C-SAIL Year 3 Convening: Implementation Study Presentation

Laura Desimone presents Year 2 findings from the Implementation Study at C-SAIL\u27s second annual A Conversation on College- and Career-Readiness Standards in Washington, D.C. on April 27, 2018. This PowerPoint presentation corresponds to a presentation video available at c-sail.org/videos

C-SAIL Year 2 Convening: Implementation Study Presentation

Laura Desimone presents Year 1 findings from the Implementation Study at C-SAIL\u27s first annual A Conversation on College- and Career-Readiness Standards in Washington, D.C. on November 18, 2016. This PowerPoint presentation corresponds to a presentation video available at c-sail.org/videos

Mejores prácticas de desarrollo profesional docente en Estados Unidos

This paper discusses best practices in teachers’ professional development (PD) in the United States (U.S.). We begin by presenting a conceptual framework for effective professional development, which suggests five key features that make professional development effective—content focus, active learning, coherence, sustained duration, and collective participation. We then describe the findings from recent U.S. research that has tested the five features, with an emphasis on the results of rigorous randomized control trials. We discuss several insights gained from this work and that have helped refine the framework. They are that (a) changing procedural classroom behavior is easier than improving content knowledge or inquiry-oriented instruction techniques; (b) teachers vary in response to the same PD; (c) PD is more successful when it is explicitly linked to classroom lessons; (d) PD research and implementation must allow for urban contexts (e.g., student and teacher mobility); and (e) leadership plays a key role in supporting and encouraging teachers to implement in the classroom the ideas and strategies they learned in the PD. We then examine three major trends in how professional development for teachers is evolving in the U.S.—a move away from short workshops, linking teacher PD to evaluations, and the use of video technology to improve and monitor the effects of PD. Finally, we discuss the challenges faced by districts and schools in implementing effective professional development.Este artículo analiza las mejores prácticas de desarrollo profesional docente (DPD) en los Estados Unidos de América (USA). Comenzamos presentando un marco conceptual sobre DPD, que sugiere la existencia de cinco características clave que favorecen un DPD efectivo: foco en el contenido, aprendizaje activo, coherencia, duración sostenida, y participación colectiva. Continuamos describiendo los resultados de recientes investigaciones que han puesto a prueba dichas cinco características en USA, enfatizando los resultados de rigurosos estudios experimentales aleatorizados. Discutimos las lecciones aprendidas a partir de dichos estudios, que nos han permitido refinar nuestro marco teórico sobre el DPD efectivo. Hemos aprendido que (a) cambiar el comportamiento de los profesores en clase es más fácil que mejorar sus conocimientos disciplinares o las estrategias instruccionales de alto nivel; (b) los profesores varían en respuesta al mismo DPD; (c) DPD es más exitoso cuando está explícitamente conectado con la práctica docente; (d) la investigación y la implementación del DPD debe tener en cuenta las condiciones de las áreas urbanas (e.g., la movilidad de estudiantes y profesores); y (e) los líderes juegan un rol fundamental apoyando y animando a los profesores para que apliquen en sus clases las ideas y estrategias aprendidas en DPD. Después examinamos tres tendencias generales en la evaluación reciente del DPD en USA—un descenso en el uso de cursos y talleres de corta duración, la conexión del DPD con las evaluaciones del profesorado, y el uso de video-tecnología para mejorar y supervisar los efectos del DPD. Finalmente, discutimos las dificultades que los distritos y las escuelas encuentran para implementar DPD efectivo

Fostering Collaboration between Preservice Educational Leadership and School Counseling Graduate Candidates

The purpose of this mixed-method study was to examine the perspectives of educational leadership and school counselor (SC) pre-service candidates on SC utilization in PreK-12 schools, barriers to implementing effective SC programs and professional SC identities, roles and responsibilities. Candidates (n = 105) participated in a collaborative class, where they engaged in group reflections and completed a survey. Emerging themes included time constraints, negative school culture, poor principal-counselor relationships, lack of communication and shared leadership

Standards Implementation in Kentucky: Local Perspectives on Policy, Challenges, Resources, and Instruction

This report examines select data from a survey administered to principals and teachers in the state of Kentucky during the spring of 2016. The results presented focus on responses about the state’s standards-based reform policies as described by the policy attributes (Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille, 1988), the theoretical framework that undergirds C-SAIL’s research. The framework suggests that five attributes are related to successful policy implementation, and that the stronger each attribute is, the better implementation will be

Year 1 State Report: California

This report examines how the state of California approached college- and career-ready standards implementation during a time of transition. For the purposes of this report and in keeping with C-SAIL’s focus, the authors concentrate on implementation of California’s English language arts (ELA) and math standards

Teacher Implementation of College and Career-Ready Standards: Challenges & Resources

Because teachers are the primary implementers of college- and career-ready standards, C-SAIL examined the challenges teachers face in using the standards in the classroom, the resources they find to be most helpful, and their attitudes toward the standards. This brief examines these issues using 2016–2017 survey data from Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky

An integrative approach to professional development to support college- and career- readiness standards.

Though scholars agree that professional development (PD) is a key mechanism for implementing education policies that call for teacher change, and that PD generally needs to be content-focused, active, collaborative, coherent, and sustained, the application of this framework has yielded mixed results. In this qualitative study, we employed structured interviewing methods to explore how district leaders across five states are implementing college- and career- readiness (CCR) standards across the United States by creatively adapting and integrating the features of this PD framework in order to meet the demands of this mandated educational policy. We illustrate a revised model for how 70 district officials are conceptualizing these features of PD to support CCR standards-based learning

Standards Implementation in Texas: Local Perspectives on Policy, Challenges, Resources, and Instruction

This report examines select data from a survey administered to districts, principals, and teachers in the state of Texas during the spring of 2016. The results presented focus on responses about the state’s standards-based reform policies as described by the policy attributes (Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille, 1988), the theoretical framework that undergirds C-SAIL’s research. The framework suggests that five attributes are related to successful policy implementation, and that the stronger each attribute is, the better implementation will be

How is policy affecting classroom instruction?

Five-plus years into the experiment with new “college- and career-ready standards” (of which Common Core is the most notable and most controversial example), we know little about teachers’ implementation and the ways policy can support that implementation. This paper uses new state-representative teacher survey data to characterize the degree of standards implementation across three states—Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas. We also investigate teachers’ perceptions of the extent to which the policy environment supports them to implement the standards. We find a great deal of variation in perceptions of policy, with Ohio teachers perceiving policy to be less supportive than Kentucky or Texas teachers. Teachers in all states are mostly implementing the content in new standards, but they are also teaching a good deal of content they should not—content that has been deemphasized in their grade-level standards. Perceptions of policy do not explain much of the variation in instruction, contrary to our theory. If greater attention is not paid to supporting teachers to implement the standards and reduce coverage of deemphasized content, we worry the standards will not have much effect