Learning Forward

The View From the Top  A report highlighting the perspectives of top-performing teachers gets this reaction from Learning Forward Director of Communications Tracy Crow: “While it is nice that additional insights affirm the standards, and while we nod our heads at respondents’ unsurprising responses about traditional professional development, what will […]

As I stood in the kitchen of our cabin, chaos was all around me. All 36 staff members of the school where I serve as principal were cooking, grilling, seasoning, and baking for our staff dinner. Laughter, music, and excitement filled the rooms. Standing alongside one teacher, I asked her […]

Assessment and evaluation have multiple purposes. First, they support continuous improvement. With data collected in formative and summative evaluations, leaders of professional learning systems have evidence to make improvements. Second, they generate evidence to determine whether the system is working both to support effective professional learning planning, implementation, and evaluation […]

Using Student Data  If You Build It Will They Come? Teachers’ Online Use of Student Performance Data Education Finance and Policy, Spring 2013 How much and in what ways do teachers use computer-based student test data? To find out, author John H. Tyler analyzed online activities of teachers in one […]

I recently looked in on a Facebook exchange among some teacher friends. It was the day before their students were to arrive for the new school year, and they were bantering about the opening day of schoolwide professional development sessions. When one of them commented, dripping with sarcasm, that she wouldn’t […]

It is not difficult to persuade school leaders and teachers that instructional coaching represents an important alternative to traditional teacher professional learning. Many recognize that job-embedded professional learning in the form of instructional coaching, aligned to a clear set of research-based practices, is nonevaluative, and, if provided with regularity, can […]

Like many school districts, the Webster Central School District in New York was sandwiched between shrinking resources and looming imperatives such as implementation of the Common Core State Standards and new measurements of teacher and principal effectiveness. With the demand for accelerated, more efficient improvement in outcomes, the district realized […]

The workshop is done. The presenter — whether consultant, principal, district office, or building staff member — is packing up his or her materials. The LCD projector is turned off. The computer is packed away. Lights are being turned off. It’s time to go home. Staff in the session was […]

As an instructional coach in a large suburban, high-performing high school, I face many challenges in measuring the impact of my work with teachers on student learning. Our instructional coach model stresses teacher choice to not only work with a coach but also choose a topic on which to focus. […]

Teacher leadership is not new to Boston Public Schools. Teachers in this district have always stepped up in formal and informal ways to assume roles that aim to improve teaching, learning, and school improvement. As data team leaders, members of school leadership teams, grade-level leaders, mentors, and instructional coaches, teacher […]