The following remarks are taken from Hayes Mizell's July 20 address to educators at NSDC's 2010 Summer Conference. Read Part 1 of Mizell's comments here.

What is professional development change we can believe in? Some things are fundamental. It would be quite a change, for example, if states, school systems, and schools took seriously the NSDC Standards and Standards Assessment Inventory and routinely used these tools as a framework for conceiving, planning, and organizing every professional development experience. Though at least half of the state education agencies and many school systems have adopted the standards, there is little evidence that they have honored and effectively used them to drive daily practice. But there is an even simpler standard to guide professional development: Will the professional development increase the productivity of the educators who engage in it, and how will we know??

The primary role of professional learning is to raise the performance levels of teachers and their students. All of a school system's functions, including professional development, should align to improve teacher effectiveness and student learning. But if we are honest, we have to acknowledge that states, school systems, and schools do not always use professional development for that purpose. They may believe they do, they may say they do, but the professional development many teachers experience demonstrates otherwise.

Too often, the purpose and execution of a specific professional development experience stems from bureaucratic interests, ego, or expediency. Someone in a position of authority makes a decision about the learning they believe teachers need, and that person's perspective and priorities drive the content and process of professional development. The individual's intentions are good, but the result is professional development that is done to teachers or for teachers, rather than with teachers. Teachers become objects of professional development, not partners. The result is that teachers have no stake in the professional development, they have no commitment to it, they frequently do not learn from it or do not apply what they learn, and there is little impact on their practice or their students' learning. In contrast, change we can believe in means professional development driven by (a) teachers' understanding of their students' learning problems, (b) teachers' commitment to learn whatever is necessary to more successfully address and overcome their students' learning difficulties, and (c) teachers' persistence in seeking, using and refining their learning to raise their students' performance levels.

This change is not possible without new expectations and behaviors by the three parties responsible for professional development: administrators who authorize it, educators who organize it, and teachers who engage in it. Administrators must create and support an operational culture in which continuous professional learning for the purpose of increasing student learning is integral to each teacher's work. Educators responsible for organizing professional development must create and facilitate learning experiences that teachers value, and that cause teachers to develop and apply new knowledge, skills, and behaviors that benefit their students. Teachers must embrace a professional ethic that throughout their careers they will actively pursue, engage in, and use learning experiences that will enable them to address their students' learning needs more effectively. ?

We are now at the third and last question to consider: Who are the people you work with who are blocking professional development change you can believe in, and what can you do to help them develop new commitments and expectations? Answering this question is not a matter of finding a scapegoat, or assigning blame. If fact, you have to begin by assessing your own commitment to professional development change, and what you are doing to make it happen. The cultures in your workplaces are powerful forces for stifling divergent points of view and maintaining the inertia that makes it so difficult to transition to true professional learning. There are so many layered, bedrock assumptions about professional development that it is difficult to even get a fair hearing about changes that could make it more useful to many more teachers. You may wish that NSDC could do something that would cause your colleagues to see the light, join hands, and march with you into a new day for professional learning. That would, after all, spare you the discomfort and risk that may accompany your advocacy for change. NSDC is doing what it can, indeed, it is doing more than at any time in its history to shape the professional norms and education policies that can prompt and support professional development change you can believe in.

But professional development is the result of many small, daily decisions made by educators at the local level. Teachers feel they are victims of this process because people in authority over them make the decisions about the content and process of professional development. But through their silence, teachers share the responsibility. Because most teachers believe it is the prerogative and responsibility of other people to make decisions about professional development, they accede to whatever is provided. Teachers neither complain to administrators, nor provide constructive feedback. Therefore, professional development never becomes an issue that demands examination, rethinking, and change. Instead, it continues as it has been rather than changes to what it can be.

What would happen if teachers, their unions, and each of you begin to raise questions such as the following, and insist on credible answers, when a state, school system, or school begins to conceive and plan professional development?

• What quantitative and qualitative data about the performance of teachers and their students indicate that professional development will be the most appropriate, effective means to improve their performance?
• What specific, realistic outcomes, for whom, are we seeking from this professional development??
• Given who these teachers are, the challenges they face, and the contexts in which they work, what is the best way to organize professional development so it engages the teachers in addressing their learning needs?
• How will we document that teachers are applying what they learn through this professional development?
• What evidence will we collect and report that demonstrates teachers are more effective because of this professional development?
• How will we determine whether and to what extent this professional development helps teachers raise students' levels of performance?

There will not be professional development change we can believe in until local educators hammer such questions over and over, and continue to do so until they forge professional learning into a pattern of practice.

A major problem, of course, is that in most schools and school systems there are no safe venues to think about professional development. It is such a low status enterprise that it isn't even considered worthy of discussion. Besides, every educator assumes they know exactly what professional development means and that it means the same thing to all other educators. There need to be opportunities for administrators and teachers, separately and together, to talk about their beliefs, their experiences, their disappointments, and their hopes for professional development. These need not be highly formal or structured conversations. A superintendent or principal could convene a small discussion group simply to begin to review the utility and results of professional development. A few teachers could do something similar, perhaps talking over drinks after school. The point is, someone has to begin and sustain the conversation.

That is an essential step, but it is only one of many. Professional development change we can believe in requires action. Someone has to raise difficult questions. Someone has to decide to pursue a new, more effective course. Exactly what that is depends on many contextual factors, but you will know it when you see it because it will look and feel very different from what now passes for professional development in most school systems and schools. The primary difference, the one that should hit you in the face, is that the professional development will excite and engage teachers, motivate and support them to improve their practice, and cause them to lead all their students to higher levels of performance. That will be change we can believe in.

Hayes Mizell is NSDC's distinguished senior fellow.