Frontline Blog

Micro-credentials have been making waves in schools around the country for several years now. Maybe you’ve had the opportunity to earn them, or see them implemented into professional learning programs.

When you talk about employee evaluations in K-12, the first thing most people think is “teachers.” That’s true at Franklin Public Schools in Wisconsin, too. But as they work to build the capacity of teachers in the district, they also place a strong emphasis on developing principals — especially on equipping them to be strong instructional leaders.

Each day, nearly 12,000 students walk into classrooms at Jenks Public Schools. Sitting just south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the district places a strong emphasis on academic performance — a focus that stems from serving students for more than a century.

How well are school systems in America measuring up to ESSA’s definition of professional development? Is professional learning “data-driven” and “classroom-focused”? That question is at the heart of Bridging the Gap, a series of reports from the Frontline Research & Learning Institute. Bridging the Gap looks at anonymized data from the professional development experiences of educators across the country and asks, “How close are we to this ideal?”