Work Plans

Each Teacher for a New Era project is asked to prepare a Year 1 work plan that outlines objectives, activities, benchmarks, responsible parties, time lines, outcomes and measures.

The purpose of the work plan is to provide a detailed guide of the specific work that will be undertaken by the project in the first year of funding support. This document will be useful to the project manager, senior campus leaders and others as you embark on a complex and demanding set of reform activities. The project work plan will also be helpful to funders and the AED technical assistance team as they organize to assist you in your work.

Activities included in the work plan should be specific steps to develop and implement a strong project. Outcomes for each goal or objective should be specific and measurable. Outcomes should be more than process-type activities or events. They ought to be the result of a set of project activities and expenditures. Each outcome should be measurable in one or more ways, so the work plan should describe briefly what evidence would be used to determine and measure success.

Examples of possible outcomes may include, but are not limited to, the number of students recruited and retained, the knowledge levels and teaching skills of preservice students, success of K-12 students in partner school classrooms, curriculum changes or implementation of new assessment mechanisms. Activities such as meetings or conferences, are not outcomes or even benchmarks, they are steps toward meeting a benchmark like redesigning the math curriculum or toward reaching an outcome like graduating new math teachers fully prepared to be successful.

In every case of an outcome, the plan should describe what evidence will be used to measure progress or success.

• Objectives—what the project plans to achieve—these objectives should be linked to each of the three Teachers for a New Era design principles. Given the complexity of this project, it is likely that you will have a number of objectives for each design principle and for the elements under each principle. The work plan should address each objective separately with activities, benchmarks, timeline and responsible party specified for each of the objectives.
• Activities—work performed by the project based on the objective and leading to a
  specific outcome.
• Benchmarks—specific, incremental targets that are beyond current capabilities but toward which the project is striving. Examples: all students in the program will be assigned a mentor who meets with them x times per month; a certain number of program courses will be evaluated and redesigned; new assessment instruments will be developed and piloted.
• Timeline—dates by which benchmarks will be accomplished.
• Responsible Party—person or group responsible for accomplishing the benchmark—e.g., the project director, a group of arts and science faculty; coordinating council.
• Outcome—the final desired product. Outcomes can be identified, measured and evaluated. Intermediate outcomes are useful to assess early results (e.g., by the end of Year 1) when the goals will not be achieved for several years. The outcome should answer the following questions: What will the impact be? What will happen that can be measured? Examples of outcomes include: producing teachers with stronger content knowledge in the subject they teach; academic performance improvement, teaching performance, employer satisfaction, and K-12 student learning gains.
• Measures—quantitative or qualitative indicators that link specific outcomes back to the project objective or goal. Outcome measures address results attained and the extent to which objectives have been met. Examples: results of one or more tests that measure teaching knowledge and skills, number of teachers placed successfully, percent of new teachers retained, percent of K-12 students showing learning gains.

Below is an example format of how to organize and display the information in your work plan. The objective in this example was chosen only to illustrate the presentation format. Applicants may use this format, or one of your own design, but please note that these are the kinds of details and measurable outcomes that are needed.

There is no prescribed length to the Year 1 work plan. New Era projects should include enough detail to enable those involved in the project, funders and AED consultants to understand all the key activities that will take place in the first year of foundation support.

• Consolidated project time line—at the end of the work plan on a separate page or pages, please provide a consolidated project timeline that integrates the activities and benchmarks from all project components.