Dive Brief:
- Farmington Public Schools in central Connecticut discovered through its annual stakeholder surveys that teachers did not think professional learning was helping them improve.
- Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Wynne writes for eSchool News that Professional Development and Evaluation Committee members discussed good professional development and goals for professional learning and then administrators approached the school board for money to pay permanent traveling substitutes who could fill in for teachers getting “just in time” professional development.
- This increased teacher satisfaction on the next survey, and administrators followed it up with another request to the board for six early release days that would make room for two hours of professional development each, growing the favorable survey responses by 35% in three years.
Dive Insight:
Teachers know what they want and need, but it's on administrators to ask them and take the appropriate measures. Building annual surveys into standard operations can give principals and central office staff members an important opportunity to target their efforts toward on-the-ground problems and concerns.
People share successes in education, which means that schools have a lot of opportunities to replicate other schools’ actions. The problem is, those successes are often based on unique circumstances. Gathering input and utilizing the expertise that people at every level of the organization bring to the table is one way to make sure new initiatives take local realities into account. That’s the method the Chalkboard Project uses in Oregon, and it has improved teacher satisfaction and retention there, as well.