1. Teacher Training to Improve Student Learning
The Search for High-Quality
Professional Development
Jenny DeMonte
Center for American Progress
October 3, 2013
americanprogress.org

2. The Problem
Professional development is generally short-term, disconnected from practice, and thin on substance.
Sustained effort: 10,000 hours to expertise
Teachers can improve practice, learn to teach better
Evidence is weak, but some features emerge as strong suggestions

3. Complications
Common Core is coming…challenges for students and teachers
NCLB waivers and teacher evaluation
Waiver renewal calls for PD based on evidence

4. Research suggests features of good PD
Coaching
Video of practice for feedback/technology
Aligned with standards and practice in school/district
Job-embedded
Collaboration

5. What might job-embedded collaboration look like
Collaboration around the real work of teaching and learning
Common in other professions: engineering, medicine

6. But we have professional learning communities already!
And we meet every week!
Are the meetings truly job-embedded?
Do you spend time on topics that teachers have faced that day, or that week, in classrooms?
Is the conversation situated in and about professional teaching practice?

7. Intersection of three key areas
Collaboration
Authentic activities/job-embedded
Common Core standards

8. What do we need to know about the CCSS for this presentation to make sense?
In Math: 8 principles
Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Model with mathematics.
Use appropriate tools strategically.
Attend to precision.
Look for and make use of structure.
Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

9. Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK): A primer
Do teachers know the subject matter?
Do teachers know what are common student misconceptions of subject matter?
How do these affect student learning?
Philip M. Sadler, Gerhard Sonnert, Harold P. Coyle, Nancy Cook-Smith and Jaimie L. Miller
The Influence of Teachers' Knowledge on Student Learning in Middle School Physical Science Classrooms
American Educational Research Journal published online 6 March 2013

10. Mathematics Assessment Resource Services, aka MARS http://insidemathematics.org/index.php/2nd-grade

11. Common Core 2nd Grade Content Standard
Operations and Algebraic Thinking (OA) 2.OA.1
Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem. 

12. 2nd Grade Item (from the MARS website)

13. Scoring Rubric

14. Assessing Student Work as PD

15. Assessing Student Work as PD

16. Common Core 5th Grade Content Standard
Number and Operations - Fractions (NF) 5.NF.1
Add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators (including mixed numbers) by replacing given fractions with equivalent fractions in such a way as to produce an equivalent sum or difference of fractions with like denominators.

17. 5th Grade Item from MARS project

18. Rubric for scoring

19. Assessing Student Work as PD
This student uses common denominators, showing substitution of fractions. What type of discourse or experience helps students to develop the ability to label answers and understand what is being found by doing a calculation?

20. Assessing Student Work as PD
This student seems to want all fractions to be parts of 100 and makes correct calculations, but converts 87.5% back to a fraction and does it incorrectly. What might be some next steps in helping this student?

21. How is scoring PD?*
“I moved away from thinking about work in an A, B, C, or D way, to thinking about criteria for performance and the evidence that would justify my evaluation.”
“After spending a full day scoring assessments, it became very obvious that we were focusing on what the students really knew and could explain. We all seemed to discover the same problems the students were having doing real math.”
The quotes are from the Center for American Progress report Teacher Learning Through Assessment by Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk, 2013.

22. How is scoring PD?*
“Teachers are now using the scoring to guide the type of project or task they can develop to marry concept/content acquisition and 21st century skills. They are asking questions like, ‘How do I shift the instructional environment to do both?’
“Measuring worthy skills and knowledge in this way has driven the context of the classroom.”
The quotes are from the Center for American Progress report Teacher Learning Through Assessment by Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk, 2013.

23. And what about policy? Make time for this work
Mix teachers with different experience and skill levels
Communicate about formative performance testing— what it is and what it is not (ie. differs from summative)
Link other kinds of professional development to data from scoring formative assessments

24. Thank you! Contact: jdemonte@americanprogress.org
MARS site:
My paper: On the Center for American Progress website, titled High-Quality Professional Development for Teachers: Supporting teacher training to improve student learning”