Schools collect a great deal of data about student outcomes, attendance, school climate, and other indicators. But school improvement also requires understanding something that can be harder to measure: the practices within a school that shape teaching and learning.
That has always been the purpose of the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL).
Developed from research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, CALL takes a practice-based approach to understanding school leadership. Rather than evaluating an individual leader, CALL gathers perspectives from educators across a school about the leadership and organizational practices they experience in their daily work.
Now, the original CALL assessment, CALL Primary, has been revamped.
What's Changed?
The revamped CALL Primary is more concise and more focused. The original assessment contained approximately 130 items. The new version contains approximately 100 items, reducing the time required of educators while preserving the comprehensive nature of the assessment.
The content has also been updated. Outdated practices were removed or rewritten, with the original CALL principal investigators participating in the review process. The revised assessment places greater emphasis on student and educator well-being rather than student discipline, as well as a stronger emphasis on student learning rather than simply student achievement.
Its five domains examine:
- School-Wide Leadership for Learning
- Teaching and Learning
- Professional Learning Communities
- Strategic Human Resource Management
- An Effective Learning Environment
What Hasn't Changed?
Just as important is what CALL retains.
CALL remains practice-based rather than individual-based, with distributed leadership at the heart of the assessment. It continues to gather perspectives from educators across the school and provide actionable data that can help school teams identify strengths, examine areas for growth, and determine where improvement efforts might be most useful.
The goal of shortening CALL was never simply to ask fewer questions. It was to create a more focused assessment while being conscious of one of education's most precious resources: time.
An Updated CALL Experience
The revised CALL Primary arrives alongside a revamped CALL user interface and the introduction of CALL AI, which gives school and district leaders new ways to summarize findings, explore patterns, ask questions of their data, and consider next steps.
Together, these updates make it easier to move from collecting data to using them for school improvement.
Interested in Piloting the Revised CALL Primary?
The revised CALL Primary is available now, and we are looking for one or two schools interested in piloting the updated assessment. Pilot schools will administer the revised survey and provide feedback on their experience, while also helping us generate real-world data for a sample CALL report.
Interested schools can contact the CALL team to learn more.