School improvement begins as a collaborative process within each building. Teams are formed to lead building staff through a systematic process of change in order to positively influence student achievement. This process involves a collaborative effort to identify, create, and realize goals designed to support student achievement and growth. 

Each building team meets to gather, review, and analyze data collected for each grade level, content area, and cohort of students. Building level school improvement teams focus on achievement levels as well as student growth. Upon reflection, building school improvement teams identify each greatest area of need (GAN). The data and GAN is shared with building level staff members, specific to their area of focus or grade level. Grade level teams and departments use this information to form their own goals to best support student improvement in the identified areas. Building grade level or department teams determine instructional strategies specific to the identified student group GAN in order to allow for those students to realize expected or greater than expected levels of growth, ultimately impacting overall student achievement.
 
The school improvement process encourages building grade-level and department teams to monitor student progress on a regular basis, make instructional changes based on the information collected through progress monitoring, and to continue the cycle of monitoring and changing instruction based on student response. 

Throughout the school improvement process, building administrators meet regularly to discuss their specific plans and collaborate with one another to share effective strategies. Administrators participate in other building’s school improvement meetings in order to support each other through the process of improvement. District administration provides direct and specific supports through a trimester schedule where building school improvement teams come together to share goals and data, identify areas of need, problem solve, and celebrate successes. At the conclusion of the school improvement year-long cycle, building school improvement teams analyze and reflect on overall student progress in order to evaluate goal progress and establish new goals for the coming school year. 

Data analysis has become a critical piece of the process in measuring and capturing if buildings have met the goals each has set. Yorkville Community Unit School District 115 uses a variety of measures to determine overall student achievement and growth. Some measures include local outcome assessments, MAP, AIMSweb Plus, PSAT/SAT, and PARCC results. Additionally, teachers use informal data and observations as a means to further determine student groupings and support decisions made regarding instructional practices.