Delaware Sets A Vision For Professional Learning

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Delaware sets a vision for professional learning

By Kathy Kelly, Nicole Marshall and Amy Baker-Sheridan

Categories: Instructional materials/curriculum, Learning designs, Standards for Professional Learning, System leadership

June 2022

State education leaders and entities play vital, if not always highly visible, roles in establishing high-quality professional learning. Through legislation and regulations, resource allocation, leadership support, and more, they establish a vision of professional learning and support its implementation in districts and schools. In particular, state education agencies have the reach and leverage to foster a comprehensive, sustained system of professional learning for all educators. But creating that coherence is a complex undertaking. At the Delaware Department of Education, we navigate this complexity by grounding our work in Standards for Professional Learning. The standards have helped us understand how to implement meaningful learning processes and foster the conditions necessary for learning to thrive. Most recently, they have supported shifting our state’s definition of high-quality professional

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Case study: Delaware's reimagining professional learning grants

Using federal School Improvement funds, the Delaware Department of Education allocates Reimagining Professional Learning innovation grants, which support the work of districts and schools to improve the quality and efficacy of professional learning for educators.

When the grant program was established in 2016, the primary goal was to provide financial incentives to districts and schools to implement professional learning grounded in Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning and the Common Core State Standards.

In 2021, we began honing the grants’ focus to support the adoption and implementation of high-quality curriculum and instructional materials — a shift that is closely aligned with the addition of the Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment standard in the 2022 revision of Standards for Professional Learning. This shift in the grants is one of the ways we are encouraging local education agencies to move away from cookie-cutter professional learning toward content-specific learning that builds the capacity of every teacher, school administrator, and district administrator.

Local education agencies that wished to apply for the grant submitted a professional learning plan, with training and support from our staff and using a template and reflection questions developed by our office that include prompts for a needs assessment and evaluation strategy. Grantees are expected to engage in a continuous improvement process that includes collaborative learning throughout the grant cycle.

In addition to hosting an annual professional learning summit during the launch of the grant cycle, we provide technical and consultive support during the drafting of the professional learning plans. Each grant awardee is assigned a liaison who meets with the local education agency at prescheduled times throughout the year to review progress, consider evidence, and act as a thought partner for midcourse adjustments.

The projects we funded for the 2021-22 school year include professional learning plans grounded in specific curricular resources that strategically attend to educator training, collaborative planning, and group and team coaching. Two examples of professional learning goals include educators using effective scaffolding to support all learners in accessing grade-level text in English language arts and strategically planning for and implementing National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ effective mathematics teaching practices in their lessons on a daily basis in mathematics.

As a result of these and other grant projects over the past few years, we have observed a faster, more immediate impact on student outcomes in classroom work. We have also observed that the adjusted professional workflow and processes have grown across other content areas in the system, not just the content area that was awarded the grant. The most successful outcomes have occurred where there has been enduring change at the systems level.

Some of these systems and strategies are featured in a virtual tour of schools in the Brandywine school system made by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. You can view the virtual tour at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbxHL68RLIk