Learning Forward Announces Release of Meet the Promise of Content Standards: Investing in Professional Learning

DALLAS—Oct.1, 2012—Learning Forward announces the release of Meet the Promise of Content Standards: Investing in Professional Learning, a brief that details the critical attributes of professional learning necessary to achieve the vision of Common Core standards, and addresses the need for long-term commitment and resource investments from the nation and each state to achieve that vision.

The brief explores the growing needs of educators with the advent of new standards and assessments, and calls attention to the urgent need for schools, districts, states, regional and national education agencies, and education vendors to change the allocation and application of professional learning resources.  It also recommends new investments for states, districts, and school leaders to make in professional learning.

Meet the Promise of Content Standards: Investing in Professional Learning was published as part of Learning Forward’s ongoing initiative to develop a comprehensive system of professional learning that spans the distance from the statehouse to the classroom. The initiative, Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students: Implementing the Common Core, is supported by Sandler Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and MetLife Foundation.

The two-year initiative’s focus is on providing tools and resources to states and school systems as they work to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and new assessments.

The Common Core standards will require teachers to challenge themselves and approach learning in a different way. In order to meet the demands of CCSS, teachers will need to employ instructional strategies that integrate critical and creative thinking, collaboration, problem solving, research and inquiry skills, and presentation or demonstration skills.

“Professional learning is fundamental to ensuring teacher quality and effectiveness,” said co-author Joellen Killion, Learning Forward’s senior advisor and director of the Transforming Professional Learning initiative. “In order to have clear outcomes from professional learning, we must have a long-term plan and sustained resources for supporting implementation.”

The brief notes that traditional professional learning will fail to meet the needs of educators and that in tight budget times, many school districts and states have cut funding for professional learning, even as the number of schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act has risen. Meeting the demands of the Common Core, however, requires ongoing professional learning in new ways that helps educators build the skills and knowledge needed to ensure deeper learning by their students.

Professional learning combines educators learning from experts as well as with colleagues to apply their learning directly to their classrooms and schools.  One of the most critical aspects of professional learning is the resources dedicated to it. As Learning Forward’s Resources standard states: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires prioritizing, monitoring, and coordinating resources for educator learning. These resources include staff, time, funding, technology and materials.

“Without serious attention to how professional learning resources are assigned, used, and evaluated, the vision to which we aspire with the Common Core standards can’t become a reality,” said co-author Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of Learning Forward.

The brief emphasizes that Effective professional learning is a shared responsibility and will require federal, state, district, and school leaders to take bold actions needed to ensure instructional revisioning and staff reallocation.

Among its strategies for success, the brief recommends:

• Federal actions: Establish a new program to support professional learning for Common Core standards and new assessments in those states and school systems demonstrating greatest student achievement needs.
• Federal actions: Require existing federal investments and federally funded agencies and programs to support professional learning for implementation of Common Core standards.
• State actions: Adopt the definition of professional learning and the Standards for Professional Learning to guide decisions about professional learning investments.
• State actions: Use rule-making authority to create a transparent, flexible, and equitable process for distributing resources, particularly time, staffing, and funding, to districts and schools with most significant student learning needs.
• District and school actions: Design professional learning that leverages appropriate face-to-face, blended, and virtual learning and support to ensure that all educators develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices necessary for deep implementation of Common Core standards.
• District and school actions: Use differentiated staffing including teacher leaders, instructional coaches, principal coaches, and mentors to ensure school- and classroom-based facilitation of individual, team, and schoolwide professional learning.