Staff Development for Teachers Deemed Fragmented

By Stephen Sawchuk

(Washington D.C.) - Although American teachers spend more working hours in classrooms than do instructors in some of the top-performing European and Asian countries, U.S. students have scored in the middle of the pack on a number of prominent international exams in recent years.

That paradox appears to stem at least in part from a failing of the United States’ systems for supporting professional learning, concludes a new report released here last week. American teachers, it finds, are not given as many opportunities for on-the-job training as their international peers, and their effectiveness appears to suffer as a result.

The time U.S. teachers actually spend in professional training largely continues to take place in isolation, rather than in school-based settings that draw on teachers’ collective knowledge and skills, the report says.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addresses the audience during a press conference to announce the release of the National Staff Development Council report on professional development in Washington on Feb. 4.

—Christopher Powers/Education Week

Despite some recent improvements in professional-training opportunities, “we’re way behind other countries that are high-achieving in terms of the time and intensive opportunity for deep learning they provide,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor who co-wrote the report with four colleagues at that university’s School Redesign Network. “We still see teachers engage in really short one- and two-day workshops rather than ongoing, sustained support that we now have evidence changes practices and increases student achievement.”

A new push to reorient staff development nationwide could come from the new U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who praised the report at its unveiling in Washington. In his remarks, Mr. Duncan named improving the quality of teaching “one of [the new federal education administration’s] top two priorities, along with raising standards.”

Read full article in Education Week