Analyzing the Root Cause of the Problem

Palo Verde School has a highly mobile population. As students move away from the school, new students enter. This happens multiple times per month in this school. Teachers felt they were not being effective enough and felt discouraged. 

Student mobility was blamed for their lack of results. This gave the staff an excuse to keep from making the changes necessary to impact results. The principal wanted to change this mindset and the strategies used in the school. She began with the data and started to conduct Root Cause Analysis (RCA). 

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is also part of facing your data facts. RCA involves looking at what your data facts are telling you and comparing them to the desired results. You can identify areas of concern or the problem statement by looking at the gaps. 

Usually, several areas of concern emerge and understanding their importance and urgency is critical. People have limited capacity to deal with multiple concerns at one time. Prioritizing concerns to be addressed is key to making an impact on results.

Once a gap has been identified, it needs to be determined how it will affect the results. The next step would be to conduct an RCA for why those gaps exist. 

In most RCA processes, there are 3 common steps:

1. Define the problem and review data relevant to the problem. Having an effective data profile is crucial at this step. You can read more about data profiles in this blog post: the-power-of-a-consistent-data-profile
2. Identify potential causes for the problem and decide on the primary root cause of the problem.
3. Identify evidence-based solutions to address the deeper root cause. 

Four general questions to consider are:

• What happened?
• What was supposed to happen?
• How could this situation have occurred?
• How can we prevent it from happening again?

Beginning Root Cause Analysis

When beginning your RCA, it is important to note that a trained facilitator is essential. It is wise to invest in someone other than the school leader to facilitate your discussion. Why? Leaders usually have too many responsibilities that prevent them from focusing objectively. They have preconceived notions about what caused the problem, and this may prevent them from identifying the actual problem. 

In addition, some staff members may be hesitant to speak openly about issues if a school principal is facilitating the discussion. Outside facilitators can ask the questions that need to be asked without an agenda. It is much easier for a trained RCA consultant to remain neutral and challenge the group when needed.

There are many ways to conduct an RCA. There is no shortage of tools and approaches to conduct root cause analysis. Here are the top three that I have commonly seen in educational settings which are also requirements in many states’ school improvement plans.

• Five “Whys" - Drilling down by asking “Why?” or “What caused this problem?”
• Fishbone Diagram:  A cause-effect diagram (shaped like a fishbone) that helps in brainstorming possible causes of a problem and sorting ideas into useful categories.
• Circle Map: This is another diagram in the shape of a circle that can be used to structure the thinking of a group when they brainstorm and put their thoughts and ideas into categories. 

If your state or district uses one or more of these tools, I suggest you continue using those tools. However, you can try to tweak them as well by adding additional questions. 

When conducting your root cause analysis, do not jump to solutions too quickly. We all want to solve our problems sooner than later. However, if you jump to solutions too quickly, you may miss a detail and it will highly impact your results. It is important to go deep enough to uncover the real root causes.

Listening to the complaints from Ocotillo K-8 School about their mobility, the first piece of data that was critical for their RCA was not data on mobility, but data on stability. I refer to this calculation as the “stability rate”. How many students stayed at the school each year and what were their results? 

Why is this important?  The mobility rate at that school was inflated by a calculation formula they used. It created a perception that too many students were coming and going to make a meaningful impact on results. Since mobility was out of their control, teachers did not feel they could make an impact.

For example, in a classroom of 24 students, within the first 2 months of school:

In September, 4 students left, and 4 new students entered.

In October, 3 students left (2 of the 4 new in Sept), and 2 new students started.

In October, the mobility rate was 13/23 = 56%. You may assume with that number that almost 50% of the class was mobile. 

Using those same numbers in this example, we calculated a “stability rate”. Even though 13 names on the class roster came and left, 20 students were there the whole time. The stability rate was 20/23 = 87%. If this feels like a lot of math, imagine how the teacher feels when students come and go each month. 

It can feel overwhelming when looking at a percentage that states half the class is mobile. It makes the teachers question themselves if they can still contribute to a better student goal. Now, multiply this example by the number of teachers in the school. You can see why mindsets like this developed.

To change this mindset, all future data was calculated on stability rates. Their data profile looked at 2 years of stable students and their performance over time. It was much easier to discuss and identify root causes for their results once the ‘mobility” perception was eliminated with the truth of their data.

After spending time on their data and conducting a deep root cause analysis, the staff took ownership of the instructional issues. They were able to give attention to the higher percentage of students who were stable. The mindset of mobility preventing students from achieving success was removed. Teachers could now see the possibility of implementing impactful strategies. 

The problem at Palo Verde is that they focused on student mobility, which was out of their control. They needed to shift to managing Instruction which was a root cause they could improve.

The principal provided training, worked with the staff to set goals, followed up with classroom visits to monitor implementation, and met with teacher grade-level teams. They discussed challenges, results, areas for improvement and celebrations. Conversations centered on interventions needed for students. All this had a positive impact on their results each year.

While mobility might not be an issue at your school, are there any perception issues at your school that need to be confirmed or dissolved using your data? If so, maybe it’s time for you to create a data profile to confirm or change your perceptions.  Once the data is in place, begin the RCA Process.  

This analysis data step is the biggest step when using data to achieve results. It may require extra time initially to identify what data and what issues are at the deepest levels, but it is time well spent. 

If you are interested in more information on what to include in your data profile and root cause analysis, request a FREE consultation call with me.  Fill in the Contact Form Link: https://debradurma.com/contact-us Type in “Yes” for “Are you Interested in STAR Leadership Data Solutions?” You will receive a follow-up email with the next step to schedule a phone call to discuss your needs and questions.