The impact of external consultation on school and Education Service Center personnel: The Campus Snapshot process

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on and provide insight into the experiences of administrators and Education Service Center Region XIII (ESC XIII) employees of the Campus Snapshot process. The Campus Snapshot is an external auditing process used to begin the work of school improvement. The study was conducted with five campus administrators and six ESC XIII employees. The intent of the study was to provide a richer understanding of change through capturing the experiences of two groups involved with the work of school improvement: the school leaders undergoing the change initiative to improve, and the external providers conducting the audit.;The study utilized qualitative case study methodology. Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) techniques were used to analyze processes and systems through focus groups. This methodology provided the foundation for supporting the understanding of change and improvement through the lens of understanding organizations as systems.;The literature review for this study includes research and theories rooted not only in education, but also in the fields of Total Quality Management and systems thinking. Knowledge about successful implementation concerning exactly what makes schools improve is sparse, perhaps because a school must first be seen as a whole system in order for the dynamics and complexity of school change to be understood.;The results from this study demonstrated the ways in which an external audit proved to be valuable to both campus administrators and external technical assistance providers at Education Service Center Region XIII. This outside perspective helped gain buy-in to the need for change and created a sense of urgency to challenge the status quo. The findings also reveal further support needed once buy-in has been created in the area of change.;The study revealed that change is an overarching theme in assisting schools in improvement. The work of improving schools is an ongoing process and requires, first of all, an understanding of the complexities of that process. From this study it was also shown that those providing assistance to schools in improvement must first understand the change process in order to provide meaningful services to schools.