Northwest Education Highlights

Classroom Collaboration

The 2005–2006 school year brings another major landmark under the No Child Left Behind Act: By the end of the year, each student must have a "highly qualified" teacher. The teacher quality requirement is prompting districts across the country to focus more intently on high-quality professional development and on how teachers can collaborate to improve learning for all students.

The fall issue of Northwest Education—"Teachers Working Together"—looks at the different forms of collaboration beginning to take hold in classrooms throughout our region. According to a survey conducted by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, about three-quarters of Northwest teachers and administrators agree that their schools should put more effort into collaboration within and across grade levels. The same study reveals two out of three principals believe their schools need to collaborate more in evaluating the effectiveness of current school and classroom practices.

Some Northwest schools are turning to lesson study, a popular Japanese strategy, to improve classroom instruction. In lesson study, a teacher team researches, plans, observes, and refines a single lesson. Other schools have adopted critical friends groups that bring together up to a dozen teachers from different subject areas to help each other examine their classroom practice and make changes in it. Team teaching, professional learning teams, and mentoring programs are other popular approaches described in Northwest Education stories that take the reader from Sherwood, Oregon, to Stevensville, Montana.

In an exclusive interview, noted researcher and Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond talks about the danger of thinking teachers are "baked and done" when they graduate from college and the need for more time for teachers to plan together. Middleton, Idaho, Superintendent Richard Bauscher describes how his district convinced skeptics on the school board that collaboration pays dividends.

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