A needs assessment is a systematic process of collecting focused information to better understand the priorities and challenges of students, their families, and the community. Similarly, an asset map focuses on the unique strengths, resources and expertise in the school and community that might contribute to addressing identified challenges and priorities. Taken together, the needs assessment and asset map are used to guide community school development. Keep in mind: A needs assessment is not an inventory of programs or a list of data points. Program inventories can come later on in the process, and can be a part of the asset map as a way to help community school teams and stakeholders understand what’s already in place to support students and families.

It is essential that your community school team comes together to talk about what data is needed, analyze data and look for patterns, develop shared understanding, and use it to guide decision making. The needs assessment process can help you and your team:

• Develop a clearer picture of your school, district, and community, as it relates to whole child, whole-family success;

• Generate engagement and buy-in from community stakeholders (e.g., students, families, staff, board members) you invite to be part of the process;

• Gain more insight into particular successes and/or challenge areas, including learning from the people “closest to the issue;”

• Build consensus around goals and priorities for community school development;

• Identify expertise to tap into within the school, district, and community.

Additionally, a needs and asset mapping process is one of the “promising practices” identified in the CCSPP Framework and explicitly required by the CCSPP planning grant. So, make it a worthwhile endeavor!

Needs assessments require three different types of data to create a good understanding of what your school needs.

High-level data is the first kind you should be looking for. These are broad brush quantitative measures like test scores, attendance patterns, and teacher retention. This kind of data can help unearth large scale trends but is a little heavy handed for some applications.

Medium grain data is the second style of data that can help. This is a little closer to the ground, things like culture climate surveys and classroom assessments. This data is a good middle ground, not too much detail nor too little, while allowing you to get a fuller picture of what's happening in the school.

Finally, you want to look for granular data. This is on the ground, face to face, street level stuff. Interviews with teachers or students, focus groups, individualized feedback. This is fantastic for getting to know who is in your school and what they specifically want.

Your school or district probably already collects a ton of data that can be used to start the

needs assessment process. We strongly recommend starting with the data that you already have, refining that to suit your needs rather than starting from scratch. After you’ve collected and reviewed what you have, fill the holes in your database with the appropriate level of information gathering.

The needs assessment process at the district level should be led by the district lead (e.g., Community Schools Director), anyone else in the district’s ad hoc community schools planning team, and the community school advisory council.

At the site level, you can similarly include the principal or assistant principal, the site’s Community School Coordinator, and the site’s advisory council (or, ad hoc community school design or planning team, if the advisory council is not yet established).

In each case, a diverse group of stakeholders should be brought into the process. Why? So you can ensure that the needs assessment includes well-rounded data that is gleaned from a variety of sources and is reflective of multiple voices. Also in both cases, the ad hoc team and/or the Community School Director or Coordinator can play a key role in staffing the needs assessment process — for example, tracking down data, and ensuring a wide range of stakeholders are included and heard.

The short answer? No. We strongly discourage you from contracting out the needs assessment to an outside entity. The needs assessment isn’t just about the product that you create, but about the process of collaboratively looking at data and engaging in conversation with the people impacted by and holding the responsibility for community school development. The relationships that districts and team members have with labor, parents and caregivers, community partners and other stakeholders are crucial in gathering clear, accurate and informative data. An outside consultant will likely not have the relational trust, nor contextual knowledge needed to do this work well. Additionally, the needs assessment process itself contributes to strengthening relationships among team members — creating a strong foundation for the many years of work ahead.