School Implementation Leadership Scale (SILS)
Category: Teacher and Leader Development
The decentralization of power is a defining feature of the American education system, allowing schools to reflect community values and needs. Yet, little is known about how values and visions for education hold constant or vary across districts. Through an analysis of 617 district strategic plans, combining qualitative coding and computational topic modeling, we provide insight into how local communities prioritize educational goals. Districts broadly converge on goals of academic learning, career readiness, climate and belonging, and family and community connection. Greater variability appears in the emphasis on student well-being, social-emotional skills, character development, and other student development goals beyond academics. Diversity, equity, and inclusion goals emerge as the theme that is most correlated with demographics, geography, and politics.
Keywords
school boards, educational goods, strategic planning, topic modeling, unsupervised machine learning
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/36at-sq75
