A Cycle of Success: How Professional Development Creates Better Teacher and Student Outcomes

Professional development for teachers is all about helping students succeed. That’s because quality teachers make all the difference. According to The RAND Corporation, “Teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling.”¹ Stronger teachers drive student achievement higher.

A successful professional development program will develop stronger teachers and lead to student success. The connection is clear.

But a set-it-and-forget-it program won’t cut it. Without a strategic approach to planning, assigning, and managing professional development activities, time and energy will be spent on activities that provide little return, leaving substantial gains on the table.

That’s why it’s important to have data that shows a holistic view of student performance to gauge the effectiveness of professional development efforts. This data can also drive more informed creation of learning plans for individual teachers. This way professional development is constantly adapted and honed to become more effective in the long term.

Classroom success starts with professional development for teachers

Since teachers are the most important factor in student success, it makes sense for any district to develop their teachers’ strengths and support opportunities for growth. This means focusing on professional skills like subject matter expertise, instructional methods, and classroom management, in addition to personal growth goals such as organization, communication, and patience.

Every teacher, like every student, has unique learning needs and aptitudes. Professional development should be personalized for teachers just as they work to teach to each student’s individual learning needs. While it may sound daunting to provide personalized professional development for teachers across a K-12 district, technology like PowerSchool Professional Learning makes this achievable through customizable and user-friendly learning interfaces. When combined with feedback using holistic student performance data from PowerSchool Performance Matters, you have the ingredients for building an effective professional development program.

Data shows results and informs more effective professional growth

Opportunities for growth found in student performance data can indicate areas where teachers should focus on developing their skills. It’s not always a direct link, but looking to student performance data is an effective starting point for building successful teacher development.

For example, a school’s data might show 9^th and 10^th grade students are struggling in Geometry. Leadership digs deeper and finds that a number of these students are doing well in most or all of their other classes.

The school decides to investigate further. They reach out to the teachers of the struggling classes and schedule observations to assess classroom conditions, teacher engagement, and provide constructive feedback.

Alternatively, the data may show that one or two teachers’ classes are performing above average. The school could look into teaching practices in those classes to see if the other teachers could apply them to boost student performance. Either of these situations presents an opportunity to recommend professional development actions to support classroom success, if the school is utilizing a program that offers individualized learning options.

But before prescribing a solution and moving forward, it’s important to consider all the angles. The wrong move could waste time and resources, or even exacerbate teacher frustration. Encouraging teachers to become more active in professional development activities will not translate to student success unless development is targeted precisely at areas where improvement benefits students. And teachers have precious little time to spare.

Measure student performance holistically to get it right

Many factors can lead to student struggles in the classroom. Looking to instructional methods is a solid starting point, but classroom resources, scheduling issues, behavioral problems, class sizes, and countless other conditions can also cause student grades to slip. Looking at student data holistically is the only way to truly see the big picture and identify areas to focus on improvement.

In our example above, students are struggling in Geometry considerably more than other subjects. Going only as deep as this identifies a key symptom, but not the problem that’s causing students to fall short of expectations. Merely asking the teachers leading these classes to participate in a standardized professional development program is essentially like saying, “do better.” And that kind of feedback won’t help teachers successfully address challenges any more than it would help the students if they were told the same thing. To be constructive, feedback must be specific.

The big picture might look completely different

Looking at attendance records, behavior data, and other valuable information in addition to grades and test scores yields a deeper understanding of why students succeed or struggle. Going back to our example, the school notices in the data that behavioral issues rose sharply at the beginning of the school year in the troubled classes. Again, many of the students acting out in these classes do not have the same histories in their other classes.

At first this may seem perplexing—why would students in different classes, with different teachers, but within the same subject be struggling to achieve on tests and increasingly acting out?

But this school began the year with a shortage of teachers, and math classes are currently understaffed, meaning class sizes are maxed out and a less experienced teacher was hired just before the school year to teach Geometry. She’s adjusting relatively well, but her onboarding was rushed, and fellow Geometry teachers have little time to offer support as they are nearly overwhelmed by their own class sizes.

The school decides that suggesting professional development for these teachers in the area of classroom management techniques would likely be beneficial in the short term, and they reach out to district leadership for a teacher at another school to mentor the new hire through weekly video conferences. The teachers quickly begin putting new skills into practice as they learn them, and the new teacher gets a weekly opportunity to ask questions, receive encouragement and affirmation, and develop a strong professional bond.

Meanwhile, the school has data to support increased investment in recruiting and hiring to fill open teaching positions.

Seeing the big picture allowed the school to address the challenge with professional development activities and long-term strategic thinking. While student performance data points to the effectiveness of a professional development program, it’s also key to improving teacher development when used to inform individualized professional learning.

Every school is unique, just as every student and teacher’s learning needs and strengths vary. A holistic view of student data gives K-12 districts and schools the ability to identify where professional development is working and how it can be improved with targeted learning plans.

It comes down to using the right tools

PowerSchool Professional Learning provides the platform for individualized professional learning teachers need to develop their unique skills and boost classroom success. It’s fully customizable, allowing administrators to create and manage learning plans, processes, and workflows. When an opportunity for growth is spotted in student performance data, a teacher’s professional development can be adjusted on the fly to support that need.

Professional Learning also allows for the creation of professional learning communities and online discussions where teachers share their knowledge and expertise. These discussion groups help teachers learn from peers, develop comradery, and approach challenges as a team.

And when it comes to student data, Performance Matters enables better decision making based on a 360° look at student data. View assessment, attendance, and behavior data from multiple sources on a single screen. No cobbling together complicated spreadsheets and pivot tables—everything you need to make data-informed decisions is easily accessible.

¹ https://www.rand.org/education-and-labor/projects/measuring-teacher-effectiveness/teachers-matter.html