Chicago Public Schools made it a priority to make high-quality, grade-level instructional materials available to all teachers and students and provide effective curriculum-based professional learning to support successful implementation. During the early planning phase, several Chicago district leaders came across "The Elements: Transforming…

What percentage of their budgets should schools and districts invest in professional learning? To answer that question, schools and districts must first know how much they are spending on professional learning and be able to connect that spending to student achievement. Knowing what is invested in professional learning requires understanding the…

For educators to be successful in ensuring that students are college-and career-ready, they must have high-quality professional learning. This article describes how the foundation and guidance for evaluating the impact of professional learning can be enhanced with the "Standards for Professional Learning Tool" (Learning Forward, 2011).…

The ultimate key to successful integration and implementation of college- and career-ready standards and educator evaluation systems is the quality of the professional learning that educators engage in every day. Effective professional learning at the school level occurs among a team of teachers learning in a cycle of continuous improvement.…

Learning Forward introduces new Standards for Professional Learning. This is the third iteration of standards outlining the characteristics of professional learning that lead to effective teaching practices, supportive leadership, and improved student results. The standards are not a prescription for how education leaders and public officials…

Implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), now adopted in a large majority of states, requires significant support. To realize the potential of these new college- and career-ready standards, states must focus significant attention on how to prepare educators for implementation. Key among the strategies is high-quality, sustained…

Vicki Phillips from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation talks with Learning Forward about the foundation's investment in effective teaching and the role of professional learning. Phillips said great teachers are the most important school-based ingredient for student success. So they are committed to ensuring teachers have the supports and tools…

More than 10 years ago, the author wrote her first version of "The Power of One" for the "Journal of Staff Development." She described her personal journey of discovering how one person could make a huge difference in the face of what appeared as insurmountable challenges. She described ways in which she had made such a difference and told,…

A significant challenge to schools is selecting the staff development approach that aligns most clearly with the assumptions and beliefs of staff members and produces the results desired for students. When beliefs are in alignment, change in behavior accelerates; when beliefs underlying a new staff development program contradict long-held beliefs…

Numerous studies indicate that student learning is directly linked to the quality of teaching that occurs in the classroom. School boards can play a vital role in staff development. They should adopt standards for student learning, teaching, leadership, and staff development. Adequate funding and an incentive system that rewards improvements in…

To ensure quality staff development, staff developers must understand the context in which it is delivered, with content, process, and context standards met simultaneously. One administrator's experiences serving on a school board in order to understand how to influence context standards are presented, discussing the creation of staff development…

To improve American education, there must be improved ongoing professional development for teachers and a national plan for helping teachers fulfill their untapped potential. Research shows that quality professional development can improve student achievement. Teachers report that professional development improves their teaching. Despite this, the…

Strategies to help principals maintain the momentum of school improvement planning include: reexamining the teacher selection/induction process, ensuring constant faculty improvement, encouraging risk taking and celebrating successes, renewing the commitment to the consensus process, determining problems inhibiting achievement of goals,…

This book explores how three ideas, results-driven education, systems thinking, and constructivism, are shaping a new direction in staff development in schools. Results-driven education judges the success of schooling by what students actually know and what they can do as a result of their time in school. Systems thinking is a framework for seeing…