March 2014
Educators want to know that their professional learning is effective; system and state leaders want evidence that their planning and funding are producing results; and community members want to know that educators are spending their time and tax dollars wisely and, most importantly, achieving results for students. Evaluating professional learning can satisfy these needs and help educators make the connection between professional learning and better teaching.
Practitioner Perspectives
Teacher Leader
Connecting instructional coaching to student learning
Michele Johnson, coach for Lanier Middle School (Va.), shares how she links student learning to professional learning using indicators in data and classroom observations, and how she overcomes challenges in connecting coaching to student learning.
Principal
Evaluate the learning, not the popularity: A principal’s struggle to learn, grow, and measure
Nathan Pitner, principal for Bookwood Forest Elementary (Ala.), explains his team’s efforts to evaluate the learning part of professional learning instead of traditional outputs. He finds the best success when teachers are guiding their own problems of practice.
System Leader
Evaluating professional learning from the district’s perspective
Dawn F. Wilson, director of professional development for Duval County Public Schools (Fla.), shares how her district measures and evaluates the impact of professional learning and offers three recommendations to help districts build their own evaluation systems.
Featured Tool:
This tool explains how a school used formative evaluation strategies to gather evidence of implementation. Use this tool to consider what processes might be used in your own school or system. Available for members at www.learningforward.org/transform.
Concerns
Learning Forward offers these cautions for educators to keep in mind as they identify the links between educator and student learning.
Actions
Learning Forward recommends these actions for educators and policy makers to get started with building an effective evaluation plan.
Featured Resource:
Assessing Impact: Evaluating Staff Development, Second Edition
This comprehensive resource guides staff development teams through a step-by-step process for planning and conducting effective evaluations of professional learning programs. This edition focuses on documenting the impact of professional learning on student learning and illustrates ways to assess a program's evaluability, formulate evaluation questions, and evaluate the evaluation.
Anthony Armstrong (anthony.armstrong@learningforward.org), Learning Forward's associate director of publications, is the editor of Transform Professional Learning.
Learning Forward's new digital publications are supported in part by MetLife Foundation.
