State Supports to Districts and Schools

How SEAs Rate the Impact

SEA Provided Supports

Across the country, state education leaders want to know which state supports and interventions are being provided to low-performing schools and districts, which supports result in improvement, and which supports are most cost effective. Until we have comprehensive research findings on the many recently implemented state supports and interventions, the expert opinions of SEA personnel are our best sources of information. The Academic Development Institute and Corbett Education Consulting LLC, both affiliated with the federally funded Center on School Turnaround at WestEd, in conjunction with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the Sandler Foundation, surveyed state education agencies (SEAs) to assess high-leverage supports that states provide to districts and to priority, focus, and other low-performing schools.

The survey was designed to (1) find out what types of supports SEAs provide to low-performing schools and districts, and to (2) determine the relative impact of each. In addition, the survey asked respondents about how they monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of SEA-provided supports and if they calculate the cost effectiveness of each. The possible supports were based on SEA-provided supports defined in The SEA of the Future: Leverage Performance Management to Support School Improvement (Building State Capacity & Productivity Center, 2013). The categories of supports include:

  • Opportunities and Incentives
  • Supports to Build Systemic Capacity
  • Supports to Build Local Capacity
  • Interventions in Schools or Districts

In addition, members of the CCSSO State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) on Supports & Interventions provided feedback on the initial design and content of the survey. Those state teams included: Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wyoming.


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