Best practice information was taken from 'Involving Communities: Participation in the Delivery of Education Programs', Andrea Rugh and Heather Bossert, Creative Associates International, ABEL Project Consortium, USAID, Washington D.C., 1998.

• To develop a "best practice" profile for each of the Partnership School Communities (PSCs) prior to the start of CSA activities.
• To serve as a benchmark for measuring change.
• To provide a set of standards for monitoring project objectives.
• To allow for community impact assessment at the completion of the project.

• Build trust in the community.
• Respond to interests/concerns of community.
• Provide culturally sensitive approach to education.
• Provide support for quality education.
• Provide support for girls' education.

• Empower local people to act.
• Define roles and responsibilities of stakeholders.
• Strengthen school management structures.
• Develop productive links to education/government authorities.
• Develop productive links to external agencies.

• Utilize participatory planning.
• Mobilize local and district resources.
• Monitor school performance.
• Monitor school finances and assets.
• Develop community leadership and ownership.

• The CSA "best practice" objectives were developed by the CSA team based on the "best practices" included in the publication, Involving Communities: Participation in the Delivery of Education Programs, prepared by Andrea Rugh and Heather Bossert, Creative Associates International, ABEL Project, 1998. The report contains a summary of 20 "best practices" compiled from six USAID sponsored projects worldwide.
• The CSA team, through discussion and consensus, reviewed each of the "best practice" items as they related to the interventions being implemented in the CSA project. Based on these discussions, the "best practice" items were modified, adapted and extended to fit within three overall CSA objectives.
• Fourteen sub-objectives were identified, which, by consensus of the CSA team, fit the objectives of the CSA project. Additionally, a fifteenth girls' education sub-objective was developed and added.
• Corresponding to each "best practice" objective, and again using a team discussion and consensus-building technique, detailed descriptions were prepared for each objective and a "best practice" baseline assessment instrument developed.
• The descriptions developed for the instrument use a five point scale: the highest value (1) describes the ideal situation if the objective is met; the lowest value (5) describes the worse case situation; the middle value (3) describes the average situation; and, the other two values (2 and 4) describe situations in between. The content of the descriptions was based on information and experience of the senior Ghanaian staff on the CSA project.
• Each of the items was then further critiqued and revised based on extensive discussions with 20 Ghanaian field officers, including 10 Ghana Education Service (GES) monitoring assistants, who were being trained to administer the instrument. Protocol questions were developed corresponding to each objective to facilitate the data collection process.
• Monitoring and follow-up of the field officers were provided during the data collection process, plus a two-day data verification de-briefing session to gain additional feedback for refinement of training, instrumentation and data collection process.

To collect baseline data, the Ghana Education Service (GES) 'loans' CSA a Monitoring Assistant for each partnership district. CSA provides the monitoring assistants with two days of training on the instrument, including field practice using the instrument. The CSA staff also provides supervision during the data collection process.

Each monitoring assistant is paired with a data collection assistant (former National Service Volunteers) during the community data collection. The teams conduct extensive interviews with the following six subgroups of the community: chiefs and elders, SMC/PTA members, teachers, parents of P1-P3 students, parents of P4-P6 students, and non-parents. The teams conduct interviews with three representatives of each subgroup and synthesize this information to derive a single rating on each objective for each community. This data collection process is performed in each of the CSA partnership communities in the cohort, as selected by the QUIPS consortium.