The Focus Model

Book excerpt: With school improvement initiatives, quality trumps quantity every time. This book solves the growing problem of schools implementing too many improvement strategies at once instead of deep focus on the most critical few. B.R. Jones’s method details: Selecting critical standards—Defining the skills your students most need now. Uncovering the essentials—Choosing your initiatives based on a deconstruction of the standards and targeted definitions of how they will enrich students. Critical formative analysis of students—Analyzing student work to measure the strategy’s effectiveness. Critical learning teams—Collaborating with colleagues so everyone can make better decisions.