Commonly Asked Questions about Professional Learning Communities

Critical Priorities in Building aProfessional Learning Community (Spring 2005 PowerPoint)

First Steps in Building a PLC (PowerPoint)

Does Your Organization have a Learning Disability? (PowerPoint)

From Bureacracy to Best Practices (PowerPoint)

Aligned with Excellence

Make the Words of Mission Statements Come to Life - DuFour

Continuous Improvement

PLC Needs Assessment

Collaborative Culture

Create an Atmosphere for Change

Strengthening Parental Involvement in Middle and High Schools: Cultivating Communication and Connections

'Collaboration lite' puts student achievement on a starvation diet (DuFour)

Data Driven/Assessment

(How do we know they are learning?)

A Data Picture of Our School template (Excel spreadsheet)

Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom

Classroom Assessment for Learning (Stiggins)

Using Student-Involved Classroom Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps

How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning (Guskey)

Educators See Classroom Visits as Powerful Learning Tool - In 'walkthroughs,' focus is on students, rather than on their teachers' practices.

Making Assessments Work

Is Formative Assessment Losing Its Meaning?

7 Practices for Effective Learning by Jay McTighe and Ken O'Connor Authors McTighe and O'Connor consider several assessment and grading practices that can enhance teaching and learning. Teachers should use summative assessments to frame meaningful performance goals, show criteria and models in advance, assess before teaching, offer appropriate choices, provide feedback early and often, encourage self-assessment and goal setting, and allow new evidence of achievement to replace old evidence.

Grading to Communicate by Tony Winger High school teacher and instructional coach Tony Winger laments how traditional classroom grading practices lead to grades becoming a distraction from learning—a commodity students feel they work the system to attain—rather than a clear message to students and parents.

Helping Students Understand Assessment by Jan Chappuis Research has established that formative assessment is more likely to produce significant learning gains if students can answer three questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? And How can I close the gap? Jan Chappuis offers seven strategies that teachers can use to involve students in the assessment process and ensure that students are the primary users of formative assessment information.

Teamwork on Assessments Creates Powerful Prof. Dev. by Jay McTighe and Marcella Emberger Jay McTighe and Marcella Emberger outline a collaborative process that helps teachers develop their own performance tasks and scoring rubrics.

What a Difference a Word Makes - Assessment for Learning rather than Assessment of Learning helps Students Succeed by Rick Stiggins and Jan Chappuis Rick Stiggins and Jan Chappuis describe how learning teams can help teachers shift their understanding of assessment to realize how to assess for learning.

Self-Study in Assessment Practice

Resources in Assessment/Use of Data

The 90/90/90 Schools: A Case Study

Creating Action-Packed Action Plans (Oct. 2003 PowerPoint)

Balanced Leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement (Tim Waters, etc.)

Listening to Student Voices

Principal Leadership

Turning Points - Transforming Middle Schools: Guide to Collaborative Culture and Shared Leadership