To stem the tide of new professionals leaving teaching, the Oceanside School District in New York created a program that sees teaching as a six-year career ladder beginning with an internship and ending with National Board Certification, with board-certified teachers supporting new interns and residents.

Feedback plays an important role in education. New teacher and principal evaluation systems, the Common Core State Standards, and Race to the Top initiatives, among others, underscore the critical importance of giving and receiving meaningful, actionable, and effective feedback to colleagues regardless of their roles in schools. A developmental…

What types of talk promote teachers' professional growth? In the following vignettes, 4th-grade teachers and instructional leaders examine student work and observe classroom instruction. These learning designs encourage teachers to talk in ways that develop a shared understanding of teaching, which is instrumental to their professional growth…

Every school district is feeling the pressure to ensure higher academic achievement for all students. A focus on professional learning for an administrative team not only improves student learning and achievement, but also assists in developing a systemic approach for continued success. This is how the Fox Chapel Area School District in…

New educator evaluation systems demand a focus on effective teaching and learning while promoting the professional growth of all teachers. By identifying and leveraging the contributions of high-performing teachers as instructional leaders, problem solvers, and decision-makers to lead improvement at the classroom level, the system builds capacity…

The "Boston Teacher Leadership Certificate" program was designed in 2010 to build Boston's teachers to be stronger professional resources for one another, their schools, and district reform. The program's key strategy has been supporting experienced teacher leaders to design and facilitate graduate-level leadership development courses…

This article presents a plan to create a united approach to improve high quality instruction in Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Professional learning communities were in their infancy, conversations around data were about autopsies of annual standardized tests, and there was no description of what…

Implementing teacher evaluation systems across the United States has created both challenges and opportunities to improving teacher quality. Lessons learned at the state level illustrate a wide range of challenges with system implementation, including value-added growth scores, implementation timetables, and human capital demands (McGuinn, 2012),…

The move toward teacher leadership is one answer to the dilemma of school leadership. The task of school leadership has become too complex and demanding for one person. Nurturing teacher leaders helps districts strengthen school leadership, aids in teacher retention, and sustains school reform. This need for more teacher involvement in leadership…

An Illinois district brings a local university into the district to craft advanced learning embedded in the needs of specific schools. Community High School District 155 in Crystal Lake, Ill., and Northern Illinois University (NIU) College of Education engaged in a partnership that has provided significant benefits, posed limited challenges, and…

A diverse school district hugging the eastern border of Washington, D.C., Prince George's County, has introduced rigorous hiring methods and other practices to boost the quality of leadership in its 198 schools. In so doing, the district has also earned a spot among the pioneers in efforts nationally to ensure that public schools are led by the…

There is no denying that combining two schools, or even opening a new school, is loaded with challenges and frustrations as well as high expectations. Principal Tracy Shafer saw a rural school consolidation as an opportunity to use professional development to create a community focused on student learning, meeting the need for high-quality…

If principals expect to reap the full benefits of having teacher leaders in coaching positions, they should create working conditions that encourage positive relationships, reduce risks, and provide leadership development. To take full advantage of school-based coaches, principals must provide them with appropriate support. This paper discusses…

In this article, the author presents Braxton Hinsdale, a director of staff development for a medium-sized school district. Hinsdale has been increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of school-based professional development in his district. His frustration emerges from what he perceives as school principals' lack of will to use results-driven,…

A principal describes her role in fostering an atmosphere of collegiality and experimentation so that teachers could become their own staff developers. (Author/MT)