What is CALL?

The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) is a cloud-based school-wide leadership assessment and feedback system. Rather than focus on an individual school leader, CALL utilizes a multi-source comprehensive survey to assess core leadership practices that are distributed across the school building. Upon completion of the survey, users receive immediate targeted data and feedback designed to support school improvement and professional growth. In addition, the CALL system provides district leaders with information on school leadership effectiveness. Please see the CALL Introductory Video to learn more.

What does CALL Measure?

The CALL survey measures leadership practices in Five Core Domains: 1) Focus on Learning, 2) Monitoring Teaching and Learning, 3) Building Nested Learning Communities, 4) Acquiring and Allocating Resources, and 5) Maintaining a Safe and Effective Learning Environment. Within each of these five core domains, there are three to five subdomains. These subdomains are the primary units of analysis for feedback and for the research conducted to validate this instrument. Please visit the CALL website to learn more about these subdomains. 

While the CALL Five Core Domains represent the standard framework for assessing and supporting school and district leadership, the CALL assessments can also be aligned to other existing frameworks such as the Center on School Turnaround's Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement.  And, the CALL Team works with organizations to create customized survey items to capture context-specific leadership practices. 

Development of CALL

The CALL instrument was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through a four-year grant funded by the Institute of Education Sciences in the US Department of Education. The CALL researchers developed the CALL survey based on extensive research of effective school leadership practices. Expert practitioners vetted the survey items throughout the development process. The CALL researchers validated the instrument by correlating CALL data against student learning data, school leadership effectiveness data, and school culture data. 

What are the Key Features of CALL?

1. CALL contains an online web-based survey. The CALL survey can be taken on any computer with an internet connection. Users can stop and return to the survey at any time.
2. CALL contains an automated action-based feedback system. Once a school staff has completed the CALL survey, school leaders can generate their data feedback report immediately. The feedback system provides school leaders with ratings of leadership practices, a distribution of responses for each survey item, and targeted suggestions and strategies to support professional growth. Please visit the CALL website to view a sample CALL Data Feedback Report. 
3. Please view this presentation of the CALL leadership assessment and feedback system for more information.