Inside a Student Success Network: Arts Education
Last Thursday, I played the role of the proverbial “fly on the wall” and sat in on the bi-weekly meeting with the Student Success Network (SSN) for Arts Education to see how they were progressing through the Strive Six Sigma process.
Of the twenty-two members of this network (click here for a complete list), eighteen sat around the large table ready to tackle five agenda items. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this particular SSN, they formed in October 2007 and are currently working towards identifying their common problem in arts education and creating a data plan to collect the information they need so that going forward they’ll be able to monitor the progress of their efforts to increase arts enrichment.
The meeting opened with a discussion on data that has been gathered since their last meeting. As a first swipe, they took advantage of the small district size of Newport Independent Schools and pulled the number of students participating in the some form of arts program. Some important clarifying questions arose, “What does it mean to participate; is that school-based or only those who come to an arts organization location or function?” “How many children attend these Newport schools so we know what percentage we are reaching?” “How do we convince those who aren’t on board with collecting common information that flexibility is needed to address the needs of the most important stakeholders – our children?” “How do we communicate the limitations of the data?” And the quote of the day was “to find out who we are reaching, and then how to fill that gap, we have to love on the data.”
The focus of this meeting then shifted to their main agenda goal - to define the “success factors” or indicators they would track going forward in the three areas: professional development, national content standards alignment, and general awareness and advocacy. That’s a tall order in a group of eighteen, so they decided to break out into three small groups and take advantage of the varying skills of the participants to strategically discuss the indicators by categories.
After reports from each small group, the meeting closed only after determining the date for the next SSN meeting. They are working on a timeline so they will be able to go before the Strive Operations committee to present their problem statement and data collection plan necessary to apply for a Strive Stage One Endorsement in late summer.
Written by Sherri Lung, Communications Manager for Strive