The Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT) Program Overview

What is KLT?

The Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT) Program is a sustained, interactive professional development program that helps teachers adopt minute-to-minute and day-by-day assessment-for-learning strategies that have been shown by research to powerfully increase student learning. KLT is the result of a three-year R&D process led by Dr. Dylan Wiliam and ETS's Learning and Teaching Research Center. The program was designed to support teacher change by joining two powerful ideas:  assessment for learning and sustained, school-embedded teacher learning communities.

KLT is built around 5 key strategies. These strategies and related techniques are all unified by One Big Idea — students and teachers using evidence of learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet immediate learning needs minute-by-minute and day-by-day.

Evidence that KLT is working in Vermont (PDF) is detailed by teachers and principals as they explain how they have been empowered to try new practices in the classroom.

How does KLT work?

KLT begins with a three day session to train Teacher Learning Community (TLC) leaders. These communities are school-based groups of 6–8 teachers who meet monthly. The three day session is then followed by two years of sustained engagement in the TLCs. The program helps teachers learn and practice the 5 key strategies and a wide range of classroom techniques for immediate integration into their teaching practice.

Who uses it?

Since 2004, the program has been used in 28 school districts in California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Vermont. KLT has been tested in a variety of classrooms, schools & districts including:

• Small suburban and large urban districts
• High-performing and low-performing schools
• All grade levels (K-12 and college)
• All subjects (ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies)

What's included in KLT?

Please see Program Components.

> See Also: 5 Key Strategies