation. Be credible as
you talk in a way that makes your audience believe you can be trusted. You can harm
your credibility by being bombastic, by lying or by exaggerating too much. In other words, be truthful. To be compelling is perhaps the hardest to
get right. To say in a condensed way
that you perform better than every other school is not child’s play. What is
the compelling benefit that you offer and to whom? What is it that you do best
at? Find where you shine and display it.
10) Executive summaries
should be re-read before submitting.
When you have written the basics, reread it
carefully. You should proofread the summary with extra care, and consider your
audience. Make sure any new references are explained and that the language will
be clear to someone who is new to the topic. Rewrite as necessary. Have another
professional read your executive summary, paying special attention to:
·
Clarity: Are the words clear, the ideas clearer?
·
Errors: Is your summary free from grammatical,
punctuation, and spelling errors? Has
someone fact-checked your figures and statistics?
·
Forcefulness: Do your ideas translate into a stirring
pitch? Where does the pitch fall flat, if at all?
·
Coherence: What parts don’t fit together? What parts do?
“I’m
not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” – James Michener
Rewriting: that is one thing that Pam
Scott, educator for Summit Day Treatment School coached me on while compiling
the Executive Summary. She laughs as she describes herself as a self-proclaimed
expert on the process of AdvancED accreditations. She laughs because she
despises them, but knows they are a necessary evil to keep her school accredited
and valid. She has been with Summit for over 15 years, and knows well the ins and
outs of “making the grade.” Her philosophy is to back up everything you do.
“Everything you say you do, you have to prove it,” she replied, when I
questioned her on why keeping records is so important. If it’s not written
down, it didn’t happen. Paying attention to your writing style was also a high
priority for her. Her advice was to keep
the responses brief, descriptive and appropriate for the specific section. No need
to belabor any point made in the summary.
The basic facts with the data to back it up were of upmost importance.
CONCLUSION
The
“lonely” Executive Summary is definitely not the most popular reading to be
found, but nonetheless serves a worthy purpose of providing critical
information to School Accreditation professionals. This is the time to grab
your reader’s attention because you only get one shot at it. The most important
reason to spend a great amount of detail and attention on your executive summary
is that it’s a sneak peak into all the hard work you’ve put into your school
for the past four years. It’s a story to tell. The story assigns the
percentages and data to individual faces that come in and out of your doors day
after day. They represent students who struggle and students who triumph. And
you are the storyteller. You know their
faces. You interact with them every day,
and you have chosen this as your life’s work.
And that’s quite a story.
Here are some
sources to help you with your Executive Summary, as well as sources I used to
write this blog
post:
Tim
Berry, “How to Write an Executive Summary”
Wikipedia: How to Write an Executive Summary
Bracken
Business Communications Clinic, Effective Use of Bullet Points in Business
Writing.
Primary
Children’s Hospital School at Wasatch Canyons Executive Summary for AdvancED
Clayton
High Schools Executive Summary for AdvancED
North
Brook Elementary Schools Executive Summary for AdvancED
South
Ogden Junior High School Executive Summary for AdvancED
No comments:
Post a Comment