Recently the CALL Team attended the summer SCASS meetings for CCSSO in San Diego. CALL is part of the School and District Improvement (SDI) SCASS in which state education agency (SEA) leaders congregate to discuss their states’ plans for supporting school and district improvement planning in light of ESSA’s designations of Comprehensive Support & Intervention (CSI) and Targeted Support & Intervention (TSI). SEA leaders from states such as Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Maine, Alaska, Arkansas, and South Dakota attended the meeting and discussed a range of topics from supporting rural school districts, to funding strategies, supporting improvement planning for alternative schools, and focusing on English Language Learners as part of an improvement plan.

The SCASS meetings provide great opportunities for SEA leaders to work together to solve some of the challenges they are facing with rolling out guidelines for improvement planning at the district and school levels. And, these meetings also allow for SEA leaders to learn from each other—to share resources and ideas across states. As it turns out, many of the challenges these SEA leaders are facing are not unique to their states, and they are able to borrow solutions from their colleagues throughout the country to keep their processes moving forward.

As a partner in this SCASS, the CALL Team was able to learn from the SEA leaders, help facilitate some discussions, and offer their own ideas about what to consider in the state-wide planning process. Since the CALL Team has developed a version of CALL survey and feedback survey that is aligned to the Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement Framework, and since many states have adopted this framework for their state-wide improvement planning process, the CALL Team was able to demonstrate how this system would support the implementation of this framework at the school and district levels.

The CALL Team is looking forward to its involvement in the SDI SCASS next year and working with SEA leaders who are doing admirable work to support district and school leaders.