The CAMEL Literacy Survey

How will the CAMEL be used?

The CAMEL will be used to prioritize our next steps in staff development.
Each item on the CAMEL includes three dimensions, the level of current use, the predicted student benefits, and the degree of effort required to make a practice happen in our district. From these dimensions, each item will be summarized with a holistic score. A holistic score is a “value” that is thought to represent the overall meaning of the collection of ratings for that item. The holistic score is obtained based on three assumptions.

Assumptions:

Assumption #1: Student improvement is our first priority.

Assumption #2: The amount of effort it will take to make a practice is critical. If a practice is overwhelming, then it is less likely to be successful than if it is a “piece of cake”

Assumption #3: Whether or not something is a current practice is important, but not nearly as important as student improvement or effort required to increase the level of use of that practice.

Significance of Assumptions:
Student improvement is our first priority, changes in this rating have the most effect on the overall score. The level of current practice is less important so differences in the level of current use cause the smallest change in the holistic score. Effort causes strain, thus ratings on this factor should take away from the holistic score, little effort is still effort and as such takes away only a little, while “overwhelming” effort should take away a lot.

Scales of the CAMEL
The effect of scaling the camel as described above leads to prioritizing the CAMEL so that in most cases, ratings that predict higher levels of benefit for students, result higher holistic scores. At the same time ratings of less effort result in higher holistic scores than ratings that are predicted to require less effort. Finally, ratings for the level of current use result in slightly higher ratings for practices that are already established as compared with those that are not currently in use.

Ultimate results:

Once all surveys have been completed. The results will be analyzed to determine what staff believe should be the next steps in the staff development process. The results will be shared with the literacy committee, and the committee will work together to determine how this information will be used in planning for staff development.