Ontario Psychological Association (OPA) Student Assessment Project “Designing a Project for Success” Date: February 6, 2009 Presented by: Marg Peppler, Project Manager Dr. Beverley Terrell-Deutsch, Team Lead For:Ministry of Education 2009 Ontario Education Research Symposium

Feb 6, Outline Background Project Governance Project Objectives Evaluation Strategy Results – Highlights in Closing the Gap Conclusions

Feb 6, Background Early in 2006: issue of wait times for professional assessments tabled by the Minister’s Advisory Committee on Special Education April 2006: OPA were approached by the Ministry of Education to develop and lead a project to provide a $20M grant to school boards Purpose: support the school boards and school authorities to reduce wait times for students requiring professional assessments and to enhance teacher capacity Target Students: Junior Kindergarten to Grade 4

Feb 6, Project Governance Project Manager & Team Advisory Group Core Committee OPA Board of Directors Decision Makers on Behalf of the OPA Board of Directors Accountable for the Project Responsible to Core Committee for Planning, Execution, Control, Closure Inform the Decisions of the Project Manager and Team

Feb 6, Project Objectives reduce wait times for students in junior kindergarten to grade IV requiring professional assessments enhance teacher capacity to provide effective programming for students provided with professional assessments improve literacy / numeracy for students provided with professional assessments sustain assessment process improvements for the long term

Feb 6, Evaluation Strategy Clear project objectives & measures defined, approved, & communicated to school boards up front School boards develop Assessment Capacity Building Plans 100% Success Model Monitor school board progress and coaching to facilitate success Test evaluation questions/data requirements with school boards: Right data / questions to measure project success? Clear / understandable instructions? Reasonable effort to acquire / provide data? Web-based software for data input with reporting / analysis capability at back end Involve decision makers in data reporting Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6

Feb 6, Results – Highlights in Closing the Gap Building capacity of teachers to provide effective programming for students provided with a professional assessment Impact on student achievement Status of activities to sustain assessment process improvements for the long term

Feb 6, Priorities for Building Capacity of Teachers

Feb 6, Priorities for Building Capacity of Professional Services Staff

Feb 6,

Feb 6, Priorities to Sustain Assessment Process Improvements

Feb 6, Sustain Assessment Process Improvements Results report “Summary of Key Results Areas – Critical Findings”: –is available in English/French on the Ontario Psychological Association website at: Resource Guide “Sharing Promising Practices”: –produced in English/French –contains brief descriptions of each school board project with 12 of them in more detail –More than 6000 copies distributed to Ontario school boards and other project stakeholders –For copies contact OPA at – Carla Mardonet

Feb 6, Conclusions 100% success model Established a governance structure Set clear direction with objectives and evaluation measures at the beginning Developed plans to meet project objectives and monitored progress along the way Tested evaluation questions / data requirements and made changes based on stakeholder feedback Involved decision makers Developed web-based software to efficiently collect, verify, summarize and analyze the data Planned for knowledge mobilization

Feb 6, Designing a Project for Success Ministry of Education Advisory Group OPA Core Committee School Boards Community Practitioners OPA Project Team EDU Special Education Leads ACPOSB OPA “Understanding, responding to, and managing the expectations of project stakeholders is one of the most crucial ingredients in designing a project for success. In the final analysis, a project is only successful when the stakeholders declare it so”.