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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Understanding students more deeply

True Progress professional development helps educators understand students more deeply and use that understanding in teaching, intervention, curriculum, and conversations with families. The work begins with your school’s students, evidence, and educational questions.

Within the Student Success System, professional learning strengthens the knowledge and judgment behind Visibility and the school’s response to what it learns. Educators bring their experience and knowledge of students. True Progress contributes frameworks for investigating needs, interpreting evidence, choosing a response, and examining whether that response is helping.

Shaped around your school

Sessions are shaped around the questions your faculty is trying to solve, the knowledge educators already bring, and the practices the school wants to strengthen. They may support implementation, deepen established practice, or address questions that emerge as the Student Success System develops.

Most sessions use your own students, evidence, curriculum, and current decisions. They are available live over Zoom or in person, individually or as a series. Length, depth, participants, and sequence are agreed with your school.

OUR APPROACH

Professional learning should change what educators can see and do

A useful session should leave faculty with more than information.

Educators should be better able to recognize an important pattern, investigate a learning question, distinguish evidence from interpretation, choose a response, or evaluate what happened afterward.

True Progress professional learning works through real educational problems. Participants apply frameworks to students and situations from their own school and leave with a method, decision, or working practice they can use again.

Professional Learning

These sessions develop professional knowledge, judgment, and shared practice. They address recurring educational problems involving student understanding, curriculum, instruction, intervention, leadership, and communication.

Leadership

Classroom Complexity

Leadership team

We examine the range of learning within your classrooms and consider it alongside the uneven profiles and support needs your educators describe. The discussion connects this evidence to the demands of instruction, differentiation, and teacher workload. Leaders consider where grouping, staffing, curriculum, or student support arrangements may need attention.

Outcome: A shared account of the instructional demands teachers are managing and the school arrangements that deserve review.

Key Learning Indicators

School leaders and department heads

Leaders develop a set of learning indicators aligned with the school's mission and educational priorities. We consider what evidence will help the school follow student progress, examine curriculum and instruction, and review support. The work includes how often to revisit the indicators and how to communicate the findings clearly to colleagues and the board.

Outcome: A working set of Key Learning Indicators and an approach to reviewing and reporting them.

School Data Strategy Review

Leadership team

We examine what your school's evidence reveals across grades, classrooms, ELA and math domains, and groups of students. The discussion considers where progress is accelerating or slowing, how students receiving support are responding, and what the patterns suggest about curriculum and instruction. Leaders identify where a closer investigation is warranted and what deserves attention over time.

Outcome: Priorities for leadership attention, questions for further investigation, and a plan for what to review next.

Student support and intervention

A visible difficulty is not always the underlying need. These sessions help teams move beyond symptoms, test competing explanations, and focus intervention on the learning question most likely to matter.

Identifying Fundamental Unmet Needs

Student support teams, specialists, tutors, and interventionists

Teams work through students from their school, bringing together observations, assessments, accommodations, and the history of what has been tried. We introduce a process for examining competing explanations, distinguishing visible difficulties from the needs underlying them, and identifying the student's most important unmet need. That understanding guides a focused plan for support.

Outcome: A repeatable process for child study discussions and clearer priorities for supporting the students examined.

Identify and Prioritize Students of Concern

Student support teams, specialists, tutors, and interventionists

We review Screener results alongside student work, grades, teacher observations, learning history, and other available evidence. Teams consider which students warrant closer examination and what that examination should involve: further assessment, a discussion with colleagues, a family conversation, or a review of existing support. The process establishes priorities while preserving room for professional judgment.

Outcome: Agreed criteria for follow-up and a clear account of who needs attention, what to examine, and who will take it forward.

Providing intervention is only the beginning of the question. Teams also need a clear account of what they expect to change, what evidence they will review, and how they will decide whether to continue, modify, intensify, or end the response.

Evaluating Intervention Impact

Student support and intervention teams

Teams develop a plan for examining students' response to an intervention. We establish the starting evidence, the progress to follow, relevant comparisons, and review dates. The discussion includes how the team will decide whether to continue, modify, intensify, or discontinue support. The same approach can guide the review of interventions already underway.

Outcome: An intervention review plan that connects evidence of student progress with decisions about support.

Teaching and learning

From Evidence to a Teaching Response

Teachers and administrators

Teachers examine their students' assessment evidence alongside classroom work, observations, and the curriculum they are teaching. We consider where the findings deepen understanding and where they raise questions. The discussion helps teachers decide when to adjust instruction, seek a closer assessment, involve colleagues, or provide greater challenge.

Outcome: Agreed next steps for the students discussed and a plan for reviewing how they respond.

Understanding Students Who Need Greater Challenge

Teachers and leadership

We examine evidence of advanced learning alongside the work students encounter in class. The discussion considers students who have mastered substantial parts of the curriculum, those who may be ready for more advanced work, and those whose progress has slowed. Teachers bring their knowledge of students to decisions about challenge, extension, and further assessment.

Outcome: Priorities for investigating students' readiness and providing challenge that advances their learning.

Preparing for Parent Conferences

Teachers and administrators

Teachers prepare to discuss a student's strengths, concerns, progress, and support using assessment evidence and their knowledge of the child. We work on explaining results in plain language, addressing differences between sources of evidence, and answering difficult questions. The conversation includes what the school is doing and how educators will review whether it is helping.

Outcome: Prepared language and a clearer account of students' learning for conversations with families.

Assessment Practice

True Progress assessments are most useful when educators understand what each measure shows, what it does not show, and when greater assessment detail would help answer an educational question.

These sessions develop consistent administration, interpretation, and follow-through so assessment contributes to understanding students rather than becoming a separate data exercise.

Assessment becomes useful when a result leads to a known next step. These sessions help schools establish how evidence is gathered, interpreted, followed up, and brought back into decisions about students.

Assessment Workflow Design

Leadership and student support

We develop the school's approach to reviewing evidence and following up: when a Diagnostic or Inventory will help, how assessment bands reflect the school's context, who contributes to decisions, and who carries out the agreed response. The work places assessment and review within your calendar and establishes how classroom knowledge informs the next step.

Outcome: A one-page working plan that sets out assessment timing, follow-up guidance, and responsibilities.

Administering for Reliable Data

Teachers and administrators

We establish shared procedures for explaining the assessment, preparing students, responding when they are unsure, and planning breaks or multiple sessions. The discussion addresses engagement and appropriate support so educators can make considered decisions during administration. Teams also identify what to note about the assessment experience when interpreting a result.

Outcome: A shared administration protocol that supports consistency and thoughtful preparation for students.

Interpreting Progress Rates

Student support teams

Participants learn to interpret Progress Rates across students, classrooms, grades, subjects, and domains. We consider current learning and progress together, including students working at a high level whose progress has slowed and students working at a lower level who are advancing substantially. Teams use these patterns to guide further inquiry and review the support students receive.

Outcome: A practical approach to using Progress Rates in student reviews, with priorities drawn from the evidence examined.

Interpreting Diagnostic Results

Student support teams, specialists, and interventionists

Using evidence from your students, we examine when the Diagnostic is useful, how to choose an appropriate starting level, and when the Inventory may provide the needed depth. Participants investigate findings at the skill level and consider them alongside classroom evidence. The discussion identifies what the results clarify and what still needs investigation.

Outcome: A clearer basis for selecting deeper assessment and using Diagnostic findings in decisions about student support.

The Inventory: Mapping Complex Student Profiles

Student support teams, specialists, and interventionists

The Inventory provides a detailed view of learning across dimensions, including profiles in which substantial strengths and difficulties exist together. Participants learn to select a starting level, plan administration across sessions, and interpret uneven patterns. We consider how those findings help explain students' classroom experiences and inform further investigation and support.

Outcome: A more detailed understanding of the learning profiles examined and the implications for educators working with those students.

Family & Admissions

Some student-learning conversations extend beyond faculty teams. Families need a clear explanation of what the school understands and what happens next. Admissions teams need to interpret assessment evidence as one part of a wider judgment about a student and the school’s ability to serve them.

For families

Parent Evening

Families; presentation and discussion

This presentation and discussion helps families understand how assessment contributes to the school's knowledge of each student. We explain what children experience, what results can tell educators, and how findings are considered alongside classroom learning and knowledge of the child. Families can ask questions about the assessments and how the school uses evidence to guide support and review progress.

Outcome: A shared understanding of assessment's place in the school's commitment to knowing and supporting every student.

For admissions

Screener Data in Admissions

Admissions team

Teams learn to administer the Screener during admissions and interpret its evidence alongside the applicant's wider record. We examine learning in the context of students already enrolled at your school, consider what warrants further exploration, and discuss how this understanding can inform a student's transition into the classroom.

Outcome: An approach to using Screener evidence in admissions discussions and carrying useful learning information forward when a student enrolls.

Bring us a question your faculty needs to get better at solving

Bring us an educational question your faculty needs to get better at solving. It might involve a student whose needs remain unclear, an intervention whose impact is uncertain, classrooms with an increasingly wide range of learners, students who need greater challenge, evidence that colleagues interpret differently, or difficult conversations with families.

We can identify which professional learning or assessment-practice sessions would help, who should participate, and whether the work is best addressed in one session or developed over time.

Schedule a Conversation