Strong Research Support for ATI/Measured Progress’s Approach to Professional Development

One of the many challenges of No Child Left Behind is the requirement for research-based justification for the educational practices schools use to teach and assess their students. Professional development programs designed to support these practices are also required to be based on research; however, often the research to support a particular approach is weak or nonexistent. It is exciting, therefore, that the learning-team-based approach that the partnership of Measured Progress and the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) uses to provide professional development in classroom assessment is strongly supported by research.

Two important studies form the foundation of the support for the Measured Progress/ATI approach. The first involves the work of Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, Phi Delta Kappa, October 1998). The findings of this study indicate that when formative assessment of the kind promoted by ATI’s student-involved classroom assessment programs is used, student performance improves significantly (between 0.5 and 1.0 standard deviation), leading to the greatest gains for the lowest performing students. This is the equivalent of a 30-percentile-point gain on a standardized test and is the magnitude of improvement called for by No Child Left Behind. This research supports ATI’s contention that learning teams that focus on increasing and improving formative assessment in the classroom are taking one of the most effective steps available toward actually achieving improved student performance.

The second study involves an analysis of the approach ATI and Measured Progress use to deliver the professional development program to support the school programs. For some time, ATI has advocated that learning-team-based professional development should be used to increase teachers’ assessment literacy and their use of formative assessment. Work done by Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers (Student Achievement Through Staff Development, 3rd Edition, Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers, ASCD, 2002.) indicates that professional development undertaken by learning teams is dramatically more effective in establishing long-term improvement in practice than traditional workshop-based programs. Therefore, learning teams that undertake professional development activities over time are highly likely to incorporate improvements in their classrooms.

Schools and districts looking for answers to the challenges of No Child Left Behind can feel confident that the programs and materials offered by the partnership of the Assessment Training Institute and Measured Progress are effective. The proof is in the research.