The following remarks are taken from Hayes Mizell's July 20 address to educators at NSDC's 2010 Summer Conference. We will publish Part 2 of Mizell's comments tomorrow.

Two years ago, a young United States senator from Illinois sought and won the office of President of the United States. His campaign was historic in many respects, including the campaign's use of the Internet to raise unprecedented amounts of money, and the use of words, phrases, and iconography to mobilize voters. One slogan of the campaign was "change we can believe in." A slogan is neither a strategy nor a program, but as the election of 2008 demonstrated, words have power. "Change we can believe in" captured the aspirations of millions of people.

Today I invite you to think very hard about professional development change we can believe in. In this room, you have the luxury of distance from your day-to-day work, with its deadlines, to-do lists, and normative expectations and behaviors. In this venue, you can think rather than assume. You can challenge rather than comply.

To prompt your thinking, I want to pose several questions. First, is change in professional development necessary? During the past 10 years, there have been notable changes in professional development. Data has become an important factor in revealing educators' needs for professional development and informing their learning experiences. The number of "one-shot" workshops has declined. More educators understand what "job-embedded" means, and more schools implement it through the use of school-based coaches, teams, and professional learning communities. Technology has made it possible for educators to see exemplary practice in distant locations and to learn from peers who work in other states. These are encouraging developments, but there is a long way to go before these approaches to professional development demonstrate a profound, consistent impact on student achievement.

Your presence here indicates that you believe even more change is essential. After all, the National Staff Development Council's statement of purpose--Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves--is a vision that has not yet come to fruition in most schools. Change is the only way to translate this ideal into a reality that will ensure most public school educators experience professional development that is much more useful and effective than is now the case.

But as powerful as NSDC's purpose statement is, there is an even more compelling reason why change in professional development is necessary. The overwhelming majority of school systems and schools know very little about what educators learn through professional development, how effectively they use what they learn, and to what extent students benefit. There is almost no accountability for results.

If you listen carefully to the educators responsible for conceiving, planning, organizing, and implementing professional development, most of what you hear focuses on process, including process that masquerades as content. Conversations continue to be dominated by references to speakers, consultants, books, videos, webinars, workshops, courses, conferences, and presenting. There is little or no discussion about whether or how the considerable resources school systems devote to professional development make a significant difference in the performance of educators or, equally important, in the performance of their students. The words "results," "outcomes," "evaluation," "evidence," and "impact" are not heard in most conversations among professional development practitioners.

If professional development is as important as we believe it is, as we say it is, then the field has to turn its attention to outcomes. NSDC is doing what it can to provide leadership, but the process-centered culture of professional development is very deep. This is understandable because it is not possible to get to good outcomes without good process, but the problem is that professional development has become bogged down, focused disproportionately on educators' learning experiences rather than the application of their learning to benefit students.

Change is also necessary because many educators assume that participation in professional development equals results. Many states mandate that for educators to renew their certification, or advance on the pay scale, they must attain a prescribed number of professional development credits or hours. In some cases, states require educators to take specific courses. In other cases, educators can choose their professional development experiences from a list of courses offered by state-approved institutions or vendors. Such requirements are based on a state's belief that the educators' performance will improve because they participate in the professional development. However, it appears most states make no effort to determine the effects of the mandated professional development. Some educators may benefit, but many probably do not. No one knows. Worse, most state policymakers and education agencies make little effort to determine the cost-benefit of these requirements. In the context of a state's education goals, what is the evidence that its professional development mandates contribute significantly to school systems and schools achieving the goals?

Unfortunately, the misuse of professional development is so widespread that educators accept it as the norm. School systems routinely use valuable professional development days for information dissemination, briefings on new laws and regulations, instructions for administering standardized tests, and passive, lecture-focused assemblies. At the same time, schools fail to capture additional time for professional learning by more creatively using faculty meetings, planning periods, and related arts periods. There are, in other words, sins of omission as well as commission in professional development. It is not just an issue of opportunities squandered, it is also a matter of opportunities missed.

The misuse occurs in two ways. First, the professional development frequently proceeds as though teachers are a blank slate, as though they know nothing, have no experience, have no expertise, and all work in the same school contexts. This is what we might call deficit-based professional development. It is not surprising that many teachers either consciously or unconsciously resist such initiatives, or half-heartedly go through the motions of implementation.

The second type of misuse occurs because of the way in which a school system or school administers the professional development intervention. The initiative may begin with a lot of promotion and intensive "training" but diminishes over time, often because it is expensive to sustain. It is not unusual for the impact to fade so dramatically that within a couple of years it becomes the topic of "Whatever happened to?" conversations.

Currently, professional development is faced with another potential misuse. During the past several years, some education policy analysts and reformers have turned their attention to "teacher effectiveness." In addressing this issue, they have rightly called for a more coherent, aligned system of performance management that weaves together teacher recruitment, retention, development, supervision, evaluation, and dismissal to create a more effective teacher workforce. Because ineffective teachers are a specific concern, advocates have proposed professional development as one response to a teacher's unsatisfactory evaluation, a kind of last chance opportunity prior to possible dismissal. This proposal demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of professional development, its potential, and its limits. Even worse, it could potentially narrow professional development to serve primarily a punitive, remedial purpose. Professional development has a role to play in addressing teacher ineffectiveness, but that should be a front-end rather than a back-end strategy.

It is clear, then, that changing professional development is necessary. The change I am talking about is not a matter of getting more days for professional development, or more money, or more status, though all that would be helpful. Rather, the change that is required is to make professional development responsive to the objective learning needs of teachers and their students. By "objective learning needs," I mean needs supported by student or teacher performance data, both quantitative and qualitative. This is not professional development based on what teachers "want" or "choose" but what they need to positively impact their performance or that of their students.

Hayes Mizell is NSDC's distinguished senior fellow.