Prologue:
Why is Looking at Student Work Important? 

by Kate Nolan, Director of Re-Thinking Accountability
Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Consider for a moment a typical teacher, working with a group of students, responding to their questions and statements in class. Suppose we could look into that teacher's brain and understand its swirling chemical language. We would witness a sophisticated decision procedure unfolding in the blink of an eye:

• Does Marie understand the connection between what she's saying and the lesson we just worked on? 
• What does Jamal's brilliant grasp of these ideas mean given what I know his project looks like? 
• How will we ever cover the whole textbook? 
• Why is Kelly so blue today? 
• Mikhail is working on an essay (it looks like it is going well). What will I challenge him with next? 
• Is the public address system with its constant interruptions sidetracking anyone? 
• Keira is ready for the next steps, but how can I help her? 

Teachers weigh all of these questions with lots of evidence about what students know, what they've demonstrated in the past, and what must be taught next, in order to make difficult instructional decisions. In the blink of an eye. 

To do this well- to navigate quickly and effectively the changing tides of a classroom full of rich ideas and potent thinkers- teachers need to set anchor every now and then. Looking at student work is the anchor.

We live in a world filled with exhortations to be "data-driven." We're invited to be "reflective practitioners." We know we should be "looking at the research." The process of studying student work is a meaningful and challenging way to be data-driven, to reflect critically on our instructional practices, and to identify the research we might study to help us think more deeply and carefully about the challenges our students provide us.

Student work is not the center of the educational universe- that spot is reserved for well educated young people, prepared to enter the worlds of work, community and further study, backed by a complete and rigorous intellectual preparation and equipped with a moral compass set to true north. Students are at the center of what we do, but just next to the center lies student work.

We know who our students are, what they think and believe, where they are right and wrong, and especially where they are provocative and challenging, by careful study of their work. Better yet, we learn a lot about who we are, what we think and believe, where we are right and wrong, and especially where we are provocative and challenging by looking at student work. Rich, complex work samples show us how students are thinking, the fullness of their factual knowledge, the connections they are making. Talking about them together in an accountable way helps us to learn how to adjust instruction to meet the needs of our students.

Habit and tradition cause teachers to spend a lot of time studying what to teach, but curiosity and fascination bring us together to study what we have taught and what students have learned. The teacher who is a learner is eager and hungry for the kind of discussions we can have when student work is the focus. We work together like an artists' colony, considering our craft and our materials, the quality of the process and the product, generating ideas about how to make our work better.

This cannot be done in isolation. Fruitful study of student work requires a well conceived process, a dedicated group of colleagues willing to work hard and take risks, and open minds and hearts seeking to move ahead. We study student work because it is the most tangible artifact of the teaching craft. We study student work to know more about the subjects we teach, more about child development, more about strengths and weakness in the assignments we design and choose. We study it together because we learn more from other practitioners than we can learn alone.

We study student work because, just as the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, the proof of the teaching and learning is in the work our students produce. Standards are deadly dull statements in heavy books and binders- until we call them to life by letting student work show us the standards we are using. How do we know all of our students are meeting high standards? The work will show us.

Why look at student work? It's what we do to be productively self-critical. It's what we do to learn more about teaching and learning. And it helps us to make better sense of the swirling questions about Marie and Jamal, Mikhail and Keira. Long, careful study makes quick, blink-of-the-eye decisions more informed, more focused, and more skillful.