How to Create an Elementary School Improvement Plan
May 22, 2025
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Every school leader has a vision of what their ideal school environment would be like – enthusiastic teachers, fun learning materials, and thriving, engaged students. An elementary school improvement plan (SIP) brings that vision to life!
SIPs are more than just documents. They’re guides to enhancing student learning, refining instructional practices, and getting your school closer to that ideal vision.
While many SIPs are required by state or district mandates, the most effective ones go beyond compliance. They are tightly aligned with broader strategic goals, and they reflect the unique needs, strengths, and values of the school community. Developing a strong elementary school improvement plan is crucial for student success.
Today’s most impactful SIPs are often grounded in improvement science – a disciplined, data-informed approach to identifying successful strategies and sustaining meaningful change. With the right mindset, your school improvement plan can foster growth, fuel innovation, and ensure that no student is left behind.
A strong elementary school improvement plan has three core components:
These elements keep the school community focused, organized, and responsive.
Relevant data is also important to consider as you make your goals. Using quantitative and qualitative data is essential, allowing you to gather information from both test scores and attendance rates to student survey responses and staff feedback. Combining these types of data ensures that your plan reflects both the measurable and lived experiences of your school community.
While it might be tempting to tackle everything at once, the most effective plans focus on a limited number of strategic priorities – typically three to five. Prioritizing a select few areas for improvement helps keep energy and plans focused. Trying to improve every weak area at once can lead to overwhelm and diluted effort.
Check out our innovative school improvement ideas to get some insight on where to start.
Each of your priorities should be grounded in an understanding of the root causes behind the challenges, not just the surface-level symptoms. A thoughtful root-cause analysis helps you avoid quick fixes and instead design sustainable solutions.
For example, you may identify low student math proficiency and low teacher morale as priority challenges to remedy. You may determine that low math proficiency is caused by ineffective teaching methods and that low teacher morale is caused by not feeling equipped to effectively teach.
By offering training sessions on new movement-based learning techniques, you can 1) boost math proficiency and 2) improve teacher readiness and morale. When you offer continued training and support for these new methods, you create a sustained solution.
Related Reading: New Way to Teach Math – Movement Works Best!
A SIP is not a one-time task. It’s a framework for continuous improvement cycles, using tools like the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model to refine ideas over time. When applied with intention, it becomes a process of learning, adjusting, and growing.
Your elementary school improvement plan should also align with state accountability measures, including:
A strong SIP includes clear roles and responsibilities, regular communication with stakeholders, and times to celebrate milestones; progress deserves to be recognized!
Key elements such as strong goals, feedback loops, parent investment, professional development, school safety, and staff engagement contribute to a successful plan. Taken together, these components form a comprehensive approach that touches on every part of the school experience – from curriculum and instruction to teacher effectiveness, student engagement, leadership, and family involvement.
We mentioned that data should inform any decisions you make regarding your elementary school improvement plan. But what kind of data should you collect, how can you collect it, and how should you analyze it?
A wide range of data sources offers a holistic picture of where your school stands and what needs attention. To get the full story, consider the following types of data:
Analysing the data you collect helps your team uncover root causes, set priorities, and drive continuous improvement. Try:
When data drives decision-making, your elementary school improvement plan becomes responsive to the real experiences of your students and school community.
Your school improvement plan will be unique to your school’s strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. However, a lot of SIPs share common focus areas that highly impact student success and school climate.
Nevertheless, being aware of these common focus areas can help school leaders set their own goals tailored to their community’s needs.
Literacy is foundational to all learning, and boosting proficiency rates is a great SIP priority. Strong reading skills ensure that students can access content across subjects. Early reading success strongly predicts future academic achievement as well.
Numeracy skills are essential for daily life and future STEM opportunities. A focus on math achievement—especially through hands-on, engaging approaches—helps students build confidence and problem-solving abilities.
Addressing math and literacy achievement is a cornerstone of any effective elementary school improvement plan. Math & Movement’s whole-school kits provide engaging, kinesthetic activities that boost understanding and retention for every grade level.
Discover how to make core subjects a dynamic and enjoyable experience for all your students.
When students feel connected and excited about learning, outcomes improve. Increasing engagement might involve project-based learning, movement-based instruction, or personalized learning strategies.
Did you know that movement-based learning brings about greater levels of student engagement than traditional classroom activities? Turning core-subject lessons into full-body activities can greatly impact student investment and comprehension.
A safe, respectful, and inclusive environment is the foundation for academic success. Focusing on culture with SIPs helps reduce behavioral challenges, boost morale, and create a sense of belonging for all.
An effective SIP directly addresses disparities by implementing targeted supports, culturally responsive teaching, and inclusive practices. Equity ensures that all students, regardless of background, have access to opportunity.
In any case, each of these areas plays a vital role in student growth and school success. By identifying your priorities, you can set your goals and create your action plans. Before you know it, you’ll have a well-rounded elementary school improvement plan.
Clear, actionable goals are absolutely essential to any elementary school improvement plan. The SMART framework is a popular tool for ensuring goals are well-defined:
To promote equity and inclusion, many schools now use the SMARTIE model, which adds:
Here are some SMART goal examples tailored for elementary SIPs:
Essentially, your goals give everyone involved in the SIP something to aim for. They slowly bring your school closer to your ideal school environment. Check out our article on goal-setting for even more strategies.
Turning your goals into accomplishments requires the right strategies. A well-crafted elementary school improvement plan relies on evidence-based and research-supported practices – ones proven to help students grow academically and socially.
Common strategies for improvement include:
An effective action plan outlines the steps your team will take to bring your goals to life. The development process should be intentional and inclusive:
Finally, looking at examples can help inspire and guide your own school’s efforts. Here are two sample action plans aligned with common SIP goals.
Clearly organized action plans make your elementary school improvement plan a practical tool for driving real, lasting change in your community.
The most successful elementary schools are those that not only plan for improvement but also ignite a passion for learning in every child.
While data and strategic planning lay the groundwork, the real magic happens when learning comes to life. Imagine a classroom where math concepts are grasped through joyful movement, where engagement soars, and where every student finds their ‘aha’ moment. That’s the power of integrating kinesthetic learning into your improvement plan.
Don’t just plan for improvement – activate it. Explore our case studies to see how Math & Movement can transform your elementary school improvement plan into remarkable accomplishments.
Want to head deeper into the research and results behind Math & Movement? Explore our Student Data page to see how schools across the US are transforming student achievement with our program.
Our whole-body learning kits are designed to bring energy, focus, and joy into the classroom through movement-based learning activities. These hands-on tools are not only research-backed – they’re student and educator-approved, helping to close learning gaps and boost engagement school-wide.
Discover how your ideal school environment might only be a jump, hop, or skip away.
Suzy Koontz, CEO and Founder of Math & Movement, has spent over 25 years helping students achieve academic success. She has created over 200 kinesthetic teaching tools adopted by schools nationwide and has authored over 20 books. As a sought-after national presenter, Suzy shares how movement can transform the way students learn.
Movement isn't just for recess
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