It’s June 13, 2007. Teachers are talking with each other about their assessment data and using it to modify instruction. Plans for SY 08/09 have been developed regarding teachers using assessment data to set student learning targets.

This is exciting! We are pursuing excellence—and it all started with a description written 4 years earlier.

Want to pursue excellence? Write a description of what you want to see. Then, make the description a reality.

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Here’s the description I wrote by hand in June 2003 during a class I was taking in Miami on creating and administering an effective school:

The room hums with professional dialogue. Sitting around tables, teachers discuss student performance data and examples of student work: essays, DBQs, PE fitness tests, oral presentations, science lab reports, and concert videos.

The teachers are excited. They are excited because their specific efforts to increase student learning have paid off:

• Five students are exiting ESL.
  
• The average essay score has moved from 3.2 to 3.7.
  
• The average oral presentation score is 3.8.
  
• Reading comprehension has increased from first semester by .4 and is higher than last year.

Yes, the teachers are excited. Attending staff development, designing rubrics, giving assessments, using data to modify instruction—these have paid off. And yet, these teachers are not satisfied, and these teachers work together to review the data and to choose new learning targets for next year:

• Improve organization in student writing.
  
• Help students use visuals more effectively in oral presentations.
  
• Decrease time needed to complete multiplication tables.

Data is shared with students and parents, so all can celebrate.

Proposals are forwarded to the School Improvement Team, which reviews the proposals. The school administration develops a schedule and secures resources necessary to achieve the goals.