Reach the Highest Standard in Professional Learning: Data

When teachers use data effectively, students see results.

Learning Forward is a leader in understanding and advancing professional learning that leads to student success. This series explores Learning Forward’s seven Standards for Professional Learning, which outline the characteristics of effective professional learning.

In this volume, the authors explore the crucial function of data for designing, implementing, and evaluating professional learning. The book’s features include:

• An original "think piece" by Thomas Guskey on using data in deliberate and thoughtful ways in the context of professional learning
• Specific implementation strategies that focus on analyzing student, educator, and system data and assessing progress
• A detailed case study of one district’s journey to successful use of data and how it led to measurable improvement in student achievement

Learning to collect, analyze and use data is an essential component of professional development. When schools are able to make data work for them, students are the ones who benefit.

Thomas R. Guskey, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. A graduate of the University of Chicago’s renowned Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis (MESA) program, he began his career in education as a middle school teacher, served as an administrator in the Chicago Public Schools, and was the first Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning, a national educational research center. He is the author/editor of twenty-seven books and over three hundred articles published in prominent research journals as well as Educational Leadership, Kappan, and The School Administrator.

 

Dr. Guskey served on the Policy Research Team of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and on the task force to develop the National Standards for Professional Development. He was named a Fellow in the American Educational Research Association and was awarded the Association’s prestigious Relating Research to Practice Award. He was also awarded Learning Forward′s Outstanding Contribution to the Field Award and Phi Delta Kappan′s Distinguished Educator Award. Perhaps most unique, in the 158-year history of his undergraduate institution, Thiel College, he is one of only three graduates to receive the Outstanding Alumnus Award and be inducted into the Thiel College Athletic Hall of Fame.

 

His most recent books include Implementing Mastery Learning (2023), Instructional Feedback: The Power, the Promise, the Practice (with Smith & Lipnevich, 2023); Get Set, Go! Creating Successful Grading and Reporting Systems (2020), What We Know About Grading (with Brookhart, 2019), and On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting (2015). He may be contacted by email at guskey@uky.edu, Twitter at @tguskey, or at www.tguskey.com.

Dr. Patricia Roy is a Senior Consultant with Learning Forward’s Center for Results. She works with state departments of education, districts, and schools across the United States as well as internationally. Most recently, she developed briefings and a resource guide to help schools use results from the revised Standards Assessment Inventory (SAI2) to improve professional learning. She has authored many articles and chapters on effective professional development,  school improvement, innovation configuration maps, and cooperative learning. In her work with Learning Forward, Pat developed professional learning resource toolkits for Georgia; Arkansas; and Rochester, NY. She co-authored with Joellen Killion, Becoming a Learning School and with Stephanie Hirsh, Joellen Killion, and Shirley Hord Standards into Practice: Innovation Configurations for School-Based Roles (2012).  For five years, she wrote columns about implementing the Standards for Professional Development for The Learning Principal and The Learning System, two Learning Forward newsletters.  She has also served as faculty for Professional Development Leadership Academy through the Arizona Department of Education. This 3-year program developed the knowledge and skills of school and district teams to plan, implement, and evaluate professional learning.  She has also served as the Founding Director of the Delaware Professional Development Center in Dover, DE. The Center, developed by the Delaware State Education Association, focused on school improvement for student achievement and effective professional learning. She also served as the Director of the Center for School Change in connection with a National Science Foundation SSI grant, a district coordinator of staff development, and an administrator in a regional educational consortium in Minnesota. Creating and improving professional learning so that it impacts student achievement is one of Pat’s passions.

Valerie von Frank has written extensively about education over several decades as a daily newspaper reporter in multiple states covering public schools and, over the last decade, for NSDC publications, including JSD, Tools for Schools, The Learning System, The Learning Principal, and T3. She is a former editor of JSD, worked as a daily newspaper editor, served as communications director in an urban public school district, and was communications director for a Michigan nonprofit school reform organization. She is co-author with Ann Delehant of Making Meetings Work: How to Get Started, Get Going, and Get It Done (Corwin Press, 2007). She is currently NSDC’s book editor and a freelance writer and editor.