A fundamental problem that continues to plague educators is the achievement gap between low-income and higher-income students. In the ongoing search for solutions, one of the more promising approaches is expanding opportunities for learning, particularly in the summer. This article describes a project funded by The Wallace Foundation that offers…

Joellen Killion is senior advisor to Learning Forward. In each issue of JSD, Killion explores a recent research study to help practitioners understand the impact of particular professional learning practices on student outcomes. The study presented here builds on past research about the relationships between teacher practice and beliefs, teacher…

In early November 2013, the authors started talking about visiting the Hurley School, a dual-language school in Boston, Massachusetts. The Hurley School had spent considerable time transitioning to the Common Core State Standards on literacy, but little time addressing the shifts in math. They worried that math classes were no longer rigorous…

This article describes the actions taken by the members of the school leadership team at McWhirter Elementary Professional Development Laboratory School in Webster, Texas, when the results of the state reading assessment in spring 2010, had taken a sudden and dramatic drop from the previous year. The team designed an action research study to…

Kristen Weatherby is a senior policy analyst at OECD in the education directorate. She runs the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and is author or co-author of publications and blog posts on TALIS and teachers. She started her career as a classroom teacher in the United States before working in education in the private sector in…

When teachers collaborate in schools, taking collective responsibility to improve instruction and achieve goals, student performance improves and good results happen. Wyoming is one example of a state that uses peer-to-peer professional learning with notable results. Teachers joined together to form a statewide professional community and saw the…

A Colorado district develops a two-year program that gives teacher teams an opportunity to learn how to use digital tools in the classroom. Called the Digital Learning Collaborative, it is built on three things about professional learning: (1) Learning takes time; (2) Learning is a social process; and (3) Learning about technology should be…

Schools and districts are inundated with data from a variety of sources. As a result, using data to guide instructional planning can be daunting for teachers and schools. While schools and districts are dealing with shrinking budgets and growing demands for high student achievement, an investment in school-based coaching can provide exponential…

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…

Every teacher knows that exposure to new information is one small part in the teaching and learning process. Before students truly learn a concept, they must actively engage with material--discussing, sharing, seeing, and practicing it--to make it their own. In other words, they need to "connect" with concepts and have opportunities to apply them…

Some schools make significant contributions to a child's growth and development with little to show on a standardized test, while other schools do little, with acceptable results on those same tests. This article describes how Lincoln Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin, made creative use of resources to promote student achievement and meet…

Adopting new curricula presents both a need and an opportunity for professional development to advance teacher content knowledge and instructional practices for achieving curriculum-specific student outcomes. This study examines two modalities of professional development: face-to-face in a summer workshop and online that included two days of…

"This is the piece that's been missing." This reaction is common among educators engaged in AIW Iowa, an initiative that engages teachers and administrators in professional learning communities that are improving student achievement, increasing student engagement, and building a schoolwide professional culture focused on improving…

Most students attend summer school not because it's their idea of a good time, but because they need to in order to advance to the next grade. To many students--and even some teachers--summer school feels more like punishment than an opportunity to learn and explore. In July 2010, working with a nonprofit organization called Big Thought, officials…

Every teacher can recall a range of experiences in professional development workshops. Some of these may have provided opportunities in which teachers felt engaged, empowered, and supported as learners, while others felt disconnected from practice. Although these authors recognize that workshops, particularly those with no follow-up support, are…