The Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE), in collaboration with Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast, formed the School Climate and Literacy for Georgia (SCAL4GA) partnership. SCAL4GA's goals are to:

1. Develop a greater understanding of the relationship between school climate in Georgia schools and students' reading achievement.
2. Improve state and district staff understanding of evidence-based practices for improving school climate.
3. Support district and school staff in implementing evidence-based practices for improving school climate and monitoring the use of school climate data to improve student outcomes.

The goal of the partnership's first project was to better understand the relationship between Georgia's school climate measures and literacy outcomes. To learn more about these connections, REL Southeast supported GaDOE's analyses of school climate and literacy using Georgia data. GaDOE found that Georgia's school climate star rating was positively related to literacy scores. REL Southeast developed an infographic to describe the results of the analyses.

After the analysis project, GaDOE asked REL Southeast to help target the second and third SCAL4GA goals. The goal of the next project is to support their staff, specifically the school climate specialists, in training school district staff to better understand and implement school climate data to make informed decisions.

REL Southeast is currently working with a group of GaDOE staff, school climate specialists, and district staff to create training materials for school climate specialists to use when delivering school climate data interpretation training to districts. In a series of three training sessions, REL Southeast will work with the participants to better understand already existing knowledge about school climate data and also to identify gaps in this knowledge. Next, REL Southeast will provide a draft of the training content and gather feedback from participants on what works and what could be improved. Finally, REL Southeast will examine the final draft of the training materials and engage in action planning and capacity building with GaDOE staff on how to train school climate specialists across the state and provide workshops to districts. A series of resources will be developed from this training project to support GaDOE staff to coach district and school staff on understanding and improving school climate. The resources will include:

• A facilitators' guide for school climate specialists to use when facilitating their own training sessions with district staff. The guide will be tailored to include district-specific data.
• Slide decks and accompanying materials and activities for the sessions.
• A handout that describes and showcases the associated materials that can be used in communications to anyone interested in training district staff on using school climate data.

What's next?

REL Southeast will continue to work with GaDOE on projects to support work in the region, including a possible project that will focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Stay tuned! Learn more about the SCAL4GA partnership and other REL Southeast partnerships here. We look forward to providing updates and progress on our work in the coming months.