School board adoption of standards is a first step

By Stephanie Hirsh

Results, September 2003

Asking your local school board to adopt standards for staff development is one important step toward improving the quality of professional learning for all staff and increasing student achievement. Here are several reasons for promoting the adoption of the NSDC Standards for Staff Development.

Reason #1: Public adoption of standards tells a community and staff that staff development will play a significant role in the quest for student success and that the district is committed to high levels of learning and performance by all students and staff members. Research and best practice literature have documented the important relationship between high-quality staff development and improved performance at the individual, school, and system level. Ongoing professional development throughout an educator's career provides the knowledge, skills, and support necessary to produce competency on the job.

Reason #2: Adopting the standards demonstrates a school board's commitment to recruiting and retaining good teachers. School boards recognize the connection between well-prepared and supported teachers, teacher competency, teacher efficacy, and student success. Most districts lose 50% of their new teacher hires in the first three to five years of their careers. Districts that successfully retain a higher percentage recognize the critical support that new teachers require. This support comes in induction programs, mentoring, seminars, carefully chosen teaching assignments, and more.

Reason #3: Aligning a district program with nationally-recognized standards for staff development and measuring progress toward implementation demonstrates a commitment to ensuring all teachers experience high-quality professional learning each year. Fortunately, research separates effective and ineffective forms of professional learning. The No Child Left Behind Act calls on states to provide evidence that more teachers each year experience high-quality staff development. The federal government recognizes the important contribution that professional development will make in its quest to ensure all students are successful in school. Adopting the standards demonstrates that a district recognizes its responsibility to ensure teachers experience high-quality staff development.

Reason #4: The school board accelerates its improvement efforts by adopting standards that have been developed and endorsed by a substantial portion of the education community. More than 30 individuals representing the nation's largest and most prestigious education associations reviewed research and best practice literature to identify standards for their own constituencies including teachers, principals, superintendents, and school board members. They viewed these standards as useful for staff development planning at individual, school, and district levels and as benchmarks for determining future directions for improvement. Rather than developing and debating its own set of standards, the district can devote its energies to implementing quality staff development and thereby move faster in its improvement efforts.

Reason #5: Adopting the standards shows a school board's commitment to providing resources to support results-driven, standards-based, and job-embedded staff development. The standards call for teachers and administrators to spend a portion of each day engaged in professional learning and for the district to set aside 10% of its annual budget to support the professional growth of its employees. When a school board adopts the standards, it affirms its responsibility to provide necessary resources.

While embracing the standards makes a powerful statement about expectations, adoption alone does not guarantee change in practice. Improved practice requires constant attention to the principles undergirding the standards as well as a system of accountability that lets everyone know that monitoring and measuring implementation will occur. As one final step associated with the adoption of standards, request that the school board annually and publicly review progress in moving the system's practice into alignment with the standards.