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Teachers are usually alone when they examine student work and think about student performance. The authors describe several projects that have enabled teachers to leave the isolation of their own classrooms and think together about student work in the broader contexts of school improvement and professional development.
IN 1995, WHEN the California Center for School Restructuring convened teams from nearly 150 elementary and secondary schools to examine the progress of local school reform and its impact on student achievement, it employed the slogan "Examining student work for what matters most."1 The precise meaning of the slogan was left open for school teams to define. For some, it meant assembling and examining school-level achievement data. For others, it meant using rubrics to assess student essays, projects, or portfolios. For still others, it meant considering samples of student work for their instructional implications or inviting a panel of students to speak about their opportunities to learn.
The years that have passed since that conference testify to a growing conviction that there is something important to be learned by giving close attention to students' experience and students' actual work. Reform advocates, professional developers, school accreditation agencies, teacher networks, and researchers have increasingly engaged teachers in looking together at samples of student work or analyzing classroom performance.2 Indeed, "looking at student work" has become the organizing theme of one website (www.lasw.org) and a prominent component of several others.3 It forms a major activity of professional conferences, professional development programs, and reform projects.
One might reasonably ask, "What's new about teachers looking at student work?" Teachers examine artifacts produced by students all the time. They read, review, grade, and celebrate student work every day. However, they do so most often on their own, possibly in conference with a student or parent, but almost always in isolation from colleagues.
In recent years, organizations engaged in professional development and school reform have begun bringing teachers together to do collectively what they generally do alone: that is, look at student work and think about students' performance in the classroom. In addition to evaluating a teacher's instructional relationships with individual students, the purpose of these collaborative efforts is to foster teacher learning, support for professional community, and the pursuit of school reform.
These...