PDSA: From Problem to Opportunity

Susan Skelton, Assistant Principal at Bethel Elementary School, shares their journey toward Continuous Quality Improvement using a school-wide PDSA process.

PDSA: From Problem to Opportunity

Each year Bethel’s administrative team, in collaboration with our Faculty Council, discusses an area that could benefit from the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) approach towards Continuous Quality Improvement.

The first step in a PDSA is to Plan. During the planning stage, we defined a possible problem or opportunity. Last year, school tardies were identified as an area in need of improvement. Not only was there a loss of instructional time for the students who were arriving late to school, but there was also a loss of instructional time when students were disrupting the class by arriving late. Next, we began to gather data weekly by grade level indicating how many students were arriving tardy to school each day. After gathering the initial data, we identified a group of students from kindergarten through 5th grade with the most tardies.

As part of the second step, Do, we arranged a meeting with small groups of these students and asked for their help in reducing the number of tardies. In order to summarize all of the ideas and strategies the students suggested, we completed an affinity diagram with each group.

After nine weeks, we Studied the results as a school and concluded that tardies dramatically decreased, and we celebrated! Students were so excited to see the success that they had made! Our Act-ion had made a difference.

This year, we reflected on our success with tardies and knew that it was time to plan for another school-wide opportunity for improvement. As a faculty we decided to focus on student proficiency of math facts at each grade level.

Again, we went through each step of the Plan-Do-Study-Act improvement process to address this school-wide issue. For eight weeks, teachers gave a timed math check to monitor students’ progress. The information was compiled and then graphed on the bulletin board in the front entrance of the school. Grade levels were not compared to each other. Rather, they were encouraged to strive for their “All Time Best” as a class each week. The final results indicated improvements based on growth over time on every grade level.

At the completion of the eight week period, as part of the Study process, the staff completed a Plus/Delta Quality Tool in order to express their perceived strengths and weaknesses of this initiative. Based on the results of the Plus/Delta Quality Tool, teachers noted that the math checks, “motivated students, kept students competitive, were a good team-building exercise.” On the other hand, teachers also suggested “to start earlier in the year, to provide more motivation for those not studying at home, present as a line graph rather than a bar graph, and to increase the difficulty of the facts every quarter.” Based on these suggestions, many teachers are continuing to Act on this for the remainder of the school year, as we maintain our commitment towards Continuous Quality Improvement.

Pictured at right:

Bethel Elementary tracked school-wide math facts results in the main hallway of the school.

For more information, contact Susan Skelton at Bethel Elementary School, 355-4100 or sskelton@greenville.k12.sc.us.