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When a low-performing school turns around, what can we learn? In a district where one school has twice the achievement gains of comparable schools, what is going on? If a school is able to eliminate performance gaps between its white and non-white students, shouldn’t we pay attention? The eight schools represented in this report tell the story of students who achieve because their teachers are learners. Whether the school is in a rural community of Texas colonias or a privileged Georgia suburb, whether students have a transiency rate of 126 percent or a poverty rate of 88 percent, the culture of learning is palpable. Teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrators have coalesced as learning communities and focused their own learning on what will translate into learning for students. Everyone is learning, and everyone benefits. At the heart of each school’s success is an exemplary professional development program – one we can profitably examine. How, exactly, did the staffs in these schools choose and maintain a focus, organize their time, and create a collaborative environment? And how did their professional development efforts interact with some of the conditions we already know are basic to successful school reform? In this report you will find specifics, exactly which literacy program a Colorado school chose five years ago, for example. But our focus is on more general conclusions, such as why that instructional program, or another one built around Navajo culture, or another one about math problem solving, or one about thinking skills have all been successful for anchoring professional development. We will help you analyze the role of programs like these in successful professional development. Likewise, if you want specific information about the implementation approaches in these schools – from Title I-funded coaching through voluntary Saturdays, it’s here. But so too is an analysis of why a whole range of implementation strategies can work. Finally, if you want to know what any of these analyses mean specifically for you, in your role as a principal, teacher, or district administrator, we have also organized our findings with your needs in mind. Our goal, after all, is to help you think about how you might apply the learnings from these schools to the professional development efforts you already have under way or are about to get started. What the schools in this report have accomplished is worthy of our attention not just because they have been successful, but because their models can help others to be so as well. The awards program is based on a set of principles of effective professional development. (More information about the awards program itself can be found here.) See also: Principles of Effective Professional Development See also: National Awards Program for Model Professional Development

The eight schools represented in this report tell the story of students who achieve because their teachers are learners.       At the heart of each school’s success is an exemplary professional development program.       What the schools in this report have accomplished is worthy of our attention not just because they have been successful, but because their models can help others to be so as well.