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Teachers take charge of their learning

The National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (NFIE) recently commissioned a national survey to find out what teachers value in professional development and what they think would be most effective in improving their ability to serve students. These teacher responses, along with other research on what constitutes effective professional development, form the basis for the following recommendations to transform professional development for student success.

Find the time to build professional development into the life of schools

• Flexible Scheduling: Reorganize time in the school day to enable teachers to work together as well as individually both daily and weekly and throughout the year.
• Extended School Year for Teachers: Redefine the teaching job to include both direct student instructional time and blocks of extended time for teachers' professional development. Extend the length of the school year allowing for up to four weeks for teachers' professional development while students are on vacation. Organize the teachers' year to include intensive, sustained study by staff as determined by school-based decisions directed toward increasing student learning. Intensive study should be supported by year-long follow-up.

• School-Based Professional Development: Professional development in schools should be based on an analysis of the needs of students in those schools and should be consistent with the district's mission and professional standards.
• Standards and Accountability: Professional development goals and plans should be decided locally by the school community of teachers, administrators, and parents. Standards for student learning and standards for professional practice should guide the design, conduct, and evaluation of professional development, and these standards should recognize and measure teachers' expanded roles.
• Balancing Individual Teachers' and School Needs for Learning: Individual teachers should design their professional development plans to fulfill their schools' needs for expertise. Schools should recognize teachers' individual as well as whole faculty interests in pursuing professional development.
• Peer Assistance and Review: Teachers should assume responsibility for their continued growth and effectiveness. Teachers and administrators should collaborate in each district to create peer assistance and review to nurture the practice of all teachers and to counsel out of teaching those who, after sustained assistance by their specially prepared peers, do not meet professional standards of practice.
• Expanded Roles for Teachers: Teachers should study new instructional approaches, subject matter, and skills that enhance instruction, such as the use of information technologies, interpersonal and management skills, and skills for reaching out and including parents, business, and community resources in children's learning. Teachers who have gained such expertise should have multiple opportunities and time to fulfill expanded roles and to exercise leadership. Principals and other administrators should recognize, honor, and support teachers in these expanded roles.
• Induction of Teachers: The induction of novices into teaching is dealt with in a report issued by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. In addition to the induction of novices, every school should organize a substantial, year-long program through which its faculty will introduce new colleagues who are experienced teachers into the philosophy and operation of the particular school and help them refine their practice.

• Involve Parents, Business, and Community: At the local level, parents, business, and the community should continue to help school set the vision for students' success and support teachers' learning. Business should provide employees greater time and opportunity to be active partners in teachers' and students' learning. Parents, communities, and business should work in partnership with schools to reach these goals.
• Community Inventory and Plan: Teachers' organizations should collaborate with districts to invite local leaders to join in conducting an inventory of available local resources and institutions for teachers' professional development, including higher education, business, cultural, scientific, and other relevant agencies. "Higher education" should be understood to include entire institutions in all fields and branches. Having conducted the inventory, these partnering institutions should prepare a plan to join with teachers and districts for long-term collaboration for teachers' professional development. Districts and schools should support teachers' incorporation of the results of this professional development in instruction. Schools should provide time and opportunity for teachers and parents to become partners in the education of students. States should review local inventories and partnership plans to produce statewide analyses of teachers' access to high-quality resources for professional development. Based on these findings, states should develop plans for assuring that such access is sufficient for all teachers.
• Establish New or Enhance Existing Partnerships: Many local entities --- called teachers' "centers," "academies," "partnerships," "local education funds" or other designations --- have been established by districts, states, businesses, higher education, and others over recent years to bring teachers together with other professionals for learning. Each district and state should assure that teachers and resource providers enhance existing entities or establish new ones where teachers, librarians, scholars, scientists, artists, information technology specialists, and others can conduct work they hold and create in common. This work differs both from the profession-building work of peer assistance based in schools, on the one hand, and from scholarship curatorship, and artistry conducted outside of schools, on the other, and therefore can best flourish in a setting understood to create common ground for both. Each state should assure that partnerships to conduct high-quality professional development, curriculum and assessment development, and the development of technology-based teaching and learning are accessible to all teachers in that state.
• National Institute: The federal government should establish a national institute for teachers' professional development to support exemplary work that builds the profession. Teachers' organizations should join with specialized associations for educators, scholars, scientists, librarians, museums, and policymakers to develop the national institute.

• Identifying Existing Expenditures: States and districts should work with teacher and community organizations to identify current expenditures specifically dedicated to teachers' professional development, reallocate existing expenditures as appropriate to realizing expanded teachers' roles, and determine the needed level of expenditure for professional development to accomplish student success. New or enhanced entities for local partnerships should allocate district and community funds for supporting teachers' professional development.
• Establishing Appropriate Measures of the Effectiveness of Expenditures: Districts, states, teachers' organizations, and specialized associations should agree on appropriate standards for measuring the effectiveness of public expenditures on professional development.