Where Do You Want to Get To? Effective Professional Learning Begins with a Clear Destination in Mind

Educators often shy away from evaluating professional learning experiences because they believe the process requires knowledge and skills they don’t possess. In truth, evaluation is a relatively simple process that begins by answering three essential questions

The Communication Challenge of Standards-Based Reporting

As traditional reporting systems based on letter grades are replaced by standards-based reporting systems, parents are often left wondering how their child is doing in school. Mr. Guskey offers some suggestions for overcoming this communication challenge

The Case Against Percentage Grades

It’s time to abandon grading scales that distort the accuracy, objectivity, and reliability of students’ grades

Integrating Innovations

Proponents of new ideas promote their favorites without seeing connections to other strategies--it\u27s up to school leaders to discover how to integrate a collection of models within their improvement programs

Planning Professional Learning

With backward planning, schools can ensure that they choose professional development activities aligned with their most important goals

Mapping the Road to Proficiency

A table of specifications provides a travel guide to help teachers move students toward mastery of standard

Lessons of Mastery Learning

The core elements of mastery learning provide the foundation for other innovative models, including Response to Intervention

What You Assess May Not Be What You Get

Performance-based assessments may not bring significant change in instructional practice unless teachers are provided requisite time and training

Professional Learning with Staying Power

Six steps to evidence-based professional learning that makes a difference

The Dark Side of Assessment Literacy: Avoiding the Perils of Accountability

Educational measurement and evaluation experts generally agree that increasing stakeholders’ assessment literacy will yield a variety of positive benefits, especially broadening the range of assessment formats teachers use to measure students’ mastery of high level, more cognitively complex learning outcomes. But in the context of education accountability as currently structured in American schools, such efforts also may lead teachers to become more sophisticated in test preparation activities and to narrow both their instruction and classroom assessment practices specifically to enhance students’ performance on prescribed, annual high-stakes accountability assessments. This article explains why that is so, describes the process by which it occurred in one state, and offers specific suggestions as to how it might be avoided