Work of the SST includes the following School Improvement functions:

1. Support for districts in identifying and remedying low academic performance for all students
2. Support for districts in systems change efforts to improve student achievement and progress
3. Compliance with federal and state requirements to improve results for students with disabilities and those at risk of being identified as disabled
4. Early learning and school readiness
5. Literacy
6. Deployment of state and federal initiatives

Overview of the Ohio Improvement Process

Ohio is committed to the implementation of a unified state system of support directly focused on improving the academic achievement of all students and student groups. SSTs have been charged with implementing the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP).

The Ohio Improvement Process is Ohio's strategy for ensuring a systematic and coherent approach for building the capacity of all districts and schools in meaningful and real ways. OIP allows districts to improve instructional practice on a district-wide basis and make and sustain significant improvement in student performance against grade-level benchmarks aligned with academic content standards for all students across the district.

Inherent in the OIP is the belief that:

• Improvement is everyone's responsibility--at all levels of the district and in all districts, but especially those in corrective action or improvement status;
• Leadership--the purpose of which is the improvement of instructional practice and performance, regardless of role--is a critical component of the OIP and must be addressed in more meaningful ways to ensure scalability and sustainability of improvement efforts on a distict-wide basis;
• State-developed products and tools, including professional development, need to be designed for universal accessibility and applicability to/for every district in the state; and
• A unified state system of support requires the intentional use of a consistent set of tools and protocols by all state-supported regional providers, rather than allowing for multiple approaches across the state, based on preference.