This article explores the powerful idea of capital and articulates its importance for professional work, professional capacity, and professional effectiveness. Systems that invest in professional capital recognize that education spending is an investment in developing human capital from early childhood to adulthood, leading to rewards of economic…

With increased teacher accountability and decreased funding, effective professional learning is more critical than ever. Teachers and educational leaders need to be fully and continuously supported in their professional growth around the changes they face, such as implementing Common Core, learning to interpret and use student data, and supporting…

Welcome to the West Valley School District in eastern Washington. Home to almost 4,000 students, West Valley made a public commitment more than seven years ago that all students would graduate with the option to attend college. This daunting goal--made even more so by the fact that almost half of the district's high school students come from…

While teachers face new expectations for student learning and more equitable educational outcomes, instruction and assessment remain rooted in traditional approaches that are largely inequitable, culturally irrelevant, and intellectually disengaging, contributing to gaps in academic achievement across student groups (Darling-Hammond, 2010; King…

Consistent, excellent teaching is the single greatest factor in improving student achievement over time. School leadership is the second. Excellent teaching and strong leadership require deliberate, ongoing professional learning. In working with high-poverty school systems over time, the following basics emerge: (1) time; (2) content; (3)…

Throughout the past two decades, Boston Public Schools has seen strong, steady improvement, recently demonstrated through student gains on NAEP's Trial Urban District Assessment in math and recognized through the award of the 2006 Broad Prize for Urban Education. Teacher leaders have played an important role in Boston's improvement. As team…

Transforming an entire district from one that is satisfied with being academically good enough into one keenly focused on improved student performance requires overhaul that reaches from end to end, from building to building, from bottom to top. Leaders in Birdville Independent School District in Fort Worth, Texas, learned that applying five…

A framework for staff development which focuses on acquisition of pedagogical language is presented as a means to increase teachers' cognitive complexity about the teaching-learning process. The language and concepts found in educational theory and research are key factors in enabling teachers' reflective instructional decision making. (JD)

A rural staff developer's decisions should be based on a clear understanding of the unique characteristics of rural schools and rural teachers. The staff developer must understand rural staff development needs, obstacles and potential advantages of the rural setting, and characteristics of ideal staff development. (JD)

Influencing educational decision makers requires creating ongoing relationships, keeping everyone informed, and developing persuasive skills. Persuasion requires preparation, refinement, hard work, and a sound understanding of the people being lobbied. Lobbying must be factual and relevant to the audience. The article looks at influence from the…

Assessment information can help school improvement teams focus the direction of improvement and specify action plans. A fishbone diagram can help identify contributing factors within four areas (educators, students, curriculum, and organization). An example from one middle school that used the diagram to improve students' writing assessment scores…

Traditional needs assessments strategies are inadequate today. Today's needs assessment involves determining problems, priorities, opportunities, and learning needs before making decisions about professional development. Four questions to guide discussions on needs assessment include whether it was planned collaboratively, whether multiple sources…

Examines role changes in school administrators, especially with respect to the professional development of staff members. Nontraditional images of the principal are explored, their new activities are linked to the staff development needs, and the implications of this changing image to staff development are discussed. (GLR)

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…

Ways to monitor staff development programs include: (1) counting the number of participants; (2) obtaining participant reactions to programs; and (3) tracking participants by needs, objectives, and inservice topics. A needs assessment model of staff development focuses on information utilization, program impact, and evaluation approaches. (JN)