There is a law in organizational theory called Parkinson’s law which says that work will expand to fill the amount of time we are willing to devote to it.

Which of my students is still struggling with this essential skill? Which of my students has mastered the essential skill? What is an area in which my students excelled, what strategies led to their success, and how might I share those strategies with my colleagues, and conversely what is an area of weakness where I might seek help from my colleagues? Is there an area where students struggled regardless of the teacher to whom they were assigned and if so, what steps can our team take to address our own professional learning regarding teaching that skill?

Teams should create their own assessments rather than using textbooks or commercial assessments and should use performance-based assessments when the skill or concepts requires such an assessment.

Instead, school leaders should ask that teachers meet with ONE collaborative group and one collaborative group only. Then, they should require that collaborative groups make formative assessment a priority. Meetings should focus on studying formative assessment data, creating exemplars, improving rubrics, and designing remediation and enrichment opportunities for kids. The simple truth is teachers just don’t have the time to do formative assessment correctly if their attention is divided between the kinds of traditional meetings we’ve always been required to attend.

"But ... what we are being judged by are some assessments that are not aligned with what we say we value.

Developing the data collection system involves decisions about when to collect progress data and which rubric to use.

If a student has not made adequate progress toward an objective, the team needs to have a conversation to decide what to do.

The visual format of the intervention form enables team members to quickly review the data and make decisions about the intervention.

It was very easy to get together and “chat” about things like lesson plans, travel forms, and recess procedures.  It was not until we began to look at our data that we realized, by accident, that some of us were better at some things and some of us were better at others!

For example, the educators community in Iowa uses #IowaCore for their discussions related to that subject. The group might have a real-time discussion, say, from 5-7 pm on a Tuesday afternoon, with participants hash-tagging their contributions so the thread appears in one column for people who follow that particular hashtag. Since a single brief tweet can contain a link to a richly textured site, essay, wiki or other content that lends far more depth to a subject, statement or inquiry, the limiting factor of 140 characters can become an asset, streamlining the dialogue in this format to essentials.