Measuring what you do and how you do it is a critical step in the learning process. It needs to happen with students, staff, and administrators. Without having great systems for measurement, you are potentially missing learning opportunities or areas of intervention. The majority of measurements that schools use are surveys. These are powerful measures that can lead to greater information. The problem I see is that there are far too many of them, and often asking the same questions. How can you streamline the measures you use, and lead to deeper understanding of the impacts you are having?

These can be as simple as a Google form. I use one to help me to measure the effectiveness that I have during any PD opportunity. I send this out as an opportunity to provide feedback, good or bad. Making this a habit for teachers helps in a few ways. It sets the stage that I care about the work that I am doing and about how you, as a teacher, feel about that work. It also captures the thoughts and feelings at that moment, eliminating the need for teachers to think far back into their mind to recall how something went. Finally, it can provide great insight into how initiatives are going and the work that your specialists are responsible for. It is a constant test of the temperature of what is going on in classrooms.