“Every teacher needs to be getting better…better at something that will make a difference to their students…”

Those are the words of Dylan Wiliam, creator of the Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT™) program. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dylan, he’s a former math and science teacher who’s worked with formative assessment strategies for the better part of 20 years.

In 1998, he co-authored the book Inside the Black Box, a major review of research evidence of formative assessment.  One excerpt from the book states:

We use the general term assessment to refer to all those activities undertaken by teachers – and by their students in assessing themselves – that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs.

And in those few lines, Wiliam defines the purpose of Keeping Learning on Track. This NWEA program is designed to utilize formative assessment evidence to adapt teacher learning – a structure around which teachers can put effective classroom strategies into practice. KLT is also built around the concept of Teacher Learning Communities, or TLCs  – a teacher professional development structure that Wiliam pioneered.

In subsequent blogs, we’ll be sharing stories that highlight the success of Teacher Learning Communities and KLT. If you’ve utilized TLCs in your professional development, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to add your comments below.

Photo Credit to Rob Shenk