A teacher leader confided in me last week that she didn't feel well prepared to respond to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan when he directed the following question to her: "What should we do with the country's three billion dollar investment in professional development each year?" She expects to have another opportunity to respond to the question, so we worked together on her response, and we agreed we wanted to share it with others.
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Mr. Secretary: I believe the $3 billion dollar annual investment in professional development is essential to ensuring great teaching every day so all students meet their respective states' academic standards. Engaging in high-quality, intensive, and sustained professional development is the only way educators will be able to meet this goal. Unfortunately, previous year investments have not been targeted in ways that produce the greatest benefits for the teachers and students who need it them most. I hope you will consider redirecting Title II professional development dollars to help educators develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviors they need to raise levels of student performance.

Here are three actions I ask you to consider:

1. Redefine acceptable uses of funds according to a tighter definition of professional learning. This definition needs to address not only the components of effective teaching but provide the time teachers need to collaborate and learn together so they can share responsibility for improving student performance across a grade level, subject matter, or entire school. I recommend a careful examination of NSDC's definition of professional learning. ﾠ

2. Allocate a portion of the dollars toward the development of the knowledge and skills teacher leaders and principals need in order to build and support collaborative learning teams and communities. Learning communities that impact student learning are only as successful as the leaders who advocate, facilitate, monitor, and celebrate their progress. ﾠ

3. Require evaluation that documents impact, expenditures, processes, and content of professional learning on educators' practice and student learning. Evaluation is essential if states and districts are to learn what processes and content are producing the better results for students. Evaluation requirements have been abandoned in the past when states and LEAs indicated it was too difficult and costly. However, several states and school systems have taken steps to evaluate their professional development approaches and used the results to strengthen their efforts and increase their results. ﾠ

Mr. Secretary, while there are alternative programs that successfully serve some teachers and some students, what I am suggesting will benefit all teachers and all students by systematically spreading good practices from classroom to classroom and school to school. It is my hope that you will give these three actions careful consideration. They will have the support of the majority of educators. All students deserve effective teachers; and all teachers deserve ongoing learning and support that will cause them to become increasingly effective.

Stephanie Hirsh is NSDC's Executive Director.