This post was last updated on September 5th, 2011 at 11:05 am
I’ve gone to many conference, read books, articles and been involved with Professional Learning Communities in its official form for about 5 years. Assessment For Learning which is so tightly tied to effective PLC’s is also something I’m very comfortable with. Today as I listened to many qualified, knowledgeable and engaging speakers and presentations, I kept thinking something’s missing.
The focus of most of these presentations were around improving student achievement. Terms like “pyramid of intervention”, “common assessments”, “standards”, “accountability” and “collaboration” were used frequently. All good stuff. It was hard to disagree with much but my focus on the changing classroom and all that relevant and engaging learning looks like, forced me to question where the ideas of this conference take us. While improved student achievement is great, I”m still questioning what their achieving.
If they’re just achieving better grades, better study habits and better test taking skills, it doesn’t seem all that important to me. Now I realize that none of these speakers would say that’s what this does and they even reference rigorous standards and I think I heard the term 21st century learning (whatever … Read the rest