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A school that is also a professional learning community recognizes that work with students and adults is on-going and embodies the values of continual growth, risk-taking and trust.

Now that we had a structure around which to build our professional community, we could explore what that community could do. We found that it allowed us to do several distinct things: as well as developing a shared accountability system, we could diagnose our students’ weaknesses, as well as the gaps in our own teaching; we learned to critique one another’s practice; and we found ways to get to know our students beyond the classroom.

As we scored student work together, and team-taught in writing seminar, we also identified skills that we needed to further develop as teachers.

The scenarios that illustrate each chapter come from two case studies, one based on a K-8th grade scenario and the other a 9th-12th grade setting. Data Wise grounds its discussion in examples from those contexts, keeping the material accessible and focused on realistic problems and solutions. Data Wise's process depends on collaboration and full faculty participation. With a sympathetic understanding of the inevitable limits on staff time, the authors discuss the best ways to structure collaborative faculty time and include three protocols to involve faculty and staff in gaining insight from data.

Online testing will require skills beyond those finely honed copying, collating and stapling skills we have acquired from our years of paper-and-pencil testing. Selecting the online assessment tool that works best for your school district can be facilitated by ensuring communication among all potential users of the application from the beginning of the selection process.

While online testing shares many of the same preparation requirements as traditional paper-based tests, they now take different forms. Rather than making sure you have enough printed copies of a test, an evaluation of the viability of online testing should involve a review of a district’s ability to provide for sufficient online access within the schedule for administration. For example, based on the number of computers and the network load, how many students can take the assessment during an exam period? Does the software restrict the number of concurrent users? Teachers likely will want the ability to create multiple forms of the test for security within the test administration. Can the application easily provide for this function?  

Further, the use of computers for online testing necessitates that students and teachers are already comfortable with using this technology as a regular part of daily instruction. Focused professional development on the usage of the application as well as what to do if things go awry will help the transition for staff. Issues to address could include what to do if a student needs to change an answer after a section of the testing is complete, how are unique log-ins provided for the students or if there is a technical problem during an administration can students resume where they were in the test.