New America’s Kaylan Connally recently reported on DC Public Schools’ new Learning Together to Advance Our Practice (LEAP) initiative. The new program provides staff with guidance from seasoned teachers on content mastery and teaching methods. Below are excerpts from the article:
Teachers tend to be dissatisfied with how professional development (PD) activities, even those that are meant to be collaborative, are implemented. Perhaps unsurprisingly, little evidence shows that the substantial federal, state, and district investments in PD have paid off in teacher and student learning. And so, this school year, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is taking a rather different approach to teacher development.
Launched last month, DCPS’ new LEAP initiative plans to engage “core content teachers” in professional learning with a team of teachers from the same grade span and subject area. Each team is led by a “LEAP leader”—a teacher leader, instructional coach, department chair, or assistant principal—designated by their school principal as having subject expertise and demonstrable effectiveness. While efforts to improve teacher PD, either at DCPS or around the country, aren’t new, efforts to help teachers deliver challenging content required by new standards using evidence-based approaches are. Few U.S. education systems have focused on building teachers’ cumulative content knowledge and skills in delivering the content effectively using methods grounded in research.
The weekly LEAP PD cycle consists of three parts: a 90-minute seminar, a 15-minute observation, and a 30-45-minute debrief session. In the seminars, LEAP leaders guide teachers in learning content-specific strategies for delivering the new academic standards to their students. For instance, middle school English Language Arts teachers will engage in seminars related to helping students unpack text complexity. Each seminar provides teachers with opportunities to practice applying their learning to upcoming lessons and to share feedback with their peers. In the days following each seminar, LEAP leaders conduct brief, announced observations of individual teachers as they incorporate the recently-practiced strategies in their lessons. As a final step, teachers receive feedback from their LEAP team leader based on the observation; prioritize one area to focus on for the following week; make revisions to their lesson plans accordingly; and then practice the skill with their LEAP leader again before implementing.
There are a few well-designed studies that identify certain aspects present in effective teacher PD. These studies show that effective PD tends to be relevant to teachers’ subject area and daily practice; ongoing rather than one-shot; and active and collaborative. And recent evidence shows that teachers who received frequent subject-specific feedback on their teaching of new academic standards were more likely to bolster student achievement than those who didn’t. As designed, LEAP aligns with what research says is most likely to improve teacher practice and student learning.
But many LEAP leaders are assistant principals. These leaders may or may not have sufficient content expertise, as it is unclear whether and how LEAP leaders were required to initially demonstrate such expertise, or their ability to develop teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. Furthermore, DCPS has yet to communicate how the content-specific formative feedback teachers receive as part of LEAP will align with the evaluative feedback they receive from their principal as part of IMPACT, DCPS’ formal teacher evaluation system. While principals will have access to the formative feedback teachers receive, there is no requirement that they communicate with LEAP leaders to ensure teachers receive a consistent, not conflicting, message about their development priorities.
For more, see
http://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-135/will-dc-public-schools-big-bet-teacher-development-pay/
