Monitoring for Achievement and Providing Support to Teachers with STRIDE

Max Thompson
May 16, 2011

Few would argue that one of the most important ways to improve schools and raise student achievement is to improve classroom practices. As any school leader will tell you, this is much easier said than done. Change is difficult and the more complex the required change, the more difficult it is to start and to sustain. It is important for school leaders to have a framework or model to guide them in bringing about substantive and lasting change in a building or district.

Just as classroom assessment should drive instructional decisions and adjustments, likewise the assessment data collected through monitoring should be used to drive professional learning. All learners need meaningful feedback to improve, whether it is the students in a classroom or the teachers and administrators in a school. Continuous improvement begins first with monitoring school-wide instructional goals in all classrooms, and then with providing coaching, constructive feedback, and collaboration opportunities to teachers and school leaders.

Learning-Focused has provided a model for Monitoring for Achievement for several years.  However, exemplary schools and their leaders have truly focused on continuous improvement, so we know much more now than even 2-3 years ago about monitoring, coaching, and feedback frameworks.  At the same time, technology continues to evolve rapidly.  Learning-Focused is proud to introduce Stride: Teacher Support and Monitoring Solutions, a proven exemplary model of monitoring for achievement combined with monitoring technology that school leaders can use on laptops, notebooks, or tablet computers like the iPad.

Stride: Teacher Support and Monitoring Solutions provides a powerful range of teacher support and monitoring features that include:

  • Setting up and monitoring school and teacher goals

  • Using rubrics with teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses

  • Scheduling, organizing, and recording notes for goal setting and reflection meetings

  • Virtual discussions and support

  • Collecting classroom instruction data through walkthroughs, 5x5’s and meetings

  • Giving feedback to teachers

  • Viewing vital information at a glance

  • Using data through reporting tools to target professional development and support

  • Customizing goals, walkthroughs, rubrics, and more (Stride works with any iniative!)

  • Viewing lessons and activities that teachers developed in Toolbox

Stride: Teacher Support and Monitoring Solutions is the result of 2 years of work with several schools and school districts to develop state of the art tool for monitoring school improvement efforts. I have used it for a few months myself and am amazed at how quickly it helped me keep track of every classroom and at looking at observation data across a school or schools.

I strongly encourage you to go to stridewalkthrough.com see for yourself what a difference it makes in the monitoring and support process of school improvement.