How is the study aligned to one of your APPAS goals?

This study is a direct result of the 2002 Florida Department of Education Professional Development System Evaluation Protocol results. In these results, Broward Public Schools's professional development events received high marks in regards to planning, delivery, and follow-up of training. The district's challenge is to improve how we evaluate our professional development programs. District level Standard 3.4 (Evaluation) is the basis of why this study exists and is the focus of one of my APPAS goals.

What documents exist today to demonstrate specific events or programs actually worked to boost students scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test? How does quality professional development impact administrators and instructional staff within schools that are implementing specific professional development protocols? How can these improvements show direct correlation to specific professional development intiatives and not a smattering of non specific offerings? According to University of Virginia professor Robert Pianta, tests in all likelihood will not measure real teaching or learning. Pianta's research shows that neither their years of training nor passing content tests predicts the quality of k-12 teachers' classrooms or the performance of their students. According to his findings only about 25 percent of first through fifth graders are exposed to classrooms offering high levels of instructional and emotional support, even though the vast majority of those teachers fulfills the NCLB definition of "highly qualified": having full state certification, a bachelor's degree, and demonstrated competence in subject area and teaching.

In Pianta's work it is the large scale objective measurement of thousands of classrooms and the ways observation is linked to support for teachers that is unique. But a clear finding from this study is also that for all children, a high-quality classroom experience is mostly a matter of luck - for 1,000 children observed across 1st, 3rd and 5th grades, fewer than 200 are in a moderately high quality classroom on all three occasions. The University of Virginia study proves that teaching can indeed be assessed, but not by testing teachers and administrators. Once effective, high-quality teaching and administering can be observed and identified, it is possible to use those observations as a target for training and supporting educators anywhere. I believe that this concept can be adjusted to use with BCPS professional development. Ultimately creating a measurement through a collective understanding and conversation about the challenges we, as educators, face.