APQC Education Site

Districts and schools that enroll in our upcoming "Evaluating Professional Learning Communities" project will automatically receive a free 90-page benchmarking report from our 2007 project, "Professional Development."

You'll find the 15 Key Findings from the three main scope areas of the project:
1.  Alignment of professional development and learning with district, teacher, and student needs.
2.  Designing and delivering effective professional development systems.
3.  Measurement and evaluation of professional development results.

Along with examples and case studies from the project's best-practice partners.

Ann Delehant, education consultant for The Dolan Group, was the host of a web cast on how to effectively use data in your professional learning communities. Delehant urges us use data "to inform, not to punish" and steer away from making inferences and focus on the facts. The hour-long web cast provides protocols and tools to help PLCs use data to influence teacher work and ultimately increase student success.

Access to the web cast is available for all registered users of the APQC Education website. Already a member? Log-in and then you will be able to access the webcast here. Not registered? Register here and then come back and click on the article.

Joellen Killion, deputy executive director of NSDC

"The greatest benefit that districts can gain from a benchmarking study is to do a self-assessment and have it compared to other district’s self-assessment to get a sense of where they stand. I’ve talked with a number of people from districts that participated in the last study, and what they realized is that they have strengths they didn’t know they had, even though they struggled in those areas.