Professional Development That Addresses School Capacity: Lessons from Urban Elementary Schools

Overview

Effective professional development can advance student achievement in a school, according to research by Fred Newmann and colleagues at UW-Madison. Their research indicates that improving student achievement is more likely to happen when professional development address not only increased the learning of individual teachers, but also other dimensions of the school’s organizational capacity.

To understand how home schools used professional development to address school capacity, Bruce King, and Peter Youngs studied nine urban elementary schools. These schools were selected through a national search for school that served large proportions of low-income students that (a) has historically low achievement, (b) has shown progress in student achievement over the previous 3-5 years, (c) attributed their progress to school wide and sustained professional development, (d) participated in site-based management, and (e) had received significant professional development assistance from one or more internal agencies.

All of the schools appeared to have high potential for addressing all aspects of capacity. However, after two years of data collection, it became clear that the schools varied considerably both in their approaches to professional development and in the extent to which they address aspects of capacity. Youngs found that districts were more likely to help schools strengthen or maintain high levels of professional community and program coherence when their policies were internally coherent and remained consistent over time.

Based on a review of empirical research, Youngs also examined the extent to which recent reforms related to professional development addressed different aspects of school capacity. Youngs found that these reforms generally strengthened teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions, but had an varying effects on other aspects of school capacity.

Although teachers can engage in careful individual inquiry about their...