June 2022 MICIP Continuous Communication

In this Issue of MICIP Continuous Communication

This issue of MICIP Continuous Communication includes important information about the requirements for continuous improvement for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, the final installment of our SEL and Continuous Improvement series, information about the fall Continuous Improvement Conference, the 2.0 Release update, and much more!

Please note that Continuous Communication takes a break for the summer each July; the next issue of Continuous Communication will be the August issue. Thank you for all of your work and dedication during the 2021-22 school year, the MICIP team wishes you a safe and restful summer! See you in August!

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Continuous Improvement Requirements for 2022-2023 and 2023-2024

The Michigan Department of Education has released the Continuous Improvement Plan Requirements for the 2022-24 school years.

This will allow districts and schools to plan for the next two years. In MICIP, a plan includes a goal with the associated strategy (-ies) and activity (-ies).

For the 2022-2023 school year, all districts must have a minimum of one active goal in the MICIP platform.

For districts that used the template process in 2021-2022, those plans must be transferred into the MICIP platform. An active goal is one that the district is currently trying to achieve through implementation, monitoring and adjusting.

Additional considerations include the following:

• New goals for which a district is seeking funding must go into the MICIP platform.
• Strategies and activities not in the MICIP platform which were previously-approved or which are connected to goals that have been previously approved may be put directly into the Consolidated Application.
• Districts should use the MICIP platform to initiate the monitoring and evaluation of goals in the MICIP platform to meet federal program requirements.
• Districts must monitor and evaluate goals not in the MICIP platform though other district processes to meet federal program evaluation requirements.

District continuous improvement goals should be entered into MICIP by July 1, or thirty (30) business days after NexSys is operational. To meet the requirements of state law MCL 380.1277, school level plans must be made available to MDE by September 1.

School plans can be accomplished by using the MICIP reporting function to print plans assigned to the school through the tagging process, by using active school-level plans in ASSIST, or by using a format of the district’s choosing.

For the 2023-24 school year, all active goals must be in the MICIP platform. Plans that are currently in MICIP as PDFs must be entered into the platform. Additional considerations include the following:

• Strategies and activities that are considered part of maintenance goals may be entered directly into the Consolidated Application. A maintenance goal is an achieved goal that continues to receive funding for on-going implementation.
• Maintenance goals can be monitored and evaluated using a process of the district’s choice.
• There is currently not a mechanism for moving a goal formerly in ASSIST directly into the MICIP platform. Such as mechanism will exist for the 2023-24 school year.
• Since active plans previously in ASSIST must be transferred into the MICIP platform, districts should consider whether the plans are still relevant as written or if they need to be revised or abandoned as well as whether individual goals might be combined to become system goals.

The MICIP Process Guide, MICIP Monitor and Adjust Guide, and MICIP Platform Guide, and MICIP Platform Report Guide are resources to help districts with their planning processes. Districts may contact their regional consultants for additional requirements and supports.

Additional resources and tools provided by the department can be found on the MICIP website.

For further information or assistance, please contact Dr. Theresa Nugent at nugentt@michigan.gov or Ben Boerkoel at boerkoelb@michigan.gov.

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Reminder

Maintaining an accurate roster of MICIP district administrators is important because it is from this list where release notifications are sent and suggested changes can be approved.

Districts who have a change in leadership should contact Renie Araoz (araozr@michigang.gov) to update their MICIP district administrators.

Users who have never logged into accounts will be deactivatd on July 1, 2022. Notification will be sent to district MICIP administrators notifying them of these deactivations.

Users who have gone more than 365 days without logging in will be suspended in early August. Notification will be sent to district MICIP administrators notifying them of these suspensions. a user can avoid suspension by simply logging into their account.

Please note that a district maintains its district user access and MDE manages the district administrators.

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MICIP and Social Emotional Learning

This is the fifth and final offering in a multi-part series on MICIP and Social Emotional Learning Competencies and focuses on the ‘Evaluate’ process.

A district-wide Social Emotional Learning system that produces results means having the teams, data, and programming in place to determine effectiveness.

The system needs to offer district leadership information from two areas:

1. Student Outcomes - the attainment of the district’s goals that relate to the degree to which learners can demonstrate the five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision making, and social awareness.
2. Implementation - evidence that supports the district’s internal decision-making process to improve the teaching and learning of these skills.

Evaluating the effectiveness of this whole child effort is reliant on a district team that can maintain multi-year focus. Positive results are more likely when social emotional learning is linked to an established continuous improvement process.

The district can look to the CASEL rubric for district wide Social Emotional Learning for guidance. The rubric identifies a cluster of efforts within ‘Focal Area 4: Practice Continuous Improvement’.

Once the team decides to include social emotional learning into their MICIP process, the team will be able to evaluate effectiveness best when they document both implementation and student results, also known as impact. The team will want to make time to reflect on what they have collected and then share these results with families, students, staff, and community members.

Before evaluation begins, district teams need to honor the spirit of five competencies (self/social awareness, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and self-management) and refrain from using data linked to social skill development for placement, high stakes decisions, or as a mechanism to identify or diagnose students.

In terms of student outcomes, teachers might use, document, and share how formative assessments reflect student learning. This feedback loop enables the district team to better support classroom and building efforts to produce positive results.

The district can support teachers with the selection of an evidence-based program will that includes methods of measuring student performance and progress. To find a comprehensive program, CASEL has recently updated their CASEL programming guide.

If the district is adopting the five competencies without the use of a commercially produced program, district teams can explore a way to assess effectiveness through a program-agnostic measure of social emotional learning. Often districts will link their social emotional learning activities as a set of factors that lead to positive school climate. American Institute for Research’s School Climate Survey Compendium provides guidance to select a climate survey.

Implementation of social emotional learning depends on resources previously mentioned in the fourth part of this series ‘monitor/adjust’. District teams can orchestrate a plan to review classroom teachers’ reflection on their own social emotional proficiency. Like the caution of misusing social emotional assessments for children, this self-reflection should be protected from teacher evaluation methods. Rather, within a learning community, teachers and coaches build the psychological safety to discuss how they might improve their practice. In addition to self-reflection, building leaders and teachers might work to design a method of observation and participate in walk throughs.

The MICIP process will support a district team to avoid the premature abandonment of an evidence-based program by responding to questions that ask about the quality of implementation. It will also help a team celebrate student outcomes and record a successful improvement effort. Social emotional learning’s research base demonstrate that this multi-year effort is worth it. According to Durlak’s research, social emotional learning increases academic performance, increases positive behavior, and mental health.

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Fall 2022 Continuous Improvement Conference

The Fall 2022 Continuous Improvement Conference will take place on Tuesday, October 18 at the Lansing Center under the theme: Continuous Improvement: Providing Connectedness, Safety, and a Sense of Belonging in Today’s World.

The conference will feature a virtual keynote presentation by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University as well as a virtual featured presentation by Shane Safir and Dr. Jamila Dugan, authors of the popular book, Street Data.

Attendees will hear in-person presentations from State Superintendent Dr. Michael F. Rice and the MICIP team and will also have an opportunity to participate in two series of breakout sessions. Continuous improvement-focused sessions will include MICIP 101 and How to Address Systems Through MCIIP.

All conference sessions will be recorded and will be available for ninety days following the conference for in-person attendees. There will also be an option to register only for access to the conference recordings. RFPs for breakout presentations are now available at MDE Fall 2022 Continuous Improvement Conference RFP | Michigan Association of Superintendents & Administrators (gomasa.org) and are due on June 30.

The conference schedule and registration information can be found at MDE Fall 2022 Continuous Improvement Conference | Michigan Association of Superintendents & Administrators (gomasa.org).

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Release 2.0

This release was one of our most exciting to date. We released new reporting functions that will allow a user to create hundreds of custom reports. There is a Platform Report Guide located in the MICIP website resources.

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 MICIP User Group

The final MICIP User Group for this school year took place on Monday, May 9.

The purpose of the group was to create a statewide learning community where participants could learn with and from each other through sharing ideas and resources rather than being a focused topical presentation from one person or a team.

Those who participated were invited to provide feedback on its value over this past year as well as to suggest ways to make it even more helpful should we decide to continue it next year. Demographics indicated that the majority of participants were district central office leaders, followed by ISD continuous improvement facilitators. Value was typically defined by role, with those having direct responsibility for continuous improvement finding it most valuable.

The opportunity to share successes and challenges in a safe environment was cited as being among the most helpful features. Suggestions included beginning each meeting with some kind of prompt – an example of a tool, modeling how to enter information into the platform, highlighting a success by a district or ISD, etc. – and varying the conversation groups from meeting to meeting, including role-alike, mixed groups, by size, etc.

The MICIP professional learning team will consider these and other suggestions as we identity overall professional learning needs for MICIP for next year.

Recordings and resources from the entire year are available at the MICIP User Group Dashboard.

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Voices From the Field

At the last MICIP User Group meeting, participants were asked to share ideas in four areas. Those reflections are below.

What successes did you experience as part of the Monitor and Adjust processes?

• Authentic conversations were happening.
• We were actually looking at data as part of monitoring.
• Meeting on a monthly basis was helpful.
• Our team had deep discussions.
• We figured out what was working and what needed to be revisited.
• The platform made it easy to record the results of our conversations.
• We recognized the importance of building the capacity of the district and building improvement teams.
• Districts are changing their language and seeing how it is connected to what we did before. Small gains.
• Districts are doing the work through monitoring and adjusting successes.
• Districts are shifting their thinking and their conversation, with school plans being embedded in district plans.

What challenges did you experience as part of the Monitor and Adjust processes?

• Not everyone was ready for the monitoring and adjust processes.
• Getting away from compliance and a yearly cycle versus a multi-year mindset.
• A willingness to actually go through the monitoring process versus checking done or not done.
• An understanding that monitoring must begin as soon as implementation begins.
• Sticking to the monitoring calendar.
• The logistics of collecting the data, including clarifying roles and who collects the data.
• Knowing what monitoring should really look like – examples would be helpful.
• Our original plans for monitoring were not realistic.
• Still getting to know the platform while we are also monitoring.
• Knowing what to monitor and how much.

What can you celebrate regarding MICIP?

• Shifting from many small goals to a system goal.
• Building capacity for our building and district teams to engage in data monitoring.
• Professional learning decisions based on the data from our systems goal.
• We are more intentional about working through the plan – entering information makes it more concrete.
• Entering evidence helps make it “real.”
• We are now creating/revisiting systems to support the MICIP process that works. We needed to get into it to see if what we were told about it was true…and it is!
• We are getting better at the process.
• Increased communication with building teams and from building teams to the staff as a whole.
• Most LEAs have at least one goal in the platform.
• One of my districts really embraced the whole child as an overarching system-level goal.
• I am working with a district that has really embraced the process from the beginning and has made growth with a common vision and mission.
• Districts have gone back and had thoughtful conversations about systems thinking – “Is this really moving us forward?”

What advice would you give to new MICIP users?

• Look at systems – write systems goals.
• Take it in small chunks – work on it step-by-step, one part at a time.
• Organizational goals drive the plan.
• You can make adjustments – just because you put it in the plan doesn’t make it permanent.
• Have a team and train them.
• Go slow to go fast!
• Set aside enough time for teams to meet. Plan out regular meetings.
• Look at the necessary district team structures to make sure they support the MICIP process as it is intended.
• Choose the most important strategies and activities – know what you have the capacity to monitor.
• Trust the process!
• Do not short cut the root cause step.
• Participate in all work groups and meetings that pertain to MICIP.
• Go to the support sites and videos.

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What is MiStrategyBank?

MiStrategy is an electronic clearinghouse of strategies designed to connect educational data systems, promote and support best practices, and provide information regarding the implementation of strategies in use to support Michigan’s education system.

This application is being used by MICIP to integrate the strategy selection process within the MICIP platform.

Registered MiStrategyBank users use the MiDataHub’s “MiLaunchPad” Single sign-on. Any admin user in MiStrategyBank can add and manage additional users within their organization. MiStrategyBank Administrators and Strategy Maintainers can add district and building level strategies that will will only be available within their organizaiton.

Logging into MiStrategyBank at MiStrategyBank.org or through the milaunchpad.org gives users access to additional filters and a strategy comparison tool.

When looking for School Improvement strategies in MiStrategyBank, there are two options:

1. When viewing the Strategy List, select the ‘improvement’ as a filter.
2. From the Integrations menu in the navigation bar, select MICIP.

If you need support navigating the system, reach out to your ISD and the MiStrategyBank ISD lead or review the documentation for MiStategyBank such as user roles, and “how-to” documents are available at https://www.gomaisa.org/projects/mistrategybank/.

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MTSS Newsletter

The May/June 2022 MiMTSS eNewsletter is now available. Each edition keeps you up to date about the Michigan Department of Education’s efforts to support effective Multi-Tiered System of Supports implementation.

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Summer Learning Partnerships: What We’re Learning

Did you know that Michigan has a statewide summer learning network? The network comprises leaders from afterschool/summer programs, school districts, regional education agencies, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), and the Michigan AfterSchool Partnership (MASP).

Network goals are to spread the word about the value of high-quality summer programs and address issues that may limit access and participation. The federal government’s recent investment in summer and afterschool programs totals $30.5 billion nationwide, underscoring their importance in learning recovery and creating new opportunities to establish or expand programs.

Earlier this year, one of our network partners—the Region 8 Comprehensive Center—undertook a listening “tour” to gather ideas from leaders of local Michigan programs about the factors essential to effective partnerships, the barriers that some programs are facing and solutions that others found, and suggestions for ways the network and MDE could be helpful.

Community based organizations and school districts described these keys to partnerships (with some quotes from the report of the listening sessions):

• Values alignment—"partnerships rest on both individual and organizational relationships”
• Clear and ongoing communication—"solid communication can overcome competitiveness”
• Flexibility—"good will goes a long way”
• Trust—"a proven history of programming builds trust”
• Responsiveness to youth—"all partners need the ability to adapt to the climate and culture of kids.”

We found examples from around the state of ways to overcome barriers through a spectrum of partnerships, including these ideas:

• A school district provides transportation to students attending community recreation programs;
• A college provides teaching interns to staff summer programs;
• A community-based program exchanges its specialized training for students in exchange for use of school facilities in the summer and afterschool; and
• Building student motivation by pairing enrichment activities with academic tutoring.

Participants in the listening sessions had lots of ideas about helpful supports from MDE and statewide networks, emphasizing the value of leaders providing consistent messages to the broader public about the importance and components of comprehensive afterschool and summer programs.

Program leaders want opportunities to share their challenges, best practices, and tools they have found helpful along with professional development and incentives for staff. They urged MDE to undertake a review of regulations and licensing requirements that are barriers to expanding access and provide more clarity about blending and braiding funding to sustain summer programs.

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Save the Date

ISDs/ESAs eligible for the Regional Assistance Grant (RAG) are invited to join the Regional Assistance Grant (RAG) Zoom webinar on Tuesday, August 16, 2022 from 1:30 – 3:00 p.m.

We will provide updates for the upcoming 2022-23 RAG, review allowable RAG-funded activities, and facilitate your questions.

Please contact Connie McCall at mccallc@michigan.gov if you have questions about the RAG. You can also find more information about the Statewide System of Supports and the Regional Assistance Grant on our website at Statewide System of Support (SSoS) (michigan.gov).

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Previous issues of MICIP Continuous Communication are available on the MICIP web page.

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Feedback is Essential for Continuous Communication!

Have a question, an idea, a suggestion, or a compliment? The MICIP team is always eager to hear your feedback! Send us an email using the MICIP email address (mde-micip@michigan.gov).