In this chapter, we discuss the importance of root‐cause analysis to better understand why the system produces the current outcomes. When you can target root causes, you can address them through strategic planning. Root cause analysis is a multistep process that requires identifying potential root causes, organizing root causes around control, and validating and verifying those causes. This chapter will prepare you to complete a root‐cause analysis after you organize the key findings from your self‐assessment process.

Down the River

Once upon a time, a group of adults enjoyed the sun on the bank of a river. Suddenly, they heard screaming. They whipped around and saw a teenager getting pulled down that river, splashing around frantically, yelling for help. Immediately, they sprang into action, racing to the water and bringing the teen to safety. They felt proud of their collective effort and maybe a little judgmental. They whispered to themselves, “Why would he go into the water if he wasn't a strong swimmer? Someone should talk to his mother.”

Strangely, the same thing happened minutes later. Another teenager was struggling to make it ashore, thrashing in the water. “Kids these days,” they thought, “We need to find out who their parents are and get them some life preservers. What a terrible decision to swim in the river without a life jacket.” A third child floated down the river, the adults becoming increasingly tired as they rescued the teens. One of the women finally walked off. The others were disgusted. “How could she leave us here to deal with all these irresponsible teenagers?” The remaining friends continued to stay vigilant, perched above the river, ready to dive in. Before they knew it, the woman returned.

“Where did you go?” they asked.

She answered, “I walked down the river, and about a mile back, the bridge is broken. That is where the kids fall in. Come with me so we can fix that.”

Identify Potential Root Causes

The previous story reminds us that sometimes we have to look a little deeper to figure out why something has occurred. Through this process thus far, you have drafted key findings and are ready to dive in to rescue the swimmers! Not quite. It is time for you to walk down the metaphorical river and complete a root‐cause analysis. Root‐cause analysis is a process where you further define and understand the problem that will focus improvement efforts. Root‐cause analysis moves the team from a broad problem to one that is specific enough on which to act (Rowland et al., 2018).

The self‐assessment process helps identify key findings. For example, one of your key findings may be that there is not adequate professional development to support staff in designing universally designed, culturally sustaining, linguistically supportive, and trauma‐informed lessons rooted in deeper learning. It is easy to look at the lack of professional development and say, “That's the problem! All we need is a few more hours of PD, and all will be well with the world.” Instead, we need to dive deeply into why we do not have professional development that prepares educators to meet the needs of all learners.

A root‐cause analysis is intended to find the antecedents for your key findings. It digs into structural domains by focusing on cause and effect. In this stage, look at factors associated with each finding. We have provided a set of those factors in our self‐assessment to help take the guesswork out of this process. Let's examine how a key finding may unfold through a root‐cause analysis in Table 8.1.

As shown in Table 8.1, you can use the self‐assessment process to help identify the effects of your systems and root‐cause analysis (with information gathered from your data and document review) to articulate potential root causes. Sometimes we review documents and data, and they inform our thinking, and sometimes the absence of documents and data provides just as healthy a source of planning information. In this case, the lack of an instructional guide was a potential antecedent for the key finding.

Organizing Your Proposed Root Causes Around Control

Once you have identified potential root causes, categorize them into three “piles” (see Figure 8.1):

• Pile 1: Those causes within your locus of control. These are things we can change without outside permission.
• Pile 2: Those not in your direct locus of control but within your sphere of influence. These are things we do not have a direct say in but have influence around.
• Pile 3: Outside your locus of control/sphere of influence. These are things that we cannot control but may impact our organization.

This step is important as you consider your action plan. First, you must consider actions that the team can address with autonomy. Next, you want to consider actions in your plans for collaboration and engagement with all relevant stakeholders for items within your sphere of influence. Lastly, you need to understand the impact of causes that fall outside your control and plan accordingly.

Let's play out two scenarios to illustrate the distinctions in those piles.

• Scenario 1. You identify lack of funding for intervention materials as a root cause. Is this in your locus of control, your sphere of influence, or outside your control? Specifically, do you have funds within your existing general fund budget that can be applied to intervention resources (within your sphere of control), do you need to advocate through the town(s) budget process for additional budget appropriations to support intervention acquisition (within your sphere of influence), or are you in a position of waiting to see annual entitlement fund distributions from the state to see if you have funds to purchase the materials (outside your control)?
• Scenario 2. As a school‐based team, do you have the power to determine the intervention materials once funding is approved (locus of control), or do you need to work with another group who needs to approve the materials (sphere of influence), or are intervention resources provided to you with no input from your team (outside your control)?

Review Root Causes for Leverage

It is important to consider how to assess our potential root causes against the concept of leverage.

• High leverage: an area where a small/moderate amount of “lift” (work) will greatly impact outcomes.
• Low leverage: an area where there is a ton of “lift” for a very small gain.

For example, if we define something as a potential root cause but the impact is only in one grade in one school, this is less likely to impact systemic planning and may be better suited as a goal for that grade‐level team. In addition, you want to look at the lift (or level of effort and resources) needed to address this root cause. With limited resources, if a cause has low impact and high lift, should it be prioritized in your planning? Figure 8.2 will help you visualize the tension between leverage and lift.

Through discussion, determine which root causes are high leverage and within your locus of control/sphere of influence. These will be the causes you bring forward to the validation and verification process.

Validate Your Root Causes

During the validation step, take the potential root causes and share them with greater stakeholder members. To do this, you need to plan. In other words, how will you solicit feedback about your potential root causes and from whom to ensure there is agreement and buy‐in about district needs? For example, maybe you will create a survey or host focus groups with students, staff, and families.

When we worked in a district together, we visited every school during an established faculty meeting to share key findings and root causes with faculty and staff. We wrote the key findings from our data analysis at the top of a piece of paper. We listed all of our potential root causes (those within our locus of control and medium or high leverage areas) in separate spreadsheet rows. We asked participants to review the key findings and, from their perspective, determine if they agreed that the potential root cause was a factor in our challenge area. We asked them to write notes with examples if they agreed or a rationale for why they did not agree. We gave them the option to work individually or in small groups to complete the validation process. This was a powerful way to validate root causes and create shared responsibility for strategic changes. See a recording sheet sample in Table 8.2.

Verify Your Root Causes

For each validated root cause, your task is to go back with your team and find data to support it. It is best to triangulate the data (find three separate sources) to ensure the root cause is an accurate antecedent to your challenge area. If there is no data to support your root cause, you need to let it go from your work moving forward. This can be challenging, but sometimes what we believe is not necessarily the actual antecedent, as shown in the following scenario.

• Scenario: Your team determines that lack of PD time in inclusive practice and deeper learning impacts student achievement. Your staff validates this root cause and desires additional time for PD. To verify it, you review time spent on PD against research‐based hours, collect qualitative data from staff through surveys and additional focus groups, and compare your PD time to districts with strong outcomes with similar student profiles. What you find is that the time itself may not be the problem. There is adequate time for professional learning, but teachers do not find value in the PD, or they aren't supported to implement the practices introduced in PD due to the lack of a robust educator evaluation system and instructional coaching. If you did not engage in this process, you might be focusing on the wrong action item for your plan, and increased time would not necessarily impact your outcomes as you had wished.

For each validated root cause, determine data sets that you will review to determine their accuracy. You can complete the grid, like the one in Table 8.3, if you think it is a helpful tool.

Summary

The process of district‐wide change is complex. We have to create a committed team, develop a shared vision, and complete a thorough needs assessment process that includes reviewing current initiatives, document review, data analysis and mapping, and a self‐assessment. Once this process is complete, we establish key findings but must dig deeper to determine, verify, and validate root causes. Although this may seem cumbersome, it is absolutely essential. Reflect on the story we introduced at the beginning of the chapter. All the rescue equipment in the world would not address the problem of the broken bridge. We have to explore multiple data sources and ask, “Why are we experiencing these outcomes?” more times than we think we should if we are going to target the areas that will impact all our learners.

Reflection Questions

1. Have you completed a root‐cause analysis in your previous strategic cycles? Compare your past practices with the methodology outlined in this chapter.
2. How will you share your key findings and potential root causes with all stakeholders to increase transparency and buy‐in?
3. Why is verifying root causes critical before drafting strategic goals and an action plan for MTSS and district improvement?
4. What strategies could you use to validate your root causes?