Collaborative Comprehensive Needs Assessment for 2025-26 (CCNA)

Collaborative Comprehensive Needs Assessment for 2025-26 (CCNA)

February 25, 2025 | Grants Management

We know it’s not even spring break yet, but it’s not too early to begin planning for next year! The time is now to set up meeting dates for your annual Comprehensive Needs Assessment that leads to your 2025-26 District and Campus Improvement Plans! Make a plan for gathering data since campuses must first look at where they are now and use that as a guide to where they need to go in the future. CSS is here to help you get up to speed with your training needs so that you can get ready for this important process that is closely connected to compliance in your federal grants and state compensatory education programs.

The CSS Federal Team assists partner schools with locating and using resources available for the CNA process including training materials, suggested templates for recording data review results, checklists, tools for the root cause analysis, and additional support as requested.

Comprehensive Needs Assessment (CNA) Defined

Very simply, a CNA can be described as “a snapshot of what is” on a campus.  The guidance gained from a needs assessment as a thorough review of data:

  • helps the campus monitor and assess the impact of programs, instruction, and other resources related to the challenging State academic standards (TEKS and STAAR), particularly the needs of those children who are failing, or at risk of failing, to meet the challenging State academic standards and any other factors as determined by the campus.

The goal of a CNA is to identify needed areas of improvement based on multiple sources of data and to prioritize those needs. Standardized testing results should not be the only data reviewed. Attendance, discipline referrals, parent/staff/student surveys, TEA systems (such as RDA and Accountability), state and federal report cards and other sources that provide a complete picture of the district should be used.

Register now for the newly-updated Comprehensive Needs Assessment online course.

Why Conduct a CNA?

An effective needs assessment helps a campus identify their areas of strength as well as areas where problems need to be addressed, in order to determine the best course of action to improve student achievement.

An annual CNA is required for all districts and charters participating in the Title I program and for those who receive State Compensatory Education funds.

Under TEA guidelines, data from the district and campus CNAs are required for the development of the programs for ESSA federal grants including Titles I-Part A, Title I-Part C, and Title IV, Part A. Conducting a comprehensive needs assessment is strongly recommended for Title II-Part A and Title III ELA.

Steps in Developing a CNA

  1. Identify and prepare the required improvement planning team members.
  2. Collect, organize, and analyze data.
  3. Identify and prioritize problem statements (1-3).
  4. Find root causes.
  5. Complete the needs assessment.
  6. Compile CNA results and write a summary narrative.
  7. Organize prioritized problem statements according to TEA Strategic Priorities. Read more about TEA’s Strategic Priorities.

Tools are available to assist your campus team with the CNA.

Click here for an online CCNA Resource Toolkit guidance document. Open the toolkit to find timelines, form templates, quick reference sheets, instructional videos, probing questions recommended for the data review portion of the needs assessment, and so much more.

Recommended timeline for the CNA process

It is recommended that the CNA process begin in February and be completed by early May. The CNA is then utilized to complete the Campus Improvement Plan (CIP). Both the CNA and a draft of the CIP/DIP must be completed before submitting the ESSA application.

CSS has online courses on boththe Comprehensive Needs Assessment and District Improvement Plan topics! Check out our webinars at https://charterschoolsuccess.com/training/

End Result:

  • A list of prioritized problem statements to be addressed as goals in the Campus Improvement Plan.
  • A clear picture of “what is” on your campus.
  • A plan to utilize when building budget for next year.

Need help?

Please contact Charter School Success: