School Success Online

The SSP, ESSP, and Learning Organization are powerful and comprehensive assessment tools for promoting academic performance and closing the achievement gap. Please take a moment to browse our web site and learn how the these products will benefit your school or program.

The ESSP is a rigorously tested, state-of-the-art assessment tool for school-based practitioners who work with children in grades 3 through 5.

The SSP is an assessment
tool for middle and high
school students.

The SSP Learning Organization tool assesses learning organizations, particularly in school settings, to create a climate more conducive to
student learning. The SSP-LO is administered to a school's administrators, specialists, teachers, teacher assistants,
and other employees.

The SSP-LO is a new survey instrument designed by Dr. Gary Bowen, Principal Investigator. The SSP team has pilot-tested the instrument and has used focus groups to refine the survey. It assesses learning organizations, particularly in school settings, to create a school climate more conducive to student learning.

The SSP-LO is administered to a school's administrators, specialists, teachers, teacher assistants, and other employees.

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations are associated with a core set of conditions and processes that support the ability of an organization to value, acquire, and use information and tacit knowledge acquired from employees and stakeholders to successfully plan, implement, and evaluate strategies to achieve performance goals. We propose that the presence of organizational learning is characterized by two key domains -- actions and sentiments.

Actions

Learning organization actions are purposeful behaviors and patterns of interaction in organizational members' approaches to work that provide opportunities for learning and the demonstration of shared responsibility and collective competence in addressing organizational goals.

Six dimensions are associated with the action domain: team orientation, innovation, involvement, information flow, tolerance for error, and results orientation.

Sentiments

The sentiments of a learning organization are the collective expressions of positive regard, emotions, and attitudes among organizational members that arise through their interactions and interpersonal connections and that encourage, support, and reinforce internal integration and social harmony.

Six dimensions are associated with the sentiments domain: common purpose, respect, cohesion, trust, mutual support, and optimism.

Actions and sentiments are dynamically interrelated. Actions operate as a "lubricant" in the change process; sentiments provide the "glue" that keeps the team together as the work group expands its structural and operational boundaries to accommodate the change process.

School and Personal Outcomes

The SSP-LO survey instrument includes six items that assess employees' perceptions of self and school: health, job satisfaction, perceived control over results at the school, plans to continue employment at the school, and actual and potential performance of the school in addressing the learning needs of all students.

| | | | |
| | |