Last week we began looking at ten tips for ensuring quality professional development during difficult economic times, when higher expectations and increased scrutiny are placed on professional learning. This offers school districts and PD professionals a real opportunity to fine-tune the professional development they offer, and focus on what's really important: increasing student achievement.

Let's look at five more ways educators can maximize both the effectiveness of their professional development and the resources spent on it.

6. Leverage team learning
NSDC supports team-based professional learning. Within NSDC's definition of effective professional development, every teacher and principal is a member of at least one learning team that meets the equivalent of several hours a week for learning and problem solving. Team members make a collective commitment to the success of all the students represented by the group. At regularly scheduled meetings, they engage in a cycle of continuous improvement that leads to better instruction and higher levels of student performance. When teachers join together in team learning, their learning and their actions have the potential to impact more teachers and all students.

Many view this recommendation as a pipedream given the time available for professional development. But what I'm calling for is a reorganization of our work and school days so that we prioritize both teacher learning and student learning. Rethinking how we organize teaching and learning has the potential to impact all teachers and all students in a school or system. Tough economic times give us reason to examine the way we do things. We learn to do more with less. There is no better time to reconsider our current schedules.

7. Use local experts
Research indicates that in any community or institution, some people are more successful in solving problems than others, even though each person is in exactly the same setting and has the same resources to draw upon. The same thing happens in schools. By design or by accident, some teachers are more successful than others in addressing a particular student learning challenge. Yet we have no systematic way of tapping these teachers' expertise. We must create systematic processes for ensuring the important lessons and insights of our most valuable resources, the people working in schools, is shared from classroom to classroom and then from school to school.

8. Curtail broad-gauge professional development
Again, training without follow-up is malpractice. We must commit to forgoing next fall's beginning-of-the-school-year district-wide pep talk by the latest high-priced motivational speaker or one-size-fits-all professional development consultant. Consider eliminating one-shot workshops, professional development catalogs, payment for unrelated graduate courses, one-size fits all conferences, and "cafeteria" staff development days. Instead, set aside resources to support the celebration you will want to host to promote the benefits of your new approach to professional development.

9. Organize and support participation in networks
Many years ago, the state of California allocated funds to support statewide subject matter networks. Research conducted on the initiative produced evidence of impact on many of the participants. Today we know much more about how to make networks even more effective. Because of the Internet, our networks can extend across schools, systems, cities, and states. Networks promote leadership, learning, and reflection. Both non-profit and for-profit companies are creating and facilitating professional networks, and most professional and subject-matter associations offer some level of free services, including networking.

Encourage voluntary participation in subject- and role-alike networks. At the district level, leaders can provide incentives of flexible time, recognition, or non-monetary support to encourage teachers to voluntarily form subject-specific networks. Recognizing teacher leaders to facilitate these networks provides another opportunity to honor teacher expertise and develop leadership pipelines.

10. Make greater use of other professional development resources
Tap the free services and expertise of state department of education consultants, regional education service agencies, textbook company consultants, professional associations, and others. These can be particularly helpful in finding a strategy to support those teachers who did not fall into the priority list established under recommendations two and three. Make greater use of the many free and low-cost resources on the Internet. Of course we have many on the NSDC web site, as do Education Week and Teacher Magazine, Library of Congress, and others.

Another option is to set up visits to other classrooms, schools, and school systems. Our colleagues can be our best source of effective practices. Spending time with the real school change experts -- the ones making a difference every day -- can be an inspiration as well as motivation for doing the hard work necessary to get better results.

Professional development is essential if teachers are to have the necessary knowledge and skills to ensure success for all students and to achieve the goal of our new president: every child will be ready for post secondary education or employment by 2020. When we accept the idea that at school, everyone's job is to learn, we will be positioned to achieve that goal.

Stephanie Hirsh is Executive Director of the National Staff Development Council.