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While collaborative inquiry is appropriate for any content area, it is particularly relevant for mathematics and science because the process mirrors for the adults what students experience in our best mathematics and science classrooms. Data teams investigate not scientific phenomena or mathematics problems, but how to improve teaching and learning. They raise questions, examine student learning and other data, test their hypotheses, and share findings with their colleagues.

Typically, one or two teachers, one administrator, and one NSF project staff member become data facilitators for a school. They then convene school-based data teams to focus on improving mathematics and science. Sometimes team members are from the mathematics or science department or are existing grade-level teams. Other times, the team is schoolwide.

If data facilitators have only one source of data on student learning, they collect additional data such as local assessments or common grade-level and course assessments for the next data facilitator session. The process emphasizes triangulating data, using three different sources of student learning data before identifying the student learning problem. By triangulating, data facilitators guide data teams to test hunches with other data instead of drawing conclusions from a single measure.

Many professional development efforts are organized as a smorgasbord of courses offered to educators. The district measures the effort's effectiveness by how many courses staff complete or how satisfied teachers are with the classes offered. District leaders who use the smorgasbord approach may view professional development as an extra that potentially helps an individual's performance but is not absolutely essential. They probably invest little in professional development planning because they don't expect great results.

Other district leaders recognize how much professional learning contributes to the district's learning goals for students, and so they align individual, team, school, and system learning plans. At each level, participants consider what outcomes they want for students, the knowledge and skills teachers need, and the professional learning that will help staff achieve the system goals. To be results-driven means following Stephen Covey's advice (1989): "Begin with the end in mind." Once student outcomes are selected, professional development leaders identify the knowledge and skills adults need to help students achieve the district's standards of success. The knowledge and skills linked to the student learning goals become part of the comprehensive professional development curriculum

In too many schools, staff development is limited to teachers attending workshops, courses, and conferences. School districts can no longer afford staff development efforts that are predominately "adult pull-out programs." That kind of learning alone will not produce high-level results. Schools will achieve high levels of performance when professional learning is embedded in every school day.