In 2014, instructional coaches Katrina Litzau and Vicki Murray designed professional learning to support teachers and principals in developing a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes of leadership. Steeped in the Common Core State Standards and building on quality literacy instruction, they designed the professional learning based on…

The road to leadership is not necessarily one that educators plan carefully with a series of logical steps. Certainly some educators start as teachers and then systematically work through a traditional hierarchy on their way to the superintendency. No matter their role or their path, education leaders demand more from themselves and others and…

Being a school leader in any role is hard, gratifying, and a gift of love. While it can be enormously satisfying to serve students, teachers, families, and school communities, leaders need to refill themselves in order to continue giving to others. This article highlights a learning-oriented model of leadership development and capacity building…

This article describes a novel effort in New York City, the Learning Partners Program, which matches veteran principals with two or more newer ones. In 2014-15, the first full year of the effort, the city's Department of Education put 73 of the city's more than 1,800 schools into 23 groups of threes and one group of four. Every group comprised one…

Every district wants its schools to shine, and more are recognizing that, in order to raise performance, they need well-trained principals who can shake up the status quo and create an environment where all students flourish. Indeed, in a six-year study analyzing data from 180 schools in nine states, researchers from the Universities of Minnesota…

In their full essay for "Reach the Highest Standard in Professional Learning: Resources," the authors note that more rigorous instructional requirements combined with tighter budgets challenge school systems to think more deliberately about where and how they invest in teaching effectiveness. They write that forward-thinking school…

This article describes an instructional coaching program that includes high-quality data displays to engage teachers in conversation about instruction. A descriptive, nonjudgmental data display that captures a teacher's practice around an identified focus provides the foundation for a productive collaborative coaching conversation. The data…

Effective professional learning evaluation requires consideration of five critical stages or levels of information. These five levels, which are presented in this article, represent an adaptation of an evaluation model developed by Kirkpatrick (1959, 1998) for judging the value of supervisory training programs in business and industry.…

Educators are demanding learning specific to their needs, and there are more options than ever for school systems to personalize learning. Sometimes these personalized learning options go hand-in-hand with teacher effectiveness systems that districts use to identify areas for educator growth. At the same time, schools and teams set collective…

Educators have begun to use protocols to facilitate professional development in online spaces--partly because people need to connect from different places, but also to take advantage of new environments for learning. For example, asynchronous tools, such as discussion forums, blogs, or Google+, where participants post messages to one another at…

Coaching is a way to support teachers in assessing and improving their practice. By engaging in rich, rigorous, and reflective professional conversations with colleagues, teachers can continue to develop and grow as they construct meaning, reinvest their cognitive resources, and apply new learning. Calibrating conversations are a way to foster…

Teacher education and professional development prepare teachers with up-to-date knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective teaching. To sustain this, however, hinges on continued professional learning within schools. Research shows that establishing long-term conditions that allow teachers to learn continuously from one another…

This article presents a story about two school leaders in a large Southern California urban district who used skills developed in a university school leadership program to create rapport, empathy, and trust while leading through challenging situations and achieving actionable outcomes. In addition to developing relationships in support of…

The School-University Research Network (SURN) Principal Academy at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has a mission to build a leadership development program that increases principals' instructional knowledge and develops mentor principals to sustain the program. The academy is designed to connect and empower principals…

Across the United States, there are schools whose students are significantly outperforming and out-improving those from nearby schools. In almost any geographic location in America, within a 30-minute drive there exist schools where classrooms are alive with stimulating learning, day in and day out. Not too far away from these schools are schools…