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Teacher collaboration and professional learning communities are frequently mentioned in articles and reports on school improvement. Schools and teachers benefit in a variety of ways when teachers work together. A small but growing body of evidence suggests a positive relationship between teacher collaboration and student achievement.

One of the most vexing problems in American education is the achievement gap. Schools and districts are tackling the problem in different ways and seeing results. The first step in dealing with the achievement gap is acknowledging that the problem exists. Yet not all districts break down student performance data to show how various racial and ethnic groups perform.

Many friendships and emotional connections arise among teachers. These are important, but they do not substitute for necessary professional support and growth. Teachers must have structured time to share, write, and talk about their teaching and their students. Otherwise, teaching is a solitary activity, all too often leading to unsatisfactory results for both teachers and students. A school with a healthy professional learning community will maintain a razor-sharp focus on student achievement; its faculty will feel a common ownership and responsibility for that achievement; and its students will achieve success.

Professional development planning focuses attention on how the system as a whole and individuals must change to achieve the district's goals. Rather than being outlined in its own plan, comprehensive professional development becomes a compilation of plans, each supporting different district and/or school priorities. These individual plans are most effective when they attend to what we know about effective professional learning and ensure that staff development is results-driven, standards-based, and focused on educators' daily work.

This Web site is part of the statewide initiative to close the achievement gap. Aimed at supporting the work of policymakers, educators, and interested community members, it is the electronic hub for helpful information, research, and success stories about efforts to close the gap in California.

Nine strategies help raise the achievement of students living in poverty. Students from families with little formal education often learn rules about how to speak, behave, and acquire knowledge that conflict with how learning happens in school. They also often come to school with less background knowledge and fewer family supports. Formal schooling, therefore, may present challenges to students living in poverty. Teachers need to recognize these challenges and help students overcome them. In my work consulting with schools that serve a large population of students living in poverty, I have found nine interventions particularly helpful in raising achievement for low-income students.

Based on research conducted by the California P-16 Council, the CDE and other partners involved in this project, specific recommendations have been proposed to address the achievement gap among student subgroups.
Note Recommendation #11: Design, develop, and implement coherent and relevant professional development in the areas of data collection, analysis and interpretation

The HSTW Assessment, administered to seniors, is used by HSTW states, districts and schools to document school improvement efforts. It is comprised of three subject tests (reading, mathematics and science) coupled with a student survey. This assessment provides comprehensive school-level data that disaggregate students' achievement by their perceptions of school and classroom experiences. These results have given schools, districts and states a unique opportunity to determine what is and is not working to increase student achievement. The assessment is administered by all HSTW sites in even-numbered years.

The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative. Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, "This too shall pass."

Analyzing your data is a process you will want to involve your entire staff. There are a number of variables that will help you determine the best strategy for your school including the size of staff, organization of teams, availability of computers with Internet, and the amount of staff meeting time. The critical piece is that you model the importance of data analysis and that you involve (mandate) all staff in the process. The odds of teachers making the instructional changes needed for improved student achievement are much greater when the data and what it tells them about current achievement.

If our end goal is to improve student achievement to meet AYP, then a critical intermediate goal is to determine where each of our students is in relation to the state content standards. While the logic is clear, most schools do not collect evidence of or for learning on an ongoing basis. We don't know what to teach students to take them to proficiency on indicators/objectives without knowing where they currently are on those indicators/objectives.

The momentum behind building high-quality data systems to harvest better information about student, school, and district performance has never been stronger. Although collecting data is essential, knowing how to analyze and apply this information is just as important for meeting the end goal of improving student achievement. The purpose of this study is to identify, quantify, and report on district-level processes that enable effective utilization of data to increase academic achievement at the classroom level.

From the Annenberg Institute. Using Data for Decisions. A study of four leading-edge districts suggests what it might take to create a system that provides useful information about early signals of progress toward academic achievement.

Thoughtful analysis from Scott McLeod. In his work with numerous school organizations in multiple states, he has seen the power of data firsthand. When done right, data-driven education can have powerful impacts on the learning outcomes of students. Unfortunately, most school districts still are struggling with their data-driven practice. Much of this is because they continue to think about using data from a compliance mindset rather than using data for meaningful school improvement

Simple strategies & tools to make sense of your student achievement data from Dennis Fox. The site includes downloadable workshop handouts.

In a move that could prompt major changes in the way states measure the achievement of English-language learners, the U.S. Department of Education is planning to tell states they must each use a consistent yardstick in determining when a child is fluent in English and when that child no longer needs special ELL services.

On-the-fly conversations regarding students occur on a regular basis among teachers. They have many positive components: conversations are student centered, teachers are supportive of each other and they meet on their own time. However, they are limited and are subject to the interruptions of daily school events, and teacher collaboration is left to chance. These teachers need administrative support to improve the likelihood that their efforts will raise student achievement to a significant degree.

Like never before, today's classroom teachers routinely are being asked to collaboratively analyze student data, develop or implement new mandated curricula, and assess the effectiveness of these innovations. Ironically, few preservice preparatory or in-service professional development programs actively train classroom instructors in the use of team-based inquiry or collaborative data- driven problem solving. Framed within the context of the literature and governmental efforts to achieve school reform, this article describes one such in-service program, in practice at public and charter schools in high-need communities in New York City. The Inquiry Based School Improvement Program (IBSIP) was created and designed to help schools serving high-need communities in New York City engage in the types of team-based inquiry and data-driven problem solving needed to meet the everchanging institutional demands on these schools to improve.

Continuous Improvement: It takes more than test scores. Analyzing state assessment results is only the beginning of effective data-driven decision making. There is no question that the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 has impacted schools in at least two ways: First and foremost, NCLB has made the use of data to improve student achievement imperative; and second, NCLB has increased the need for continuous improvement processes within schools. Summative data just the beginning

Assessments of learning provide evidence of achievement for public reporting; assessments for learning serve to help students learn more. The crucial distinction is between testing to determine the status of learning and testing to promote greater learning.