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A school principal’s job is multifaceted, and evaluating a principal’s performance should be a robust process that incorporates multiple measures. 

The Network for Educator Effectiveness provides schools with a comprehensive approach to principal evaluation that includes four independent measures that help document the ability of a building administrator to be an effective school leader. 

We have previously reviewed the NEE Principal Evaluation system and all four measures. In this blog, we’ll dive into the details of one of those measures: the NEE Building Improvement Plan.  

Overview of the NEE Building Improvement Plan 

Developing and executing a Building Improvement Plan is one important function of the principal’s job. It requires collaborating with the school community, setting goals and strategy, monitoring and communicating progress, and making adjustments when necessary. 

The NEE Building Improvement Plan organizer provides a way to evaluate the building administrator’s ability to organize and lead others toward meeting the goals laid out in the school’s Building Improvement Plan. The BIP organizer is not intended to be used as the building improvement plan. Rather, it is a summary of the principal’s contributions toward creating, leading, monitoring, and reporting progress on the building improvement plan.  

Components of the NEE Building Improvement Plan  

The NEE Building Improvement Plan organizer contains seven elements. 

The first five elements of the NEE BIP are completed in the fall. In these sections, the building’s lead principal and assistant principals each describe their leadership roles and responsibilities in developing the building improvement plan; the collaborative processes that were used to develop it; and the major objectives and strategies of the plan. 

If a principal is new to the building and was not involved in developing the plan, NEE encourages them to complete the sections to the best of their ability while making note that they were not involved. When the NEE BIP is scored by their evaluator later, those sections should not be scored for new principals who did not participate in development.  

The final two elements of the NEE BIP (Elements 6 and 7) can be added to throughout the year and allow administrators to detail how they monitored the goal, document any corrective actions that were taken, and describe how they communicated progress to the school community. 

When submitting the plan for review at the end of the year, principals can upload attachments as evidence of their goal progress and attainment. Attachments could include meeting agendas and minutes, presentations to faculty, data, communications about progress, and/or a BIP report sent to district administrators. 

When the Building Improvement Plan organizer is complete in the NEE Data Tool online evaluation system, the principal toggles the “Ready for Review” button at the top to signal that it is ready for scoring.  

Scoring the NEE Building Improvement Plan 

The NEE BIP can be scored at any point during the year, but most often, it is scored either right before the principal’s summative evaluation is complete or at the end of the school year. The key consideration in choosing when to score the BIP is whether the evaluator wants the score to appear on the current year’s summative evaluation (score before the summative) or on the following year’s summative evaluation (score at the end of the year).  

When scoring the BIP in the NEE Data Tool, the principal’s responses to each element are displayed along with the scoring rubric and radio buttons to select a score. The evaluator selects the appropriate score and can enter comments for each element as well as general comments at the bottom of the form. 

When the evaluator has completed scoring, the scores will feed into the principal’s summative report, appearing under the appropriate NEE Leader Indicator. 

Considerations for Completing the NEE BIP within the NEE Data Tool 

  • The Building Improvement Plan Process Organizer is available to individuals if the access level in their NEE account profile is set to “Building Lead” or “Building.” These are the two access levels that are generally assigned to principals and assistant principals. In some districts, a building principal has the “District” access level assignment to manage NEE for the district. In those cases, the NEE Help Desk can change a principal’s access level to allow completion of the organizer and then change the access level back after completion. 
  • Because the NEE system rolls over to a new school year in July, individuals cannot enter a BIP for the upcoming school year until after the rollover has taken place. However, a new plan can be created using the Word Document version of the organizer that is found on the Help and Resources section of the NEE Data Tool. Administrators can begin their plan on the Word Document in the spring and then copy/paste the text into the online organizer in the fall.  
  • The Ready for Review button is intended to be used when the BIP is ready to be scored by the principal’s supervisor. If a principal uses the Ready for Review button in the fall for a pre-implementation check, no further changes can be made to the plan, and no files can be uploaded after the plan has been submitted for review. Once a principal has started their BIP, their supervisor can see it by clicking the My Principals tab on the left-side menu and then clicking Review Building Improvement Plan Organizers. 

In upcoming blogs on principal evaluation, we will detail the other three measures that are part of the NEE Principal Evaluation system: the NEE Building Personnel Development Plan, the NEE Principal Professional Development Plan, and the NEE Teacher Survey.  


The Network for Educator Effectiveness (NEE) is a simple yet powerful comprehensive system for educator evaluation that helps educators grow, students learn, and schools improve. Developed by preK-12 practitioners and experts at the University of Missouri, NEE brings together classroom observation, student feedback, teacher curriculum planning, and professional development as measures of effectiveness in a secure online portal designed to promote educator growth and development.