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Professional Development
Blog Entries
Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Matt Brown, who can typically be found blogging on education issues over at Relentless Pursuit of Acronyms.
Reading through recent stories about the worth (or worthlessness) of teaching experience reminded me of one of my old college roommates.
I’m not normally that into video games, but during college, I made an exception for the NCAA Football series. While I technically have a degree in Political Science, I suspect I completed enough hours on our PlayStation for at least a minor in video game football. It didn’t matter if you wanted to run a spread offense, the option, Wishbone, whatever. Any of my dormmates knew if that if you fancied yourself a good NCAA guy, you needed to see how you matched up against Matt (I wasn't Mr. Brown yet).
But one of my roommates decided that he wanted to be the new floor champ. He was pretty good at a bunch of other video games, and he was a casual football fan, so he figured he could pick up the game pretty quickly. He thought that when I left the room to go to work or class, he’d play online, learn the secrets of the game, and then challenge me.
Sadly for him, playing video games online is not for the faint of heart. Only the best of the best plunk down the money for a subscription to play, and they take great pride in ...
In an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, Robert Samuelson claimed that school reform efforts have disappointed for two reasons. One, no one has discovered transformative changes that are scalable. And two, shrunken student motivation.
Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren't motivated, even capable teachers may fail.
Samuelson may be on to something here. Student motivation is rarely mentioned in education reform discussions--except, of course, as part of carrot and stick conversations about how incentives can help students do better (an idea that research both within education and in other sectors has shed doubt on). Perhaps if reform discussions focused more on getting students invested in their learning, they would be more fruitful.
But then he takes it a bit far for me:
The unstated assumption of much school "reform" is that if students aren't motivated, it's mainly the fault of schools and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive (in 1950, 40 percent of 17-year-olds had dropped out, compared with ...
Every child can learn, but teachers are unteachable. That seems to be an unspoken premise of the current national debate on school reform.
Okay, I exaggerate. But the punditry's enthusiasm for Teach for America stands in stark contrast to the radio silence on issues like staff development and teacher support. Great teachers are born and hired, it seems, not made.
I hope at least some people will take note of a new IES study on teacher induction programs. The study found that teachers who received "comprehensive induction" support for two years were more likely than those who did not to raise their students' scores in reading and math. Mathematica Policy Research carried out the study, which was a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).
The three-year study's findings are surely music to the ears of people who support induction programs. An interim report last year showed no significant impact on test scores after just one year of induction support. The second year appears to be the charm. It may well be that new teachers need more than one year of mentoring to ...
Yesterday, the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 17 national education associations representing over ten million parents, educators and policymakers, released the following statement:
“The Elementary and Secondary Education Act should make effective professional development a top priority. The federal government should support frequent, job-embedded professional development for teachers, principals and other school and district staff. It should offer dedicated funds for a comprehensive, sustained and intensive approach to improving staff effectiveness in raising student achievement. The National Staff Development Council’s definition of and standards for staff development identify the characteristics of professional development that are most likely to increase achievement.”
The Learning First Alliance is entirely responsible for the content of this website. The National Staff Development Council is a member of the Alliance.
You can read our full press release here (PDF). ...
Back in 2005, Idaho’s Sacajawea Elementary School was struggling. The school had had four principals in four years, had never made Adequate Yearly Progress and lacked direction. But that changed with the arrival of Greg Alexander.
Now in his fourth full year as principal, Alexander presides over an award-winning school. After making AYP the last two years and seeing tremendous growth in its Limited English Proficient students' reading scores in particular, Sacajawea was named one of only three Distinguished Schools in Idaho for 2009. What are the keys to its success? A focus on recruiting and retaining excellent teachers, a consistent discipline strategy, a strong reading program and a host of other efforts designed to meet students’ individual needs. Principal Alexander recently told us more.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Sacajawea Elementary?
Alexander: Sacajawea Elementary is located in Caldwell, Idaho, a suburb of the capital city of Boise, just a good 20 minutes away. I actually live in Boise and commute to this community. We have a neat facility. We are up on a hill, overlooking what is called the Treasure Valley. There is a story about a young boy sitting on the edge of a cliff off beyond our school, looking over the valley as the wagon trains came through. The sagebrush was so high that you could only see their canopies. And we look up at the Cascade Mountains. It is just a really beautiful campus.
On this beautiful campus we serve 500 students from pre-K through fifth grade. We are 60% Hispanic and 23% ELL, or LEP [Limited English Proficient], students. We are about 36% Caucasian students, and then just a few percentage of a variety of other students. We have 7% that have special education needs, and we are 90% free and ...
When Melissa Glee-Woodard became principal of Maryland’s Lewisdale Elementary School four years ago, it was struggling. The school was in the dreaded “school improvement” process because of the performance of multiple subgroups of students, and it needed change.
Change is what it got. But not the dramatic “fire-all-teachers” change that has been making the papers. Rather, Glee-Woodard inspired teachers, parents and students with a new vision. The staff began focusing on student data in a meaningful way. Targeted professional development addressed areas of weakness in the instructional program. And new summer programs ensured that students kept their academic success going even when school was not technically in session.
As a result, Lewisdale has made AYP every year Glee-Woodard has been principal. The National Association of Elementary School Principals recently honored her for her transformational leadership.
She joined us for a conversation about the school and its journey.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Lewisdale?
Glee-Woodard: Lewisdale Elementary School is located in an urban setting in Prince George's County, Maryland. We are in the backyard of the University of Maryland, College Park. It is a working-class neighborhood. 80% of our students are Hispanic. 17% are African-American.
All of our students walk to school each and every day, and we are a neighborhood school. Our parents are very actively involved. Anytime that you are outside in the morning, you will see a lot of parents either walking their children to school or dropping their children off in cars.
Lewisdale is also a Title I school. 84% of our students qualify for free or reduced meals. And 54% of our students speak English as their second language. So that gives you a general idea of ...
A Conversation with Stephanie Hirsh and René Islas of the National Staff Development Council
As a national debate swirls around how to hire or fire teachers, we hear precious little about how best to support teachers in the classroom. If you ask Stephanie Hirsh, though, investments in the current teacher corps are among the most important investments we can make. It's just that we have to make those investments more wisely than we ever have.
We recently spoke with Hirsh, who is executive director of the National Staff Development Council (NSDC), and René Islas, her federal policy advisor. Schools don't have much to show for the billions of dollars the feds have spent on professional development (PD) over the past eight years, they told us. But 
unlike critics who would all but de-fund PD, they argue for much better use of PD dollars.
Hirsh and Islas believe that a "school-wide, team-based approach" to professional learning, an approach outlined in NSDC's Standards for Staff Development, will pay big dividends. And they believe that federal law can foster that approach in schools across the country.
Improving Our Investments
Public School Insights: Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) already includes money for professional development. Why do you think we need something different?
Stephanie Hirsh: The federal government is committed to improving teaching quality, and the single most powerful way to do that is through professional learning. We believe that the federal government has a responsibility to take a position on what effective professional learning is and how it wants to spend its dollars to support it.
The money that has been allocated for professional development over the last several years has not resulted in any significant overall improvement in teacher practice or student learning. New evidence gives us better information on the kinds of professional development that improve practice. So if we can focus the resources we have at the federal level toward more effective PD we can achieve better results.
In addition, PD as included in previous ESEA authorizations has promoted a fragmented, individualized approach to professional learning. The PD that we are advocating promotes a ...
Newsweek excels at self-parody. It has long produced lop-sided and simplistic reporting on school reform. But this week's lead story takes the cake: "The Problem with Education is Teachers."
I had a hissy fit when I first read that inflammatory and irresponsible headline. And the lede pushed me over the edge: "Getting rid of bad teachers is the solution to turning around failing urban schools." Any journalist who writes about "the solution" to anything should get a pay cut. Another subtitle for the article just added insult to injury: "In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability." Well, what about journalism?
It's too bad Newsweek ran such a poor piece. They could have learned a thing or two about schools and journalism if they had read Elizabeth Green's wonderful piece in last weeks' New York Times Magazine. Newsweek's authors interviewed only the usual reform suspects, ignored viewpoints that clashed with their angle, ignored the role of factors like staff development and curriculum, and went for the sensational headline. Green's story is a world apart from all that.
For one, Green asks logical questions about what has become received wisdom in some school reform circles. Can TFA really supply the needs of all our troubled urban and rural schools? If we fired "bad teachers" at the bottom and hired "great" ones at the top, would we really solve our education problems? What about the ...
Thomas Edison Elementary School in Port Chester, NY has earned its reputation as a success story. A decade ago, only 19% of Edison’s fourth graders were proficient in English language arts. Last year 75% were. Proficiency rates in math and social studies are even higher. Not bad for a school where over 80% of students live in poverty.
If you ask the school’s principal, Dr. Eileen Santiago, the decision over ten years ago to turn Edison into a full-service community school has played a key role in its transformation. Working with strong community partners, the school offers on-site health care, education for parents, counseling for children and their families, and after-school enrichment. Add that community focus to a robust instructional program and close attention to data on how students are doing, and you get a stirring turnaround story.
Dr. Santiago recently told us more.
Public School Insights: Tell me about your school.
Santiago: I have served as principal of this school for 14 years. And I have always felt fortunate that I came into a school with many, many caring people. I did not walk into a school where the adults felt negatively about the children.
However, I was faced with other concerns. One of them was that the school had a pretty significant level of poverty. We were at over 80% free lunch. We continue to have that level of poverty today.
In addition, Edison has always served an immigrant population. The school was constructed in 1872, so you can imagine that the population has changed a lot over the years. Today the population is primarily multi-ethnic Hispanic, coming from different areas of the Hispanic world. And many of our children are undocumented immigrants. That in itself adds several levels of challenge: ...
A couple of days ago, I wrote that the President's proposed budget gave staff development short shrift. That may have been a premature judgment.
The languge of the budget may in fact contain the seeds of good news. The budget includes a program called "Excellent Instructional Teams," which includes most of the staff development money for 2011. That program, the budget tells us, should "promote collaboration and the development of instructional teams that use data to improve practice." This new language suggests that the feds may have seen the light on what makes for good staff development.
It is too early to celebrate, however. The overall cut in Title II funds will keep some people up at night, and we don't yet know if the change in language will fuel a change in practice.
At the very least, though, champions of strong professional development will have something to hang their hats on. ...
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