Frontline Blog

At, Greece Central School District in Rochester, NY, we hired certified trainers to facilitate the 8-day Cognitive Coaching® seminar for all of our teacher leaders. We followed up with monthly collegial circle meetings for them to reflect on their learning, share how coaching sessions were going and practice scenarios with one another to refine their skills. We invited the trainers back for yearly refresher sessions. This program was designed to influence changes in teacher practice and ultimately impact student learning.

Today’s article, focused on the five phases of program evaluation, is Part 2 of a seven-part series on evaluating professional development. In the rest of the series, you’ll learn how you can apply these phases to evaluate your own programs.

When districts invest in professional learning, they expect results for both educators and students. Yet far too often, the evidence of effect is elusive. This reality can be changed when district and school leaders plan for the evaluation of professional learning when they initially design it to strengthen educator effectiveness and student success.

Wouldn’t it be great if we knew when our professional learning programs were successful? What if we knew more than just the fact that teachers liked the presenter, were comfortable in the room or learned something new? Wouldn’t it be better to know that teachers made meaningful changes in teaching practice that resulted in increased student learning?

20 miles east of Portland, Oregon sits Gresham-Barlow School District. With 18 schools, “We’re too small to be big, and too big to be small,” says Sarah Barlow, an instructional coach at the district. Sarah and her colleagues work one-on-one with teachers, but also work at the district level in to provide support where needed.

Continuous improvement - an idea that has taken root in other industries - is increasingly seen in K-12. Often, it refers to continuous school improvement and long-term growth in student achievement, engagement, attendance and the like.

Being a director of programs supporting English language learners (ELLs) is truly a balancing act. Just like a juggler with spinning plates, we always have our eye on the prize of student success. We know, however, that unless each staff member involved is fully committed to supporting the ELLs, one of those plates might come crashing to the ground. So, how can we keep those plates spinning? And just who are the individuals represented by these "plates"? Who are those staff members that contribute to ELL success?

We are well into the last quarter of the school year, and that means we are entering the final phase of conducting classroom observations for teacher performance evaluation. If observations involve only one person, how do we enhance intra-rater reliability? And especially, if multiple observers have been involved in observing teachers’ classroom performance, what can we do to ensure inter-rater reliability? If a vice principal conducted an observation earlier in the year and the principal is scheduled to conduct an additional or final observation, how can we ensure the results of the more recent observation won’t sway the decision disproportionately and that observers are using the same yardstick to measure effectiveness?