Every school in Washington must have an annual school improvement plan under WAC 180-16-220. The plan must be data driven, must promote a positive impact on student learning, and must include a continuous improvement process with ongoing monitoring, adjusting, and updating.
That last clause is the one that might be challenging to honor. A Consolidated School Improvement Plan (CSIP) is not a document you produce in August. It is a document you operate for a year, and the template is built accordingly — which becomes obvious the moment you notice that three of its nine sections cannot be completed until January and June.
What the consolidated template addresses
In Washington State, OSPI’s consolidated template satisfies three requirements atonce: Title I Part A schoolwide programs, Title I Part A targeted assistance programs, and OSSI School Improvement Plans. Schools using LAP or Title I PartA fu nds may alternatively use the Washington Integrated Student Supports Protocol template.
Schools identified for Tier 3 and Tier 3 Plus school improvement supports must upload the plan to their Basecamp folder by August 28.
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Section |
What it holds | What it is really asking |
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1 |
Building data, WSIF support status, vision and mission, leadership team and community partners | Who is accountable for this plan, and who was in the room |
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2 |
WSIF cycle identification and report card data by student group, 2023 through 2025 | Which groups produced your identification, and whether the trend is moving |
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3 |
Comprehensive Needs Assessment summary — students, educators, systems of support, family engagement | What is happening, and why |
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4 |
Resource inequities identified through the CNA | Where students do not have equal access to teachers, programs, coursework, or services |
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5 |
Top three CNA priorities | What you are choosing, which means what you are not choosing |
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6 |
SMARTIE goals with evidence-based intervention tables | The plan itself — and the part the budget must trace to |
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7 |
Mid-year reflection (answered in January) | Whether it is working, and what you are changing |
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8 |
End-of-year reflection (answered in June) | What happened, and what carries into next year |
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9 |
Consolidated funds matrix | Which funding stream pays for what, and how each meets its intent and purpose |
The through-line is the whole design
The template is a chain, and reviewers read it as one. Report card and WSIF data feed the comprehensive needs assessment (CNA). The CNA produces resource inequities and three priorities. The priorities become SMARTIE goals. Each goal is supported by evidence-based interventions. Each intervention carries a data measure, a named lead, a timeframe, and a monitoring cadence. And in Section 9, each funding stream is mapped to what it actually buys.
Plans come back when a link is missing — a goal no priority produced, an intervention with no data measure, a funding line that cannot be traced to a goal. The most useful review you can run on your own plan is to read it backward. Start at any single intervention and see whether you can get from it all the way back to a specific number on your report card. Wherever you cannot, that is the link to repair.
Section 3: The question that decides the plan
“What root causes has your team identified for disproportionalities among student groups?”
A disproportionality is not a root cause. A root cause explains it. “Our students with disabilities are not meeting standard in math” restates the finding your report card already gave you. “Sixty percent of service minutes in grades three through five are scheduled during core math instruction” is a cause — and it points at an intervention that could plausibly work.
Section 3 also asks a set of questions that teams often answer too quickly. Which needs require short-term goals of three to six months and which require one to two years? Which need, if addressed, would represent a quick win that builds momentum toward harder problems? How do the identified needs affect each other? These are sequencing questions, and a plan that sequences well is a plan a team can actually carry.
Section 6: Writing a SMARTIE Goal that can be measured
A SMARTIE goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound, inclusive, and equitable. In practice, it must answer six questions: what will be improved, by how much, by when, for whom, how you will know progress is being made, and how often data will be checked.
The inclusion and equity elements are not decoration. The template asks directly whether achieving the goal will shrink disparity gaps for specific student groups, whether it ensures equitable access for students historically underserved, and — if the outcome is not itself about equity — whether the process of achieving it will improve equity and inclusion. It also asks who you consulted to check for unintended negative consequences. A goal that raises a schoolwide average while leaving an identified subgroup flat has not met the standard.
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The intervention table, column by column Evidence-based intervention — name the specific practice, include the level of evidence, and state what resources implementation requires (professional development, extended time, curriculum, materials). Also name which student groups benefit and why. Data measures — what data will be collected to measure the impact of implementing this EBI, and how the impact on equitable learning or behavior change will be measured. Lead and timeframe — who is responsible for implementing, measuring, and adjusting; when the EBI occurs; and when or how often progress is monitored. Be as specific as possible; “ongoing” is not a cadence. Mid-year and end-of-year progress — completed in January and June. What impact is the intervention having, and what is the evidence of that impact? |
Implementation: The 11-months after August
A plan uploaded and unopened is the most common failure mode in school improvement, and the template is designed to prevent it. Three checkpoints are built in.
| When | What is due and what it asks |
| Beginning of year | What does the school expect to see at mid-year to know it is on track? Answer this in August, not in January. A mid-year expectation set in advance is the only thing that makes the January review honest. |
| January 29, 2027 | Mid-Year Progress Monitoring Review due to Basecamp for all Tier 3 and Tier 3 Plus schools. How close is the school to the goal, based on the mid-year expectation stated in the plan? Which interventions are having the largest impact, and what contributes to that? For each goal not on track, what adjustments will be made? |
| June 25, 2027 | End-of-Year Review due to Basecamp, along with exit templates for schools newly identified as Foundational for WSIF Cycle 4. How did you identify and respond to equity needs? Share progress in narrowing opportunity gaps and the plan to sustain it. Describe a specific challenge and the adjustment you made. |
The reflection questions are worth reading in August rather than in January. They tell you what evidence you will be asked to produce, which tells you what to start collecting now. A team that reads Section 7 in August collects the right data for eleven months. A team that reads it in January reconstructs.
The annual cycle does not stop in June
WSIF Cycle 4 identification and annual report card data release in March 2027. Comprehensive needs assessment work for Cycle 4 runs April and May. Cycle 4 plans are due in Basecamp in August 2027.
Which means the spring is when the next plan is actually made. Teams that begin the CNA in April write a different plan than teams that begin in August — not because they work harder, but because in April they still have time to go look at something before deciding what it means.
Five potential pitfalls
1. The CNA restates the WSIF finding instead of explaining it. Fix: name a structural cause you could change this year.
2. A SMARTIE goal has no baseline. Without a starting number, “by how much” cannot be answered and the January review has nothing to compare against.
3. The intervention table omits the level of evidence.
4. Progress monitoring is scheduled annually. The requirement — in the SIP and in the L-CAP — is that monitoring be ongoing, more than once a year.
5. The plan names interventions the school lacks the capacity to implement. Three interventions delivered well beat eight named and abandoned, and the end-of-year review will show which happened.
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DECS offers a free 30-minute consultation to any Washington school working on its School Improvement Plan, and to any district working on its L-CAP. Sign-up for a time to consult with Dr. Hannah Gbenro, who is experienced partnering with districts and schools on continuous improvement. |
Sources cited
Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Smith, D. (2019). Building equity: Policies and practices to empower all learners. ASCD.
Gibbons, K., Brown, S., & Niebling, B. C. (2019). Effective universal instruction: An action-oriented approach to improving Tier 1. Guilford Press.
Hall, G. E., & Hord, S. M. (2020). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes (5th ed.). Pearson.
