Students focus on consistent effort, effective study habits and proactive engagement with education to improve their performance in school. At the same time, schools can improve their performance by creating positive learning environments, using educational technology and fostering strong communication between students, teachers and parents.
If you're responsible for school performance, you know it's not just about test scores. It's about school rankings, district accountability and how the community perceives your performance and progress.
From teacher performance reviews to data-driven school decisions, the pressure for school performance is real. Keep reading to learn how to improve school performance through feedback, collaborative leadership and the right education data tools that can move the needle.
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When improving low-performing schools, you must first understand how performance is judged. School performance rating factors vary slightly by state. Still, almost every public school in the U.S. is evaluated using a few core metrics: standardized test scores, student growth, chronic absenteeism, graduation rates and subgroup equity performance.
These aren’t just check boxes; they directly impact your district’s public ratings, funding and perception in the community.
If your school isn’t hitting performance targets, it’s almost always tied to one of these metrics. Red flags include slipping test proficiency, rising chronic absenteeism or widening graduation gaps. Your state is watching and so is your community.
These are the big-ticket metrics state departments and school boards track:
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states use multimetric “report cards” that track:
You can't improve what you don't track and states are constantly tracking. Some states use letter grades, others use index scores or tiered labels, but the core measures are similar.
These evaluations guide data-driven school decisions year-round. They help districts plan school improvement strategies, hold leadership accountable and decide where to focus limited resources.
To improve school performance, you don’t need guesswork, you need clarity, consistency and data that helps.
You’re not chasing trends. You’re implementing what works: focused leadership, collaborative staff culture, innovative data use and a school environment that supports students, teachers and families.
These five proven strategies are drawn from what’s worked in real classrooms, real districts and in schools that used to rank at the bottom of district spreadsheets.
School improvement through performance feedback involves using data and observations to help teachers and administrators improve instruction and leadership.
Feedback should never be from a drive-by evaluation. If you rely on annual formal observations and checking boxes, you’re missing the most powerful part: real-time improvement. The best schools make teacher performance reviews a growth conversation, not a compliance task.
When you create a culture of coaching and formative feedback, teachers feel supported instead of judged. By making teaching sharper each day, you improve student achievement.
Targeted academic interventions identify and support students who do not meet grade-level standards through specialized instruction.
You already know the scores; standardized testing has dropped across the board. But average scores don’t tell the story of who’s falling behind. That’s where student support systems come in.
If you’re committed to student achievement improvement, this starts at the individual level with the proper supports for each learner.
A strong school culture promotes safety, respect, motivation and collaboration. Effective school leadership strategies anchor that culture.
But you can’t strategize your way past a toxic culture. If your school culture is off, you’ll see it in attendance dips, low staff morale and parent complaints. But when the tone is right, performance follows.
Culture impacts everything: test scores, attendance and even teacher retention. Outstanding leadership isn’t loud, but it’s always visible. Schools that thrive do so with intentionality and heart.
Family and community engagement involves parents and local partners in the educational process.
Want to boost scores, behavior and attendance? Start with parent-school communication tools that keep families in the loop and connected. Schools where parents feel seen and heard tend to outperform peers in almost every metric.
Parents can’t support or explain what they aren’t aware of. Build two-way communication into your daily practice and student outcomes will follow.
Progress-tracking and education data tools help schools monitor real-time performance and quickly respond to emerging needs.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s why smart schools invest in tech that flags issues early, before they appear on state report cards.
Schools using integrated tools make quicker, more intelligent choices. It’s not about the data, but what you do with it. This strategy is the core of improving school accountability and driving lasting results.
To improve performance, especially in consistently underperforming schools, you must deal with reality before making real change. These campuses don’t need “more effort,” they need structure, clarity and leadership that doesn’t flinch.
When you work in a low-performing school, every decision is under a microscope. The pressure is constant. You’re not just chasing student achievement improvement, you’re carrying the burden of improving school accountability.
Every test score, every attendance slip, every missing assignment gets amplified. If your school performance rating factors don’t move fast enough, you’ll start hearing it from every direction.
When you've seen it firsthand, you know turnarounds are possible, but only with the right pieces in place:
Chronic absenteeism was 33% at a particular school and only 17% or students met reading benchmarks. After a new principal restructured the leadership team, brought in peer coaches and used weekly PLCs focused on education data tools, reading scores jumped 11% in one year. No fluff, just data, strategy and grit.
You don’t have time to chase lunch money, field trip forms or last-minute permission slips. If your school is serious about student achievement improvement, you need every minute and every dollar working for instruction, not paperwork. That’s where Vanco comes in.
Vanco is a school payment system designed to reduce manual tasks, improve transparency and give your team more time to focus on improving school performance.
With Vanco’s education payment tools, you eliminate the chaos; no more collecting checks in backpacks or scrambling for lost forms. Parents pay online. Office staff tracks everything in one dashboard. Teachers focus on teaching. It’s clean, fast and built to support data-driven school decisions and improve accountability.
Here’s how you feel the impact almost immediately:
Watch this brief video to hear how one school streamlined payments and got back valuable instructional time.
A school payment system tool isn’t just about convenience; it’s tied directly to education data tools, student support systems and data-driven school decisions.
With the right systems, you boost efficiency, improve school accountability and create space to focus on fundamental school improvement plan strategies.
No paperwork. No chaos. Just more time for what matters.
You will need more than a short-term boost to improve school performance. Quick wins are fine, but what moves the needle is locking school improvement into your long-term strategy and sticking with it.
Sustainable results come from clear goals, regular follow-through and support that doesn't evaporate mid-year. You already know your school performance rating factors; it’s about embedding practices that make growth part of your DNA.
That includes routine teacher performance reviews, collaborative planning and using education data tools that give you real-time insights without wasting your time.