Jared Griffis is the principal of Central High School in the Carroll County School System (GA), which serves over 13,000 students. Mr. Griffis has been working with the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) to support professional growth and school improvement planning. As part of this work, Mr. Griffis administered the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) system. Mr. Griffis has been the principal at Central High school for the past three years, and he has administered the CALL survey in each year.

With support from GLISI, Mr. Griffis administered the CALL survey for consecutive years to measure school-wide leadership effectiveness. With each administration, he was able to examine the Areas of Strength and Focus Areas for his school and compare the data to previous survey administrations to examine growth over time. Mr. Griffis used this opportunity to work with his leadership team collaboratively on data analysis to determine target areas: “I look for areas that have decreased or have continued to show slow growth. My leadership team looks at these areas for ways we can improve.” Central High School has continually yielded relatively high ratings in the CALL system, but Mr. Griffis is not complacent; he continues to find ways to progress in various areas of school-wide leadership.

Since the CALL system focuses on specific practices, Mr. Griffis and his leadership team were able to focus on the specific items in CALL and discuss what they are currently doing and what they could be doing differently. “[CALL] validated much of the work we have done,” Mr. Griffis said. “It also showed us some areas for us to continue to work on to improve. We will continue our work in all areas validated by CALL as well.” One area that Mr. Griffis and his team has been focusing on has been Peer Observations, which has been a new process implemented in the school. And while not all teachers have engaged in this practice, the ones that have reported it to be beneficial feedback practice. Also, CALL is part of the work with GLISI, but it has also supported the overall school improvement planning process. Moving forward, Mr. Griffis anticipates using CALL to support school-wide leadership and ongoing school improvement: “[CALL] will serve as a data source for continued improvement. The areas identified will serve as guides for next year's school improvement plan."