As teachers and students are heading back to school, Jenny DeMonte at the Center for American Progress has penned a timely piece about teacher professional development. DeMonte argues that there is a general consensus that most current systems of educator professional development (PD) are not effective, and calls for reforms that align PD with teacher evaluations and help prepare teachers for the Common Core and other imminent reforms. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates on PD reform.
Here are a few snippets from the report:
Professional development in education has gotten a bad reputation, and for good reason. Everyone on all sides of the education reform and improvement debate agrees that what most teachers receive as professional opportunities to learn are thin, sporadic, and of little use when it comes to improving teaching. According to Harvard University Professor Heather C. Hill, the “professional development ‘system’ for teachers is, by all accounts, broken.”
As is often the case in education, successful systems and strategies emerge in many places around the country but these bright spots too often remain hidden to the majority of educational organizations because of geographic distance and the decentralized structure of schooling.
This paper is the first of a periodic series of reports and briefs by the Center for American Progress looking at professional learning-what states and districts are doing that is working, and what policies are in place to support effective teacher-training activities. The work of improving instruction to help students achieve deserves our attention, particularly now when it is an important part of powerful reforms. This report is an attempt to map the landscape of professional learning to prompt ideas that can grow from the foundation—albeit small—that is already in place around professional learning.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2013/07/15/69592/high-quality-professional-development-for-teachers/
