From Compliance to Collaboration: Redesigning Nevada’s School & District Performance Plans
PARTNER: Nevada Department of Education; Local Education Agencies
SERVICE AREAS: School/District Improvement Planning
LOCATION: Nevada
TIMEFRAME: 2020 – Ongoing
Bridging the District Divide
Nevada is a study in contrasts. The bustling cities of Las Vegas and Reno give way to vast rural landscapes and small desert towns. The Clark County School District serves over 300,000 students, making it the fifth-largest district in the country, while some rural districts, like Esmeralda County, have fewer than 100 students. These size disparities often translate into differences in funding, teacher availability, extracurricular offerings, and access to advanced technology, contributing to varying educational experiences for students across the state.
In the fall of 2020, the Nevada Department of Education (NDE) partnered with a consortium of districts to hire UPD to reimagine its statewide school and district improvement processes and tools. We leveraged user-centered design practices to create an inclusive process and comprehensive toolkit that:
- Reflected national research, best practices, and shared values around equity
- Streamlined the work for local and state stakeholders
- Strategically and meaningfully engaged school communities in authentic improvement efforts
Our work has helped Nevada take meaningful steps towards ensuring the rigorous, caring, and equitable learning environments all students deserve.
How We Got Here: Statewide Collaboration + Design Thinking
Our team employed user-centered design thinking, seeking to answer a fundamental question: How might we design an improvement process relevant to all districts that is collaborative, not compliance-oriented?
Crucially, design power was shared between NDE and district leaders. Rather than the State designing for their districts, the state invested in a process through which they designed with local representatives. The consortium of representatives from a range of districts was established to design the continuous improvement process and toolkit over the course of the first year of the project.
By leveraging both research and user input, we facilitated the design team to developNevada-specific prototypes. School and district volunteers then piloted the redesigned processes and materials, providing feedback for refinement before the statewide “beta” rollout in the second year.
A Plan For Districts, By Districts
Our design process successfully incorporated the needs and perspectives of multiple stakeholders, building more effective and community-informed performance planning structures for the state. The full rollout of Nevada’s beta continuous improvement process received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with post-rollout surveys showing 92 percent of LEA and school respondents either agreeing or strongly agreeing that the process was inclusive and represented the diversity of their communities. Additionally, 97 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the final plans reflected the needs and contexts of their individual schools.
With a new continuous improvement process and tools in place, our efforts have contributed to a foundational shift in interactions between schools, districts, and the NDE, from one of compliance to one based on collaboration and improvement. We continue to support the use of change management strategies in Nevada to ensure sustained, effective execution of the performance plans as they evolve year-over-year. Our work in Nevada has led to a process that is resilient and sustainable at scale because it was built from the ground up.