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Scooping up meaningful evidence

By Thomas R. Guskey
October 2003
Vol. 24, No. 4
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation places new demands on educators at all levels. But perhaps no group will be more affected than staff development leaders. The accountability requirements under this federal program drastically reshape their roles. More notably, the legislation compels staff development leaders to refocus their perspectives and, in some cases, to revise completely their efforts in the educational improvement process. Two aspects of the NCLB legislation have special significance for staff development leaders. First is its requirement for “scientific, researchbased programs.” Second is the strong emphasis on accountability, defined in terms of improvements in student performance. These two aspects have profound implications for staff development leaders’ responsibilities, especially in the area of evaluation. RESEARCH-BASED PROGRAMS Believing that educators have not always

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Authors

Thomas R. Guskey

Thomas R. Guskey is a professor of education. You can contact him at the College of Education, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, (859) 257-8666, e-mail: guskey@uky.edu.

References

 Guskey, T.R. (1992, November). What does it mean to be “research-based”? The Developer, 5.

Guskey, T.R. (1996, October 23). To transmit or to “construct”? The lure of trend infatuation in teacher professional development (Commentary). Education Week, 16(8), 34.

Guskey, T.R. (1999). Evaluating professional development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Guskey, T.R. (2001a). The backward approach. Journal of Staff Development, 22(3), 60.

Guskey, T.R. (2001b). Backward planning: An outcomes-based strategy for professional development. Curriculum in Context, 28(2), 18-20.

Guskey, T.R. (2003, February). How classroom assessments improve learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 6-11.

McLaughlin, M.W. (1991). Enabling professional development: What have we learned? In A. Lieberman & L. Miller (Eds.), Staff development for education in the ’90s: New demands, new realities, new per – spectives (2nd ed., pp. 61-82). New York: Teachers College Press.

Miller, B., Lord, B., & Dorney, J. (1994). Staff development for teachers: A study of configurations and costs in four districts. Newton, MA: Education Development Center.

U.S. Department of Education. (2002). Scientifically based research and the Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) Program. Washington, DC: Author.

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University of Kentucky | + posts

Thomas Guskey is a professor emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, whose work is dedicated to helping teachers and school leaders use quality educational research to help all of their students learn. The author/ editor of 25 books and more than 250 articles and book chapters, he is an expert on educational measurement, evaluation, professional learning, assessment, and grading. His five-level framework of professional learning evaluation is a seminal resource in the field. His latest article for The Learning Professional, Learning Forward’s journal, is “Look beyond the satisfaction survey: A framework to evaluate results of professional learning.”

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