Main Area
High Performing Classrooms
With the advent of No Child Left Behind, schools need to have all students make adequate progress toward state standards. For those students that have fallen behind, schools need to find instruction that moves those students toward proficiency quickly. Research shows that students in certain classrooms make larger gains toward standards than other classrooms. The goal of Looking at Learning is for schools and teams to learn what instructional strategies are most effective with their students and have all teachers implement these strategies uniformly in their classrooms. High performing classrooms tend to have similar expectations and use similar instruction. However, we find that many schools have widely disparate instructional practice with widely disparate student achievement. Looking at Learning is a classroom measurement tool that is often missing from a school’s improvement scheme. It is felt that without knowing what instructional practices are present, teachers have little chance of implementing changes likely to change student achievement.