Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how twelve individual schools in Wyoming utilized resources and implemented instructional strategies to organize, prioritize and plan for improved student performance. This study identified school improvement strategies, resource use in school, and the alignment between school improvement strategies and resource use in those schools. The study attempted to identify resource strategies and/or instructional improvement strategies that appeared to be more associated with schools making larger student performance gains than other schools. This study served to inform a larger study supervised by Lawrence Picus and Associates who were conducting research for the Wyoming State Legislature. This study was duplicated by approximately 19 other researchers during the same time frame for this purpose.

Ten school principals were interviewed and data were collected regarding the instructional strategies of the school, resource use practices in the school, the degree of alignment between instructional strategies and resource use, and practices that appeared to be more associated with student performance improvement. Data were collected to compare actual resource use to the Wyoming education finance funding model. All data were reviewed and a case study for each school was written following an outline prescribed by Picus and Associates. The data in the case studies were then analyzed and formed the basis for the conclusions of this study.

Several conclusions were reached in this study. The study found that while schools employed a variety of instructional strategies for school improvement five instructional strategies were common in the schools. The study found that schools allocated resources in traditional ways while beginning to reallocate resources more in line with the Wyoming funding model. The study found that schools aligned instructional strategies and resource use to some degree and it was found that the schools were not able to track resource use and instructional strategy alignment in detail. No conclusive findings were found as to which practices were more associated with student performance improvement although some possible promising practices were identified.