Blog
A Powerful Tool for Student and Teacher Learning
I remember early in my leadership constantly assessing where we were as a school and setting goals for where we needed to go as a school. With a clear vision in mind, we would chart incremental . . . Read more
Are Your Assessments Good, Not So Good, or . . . Great?
“What does a good formative assessment look like?” “Can you please show us some examples?” These are the types of questions that often surface as collaborative teams in PLC schools delve into the work of... Read more
Is It Worth It? Sharing Data From Successful PLCs
As we speak about professional learning communities, we know that excitement for student learning is palpable. It is impossible to not be jazzed when we speak about all students learning at high . . . Read more
Assessing Your School’s PLC Progress
“What should we do next?” is a question I frequently hear as a PLC consultant. But without data, I can’t answer this question. I have to understand where a school is on the PLC . . . Read more
From the PLC Summit: DuFour’s New Assessment Resource
Rick DuFour kicked off day two of the Summit here in Phoenix with the release of a new assessment resource called a Data Analysis Protocol (PDF). It’s a worksheet that teams can use to ensure . . . Read more
Eliminating Bias in Grading: Teachers Collaborate on Student Assessments
The work of a professional learning community team is never done. Instead, teachers continuously navigate the world of standards, assessments, interventions, and extensions, using inquiry in an informed way to improve student learning. They begin a journey that becomes… Read more
How PLCs Use Assessments
We received a series of questions from a school grappling with developing common assessments. I summarized the questions and attempted to provide a brief response for each… Read more
Three Rules Help Manage Assessment Data
We live in the Information Age, when never before has so much data on student learning been so readily available. It is the best of times... And yet, to harried principals struggling to make sense of the mountains of assessment data, the Information Age may feel like the worst of times... Read more
Getting the Most Out of Common Assessments
Like most schools that begin implementing PLC practices, the faculty at Pioneer Middle School learned about the importance of common formative assessments and decided to utilize this powerful tool to help us focus on learning. Unfortunately, as time progressed… Read more
Collecting and Analyzing Common Assessment Data
While most teachers recognize the value of analyzing assessment data they often struggle with collecting the data. It is not sufficient to know how many questions each student answered correctly or . . . Read more