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If you're tired of professional development that takes up too much time and delivers too little, then you'll appreciate this guide to effective and sustainable practices that help educators make a measurable difference for their schools and their students.
How can we create and sustain professional learning programs that actually lead to improved student achievement? In this thoughtful and informative guide for teachers, administrators, and policymakers, Douglas B. Reeves provides answers. First he casts a critical eye on professional learning that is inconsistent, unfocused, and ultimately ineffective, and explains why elaborate planning documents and "brand-name" programs are not enough to achieve desired outcomes. Then he outlines how educators at all levels can improve this situation by * Taking specific steps to move from vision to implementation; * Focusing on four essentials: teaching, curriculum, assessment, and leadership; * Making action research work; * Moving beyond the "train the trainer" model; and * Using performance assessment systems for teachers and administrators. If you're tired of professional development that takes up too much time and delivers too little, read Transforming Professional Development into Student Results and discover how to move toward a system that gives educators the learning experiences they need to make a measurable difference for their schools and their students.
Explains how to better evaluate professional development in order to ensure that it increases student learning, providing questions for accurate measurement of professional development and showing how to demonstrate results and accountability.
Provides specific information on how to transform schools into results-oriented professional learning communities, describing the best practices that have been used by schools nationwide.
Much-needed direction for navigating online professional development Although many educators are on the fast track to embracing online professional development (OPD), choosing the best solution is not as simple as pushing a button. OPD expert John D. Ross′s practical framework will guide you through asking the right questions and making sound development and purchasing decisions. The book′s process is founded on proven principles of professional learning and instructional design. You will benefit from others′ experience and expertise while efficiently charting a cost-effective course to success. This reader-friendly guide provides a path to answering these fundamental questions: Why online professional development? How much does it cost? How do I get started? What does high-quality online learning look like? What technologies are right for me? How do I put it all together? Did it work? Included are an OPD decision matrix, a step-by-step planning and implementation framework, "buyer beware" guidelines, and real-life case studies from successful OPD providers. Whether you want to purchase or create OPD, this time-saving resource will help you understand your financial options and confidently chart your course to success.
Given the current economic climate and budget constraints facing schools, funding for professional development is continually reduced. And yet administrators still need to find methods to implement new instructional initiatives, such as the Common Core State Standards. This important book provides leaders with a high quality professional development approach at a low cost—the Peer Observation Process. Outlined in manageable steps, this strategy will help leaders implement any new school initiative or instructional method, no matter the context. This book will help you: -Support staff with job-embedded learning that includes reflection and feedback -Get your staff excited and engage them in ongoing collaboration -Create teams and organize schedules -Initiate and deliver tough conversations -Address accountability and measure success Based on an established and successful program, this book outlines an effective approach that is easy to implement and will help schools increase student achievement, strengthen school culture, and improve job satisfaction.
"We can't do that in our school district." "I don't have time to add that to my curriculum." "We're fighting against impossible odds with these students." Sound familiar? School improvement can often feel like a losing battle, but it doesn't have to be. In this fully revised and updated second edition of The Learning Leader, Douglas B. Reeves helps leadership teams go beyond excuses to capitalize on their strengths, reduce their weaknesses, and reset their mindset and priorities to achieve unprecedented success. A critical key is recognizing student achievement as more than just a set of test scores. Reeves asserts that when leaders focus exclusively on results, they fail to measure and understand the importance of their own actions. He offers an alternative—the Leadership for Learning Framework, which helps leaders identify and distinguish among four different types of educators and provide more effective, tailored support to - "Lucky" educators, who achieve high results but don't understand how their actions influence achievement. - "Losing" educators, who achieve low results yet keep doing the same thing, expecting different outcomes. - "Learning" educators, who have not yet achieved the desired results but are working their way toward excellence. - "Leading" educators, who achieve high results and understand how their actions influence their success. Reeves stresses that effective leadership is neither a unitary skill nor a solitary activity. The Learning Leader helps leaders reconceptualize their roles in the school improvement process and motivate themselves and their colleagues to keep working to better serve their students.
Principals navigate the dynamic complexities and subtleties of their schools every day. They promote, facilitate, and lead efforts to achieve both tangible and intangible results throughout the school community. They fulfill a role that includes counseling, budgeting, inspiring, teaching, learning, disciplining, evaluating, celebrating, consoling, and a million other critical functions. As the principalship has evolved and grown, so have the expectations of it. With that in mind, ASCD developed the Principal Leadership Development Framework (PLDF). The PLDF establishes a clear and concise definition of leadership and includes clear targets that support the ongoing growth and development of leaders. Using the Framework, principals will learn to capitalize on their leadership roles: * Principal as Visionary * Principal as Instructional Leader * Principal as Engager * Principal as Learner and Collaborator The PLDF also offers 17 criteria of effective practice that allow leaders to focus on behaviors that have the greatest direct effect on the culture and status of learning and teaching. Coupled with the PLDF are tools for self-reflection that help principals identify and strengthen their reflective habits. Whether you want to develop your own capacities or support the development of a group of principals, assistant principals, or aspiring principals, The Principal Influence can help channel your efforts in ways that promote successful teaching and student learning.
Transforming student and learning supports is key to school improvement and enhancing equity of opportunity. This work examines the marginalization and fragmentation of student and learning supports, and offers a design, prototypes, guides, and more for system change. It delineates how to develop a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system by reframing and redeploying the ways schools address learning and teaching barriers in the classroom and schoolwide. It draws on years of research and offers examples from work at local and state levels. The text provides detailed frameworks for expanding school improvement policy to unify student and learning supports, rework operational infrastructures, and make sustainable systemic changes. There are also frameworks and guides for in-classroom supports, supporting transitions, creating home and community engagement, providing crisis assistance and prevention, and personalizing student and family assistance. Rooted in research, field trials, and common sense and focused on collaborative solutions, Transforming Student and Learning Supports offers a fundamental perspective for any course that addresses school improvement. The book is a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate courses, continuing professional development, policy makers, and a wide variety of stakeholders who are concerned with enhancing equity of opportunity for students.
