By Hayes Mizell

Journal of Staff Development, Summer 2001 (Vol. 22, No. 3)

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2001. All rights reserved.

Question: Which of the following does not belong?

Answer: (c) The Seven Deadly Sins. They are a mere statement of undesirable behaviors (pride, wrath, envy, sloth, avarice, greed, and lust). The others are guidelines for, respectively, life, liberty, and professional growth.

Some may say it’s a stretch to claim that the recently revised NSDC Standards for Staff Development are comparable to such cherished documents as the Bill of Rights and the 10 Commandments. Yet, for staff developers the comparison is not as outrageous as it might first appear. Just as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were a reaction to the abuses of British rule, the standards are in part a reaction to frequent abuses of staff development, from concept to implementation.

The standards point the way to a more fulfilling (professional) life. They represent a road map to high quality staff development. They provide directions to that destination, but don’t dictate the mode of transport, its speed, or how many rest stops drivers will make along the way. Some school systems and schools will choose the new route the standards suggest. Others will continue on the meandering scenic route that is reassuringly familiar only because it’s really an endless loop.

The standards are necessary because for too long the professional development practices of too many school systems and schools have led nowhere. Year after year, their staff development has amounted to little more than a disparate set of adult learning activities with few demonstrable results other than participants’ mounting frustration. Over time, these unproductive experiences have disappointed or even alienated educators and eroded staff development’s credibility and core constituents — the teachers and administrators who depend on it for professional renewal.

NSDC’s new standards can guide school systems and schools to break out of this downward spiral. They are informative and provocative, but not regulatory. They are clear and direct. Neither educators nor citizens should have difficulty understanding them or their implications.

The product of NSDC’s collaboration with more than 25 educators and policy makers from more than 15 professional education organizations, the standards represent remarkable consensus about the prerequisites of context, process, and content for staff development that results in higher levels of learning.

At the same time, NSDC has learned from the mistakes of states and professional associations that have developed content standards for student learning. In their zeal to define what students should know and be able to do, the developers of these standards often produced long lists that were excessively complex and dense. One result has been that many teachers have felt overwhelmed by academic standards, unsure what they mean or how to implement them within the limits of a school year.

NSDC, on the other hand, has taken the bold step of reducing by half the number of standards in its 2001 revision compared with those in the 1995 edition. It has focused on those it considers most essential for school systems and schools to observe in providing high quality staff development that will ultimately increase student learning.

There will be dedicated, hardworking educators of good will who will question the need for professional development standards. They may assert, as many teachers have done in relation to content standards for students, that they are professionals and do not need the standards to help them meet the learning needs of teachers and administrators. While it is true that increasing numbers of educators are embracing effective staff development practices and abandoning those that are problematic, they are still the exception in most school systems and schools. Unfortunately, the strongest argument for the standards is the poor results most staff development continues to yield.

Some educators will cite the standards’ more challenging elements and assert that they are not "practical" or "politically realistic." But NSDC did not pull these out of thin air. They are the product of research, hard thinking, discussion, and debate among educators grounded in the realities of school systems’ and schools’ operations.

Certainly, creating and sustaining systemic staff development that is congruent with the standards will require old-fashioned intestinal fortitude and effort. No change in public education is easy, but in the case of staff development there is a silent majority of teachers and administrators waiting for leaders determined to make professional development more rewarding and effective.

Whether or not they know it, many educators are hungry for the guidance and challenges the standards provide. Thankfully, the standards and rationale do not mince words:

"Workshops and courses. . .are limited in their ability to affect permanent changes in daily practice."

"School systems [should] dedicate at least 10% of their budgets to staff development. …At least 25% of an educator’s work time (should be) devoted to learning and collaboration with colleagues."

"It is critical that teams of teachers and administrators take the time to methodically study the research that supports the claims made by advocates of a particular approach to instructional improvement or whole-school reform. Such study often extends for several months."

"Evaluation [of staff development] must focus on teachers’ acquisition of new knowledge and skills, how that learning affects teaching, and in turn how those changes in practice affect student learning."

Though these are just a few of many powerful statements in the standards material, they illustrate that NSDC and its collaborators believe that to improve the quality and results of public education, it is necessary to push the boundaries of normative staff development practice.

Thousands of educators agree, but many of their colleagues who are responsible for determining the context, process, and content of professional development are myopic about its potential. It is these decision makers’ own unfortunate staff development experiences that have distorted their vision of what professional development is: theater-style seating, a visiting expert from outside the school system, a PowerPoint presentation, and a largely passive audience. Like the teachers in many classrooms, the person "presenting" is working the hardest and learning the most.

NSDC understands that such practices are pervasive, and that for public education to improve dramatically there must be an equally dramatic new vision for staff development. The new standards serve that purpose.

But who will read and use the standards to create staff development experiences that significantly increase teachers’ and administrators’ effectiveness?

One would hope that every legislator, every member of every state board of education, and every local school board member would use the standards for bedtime reading and sleep with this document under their pillows. That is only a slight exaggeration of what is necessary to influence state and local policies that shape so much professional development. The sad fact is that most policy makers do not know there is a new vision for staff development or that it can have a direct and beneficial impact on student learning. There is a tremendous need for members of NSDC and the collaborating organizations to create venues for elected leaders to learn about the standards and how they can use them to cultivate laws, regulations, and policies that will yield more powerful professional development.

This raises the interesting question of whether these staff development opportunities for policy makers will themselves reflect the admonitions of the standards, or whether they will look more like the familiar training paradigms.

How clear will standards advocates be about the specific results they are seeking to achieve through their interactions with policy makers? How will they go beyond "exposing" these leaders to the ideas and instead engage them in understanding the implications for policy and practice? What will be the context, process, and content that advocates create and use with legislators and school board members? How advocates answer and act on these questions will send subtle but persuasive messages about whether the vision the standards represent is powerful enough to apply even to adult learners who happen to be policy makers.

But educating consumers and potential beneficiaries must be both a top-down and bottom-up process. Just as policy makers need to understand and use the standards, so too should superintendents and central office administrators who make decisions about staff development. While inappropriate and ineffective staff development is not confined to any one sector of public education, central office often adheres to traditional staff development and pulls the rug from under good intentions for instructional improvement.

Each day, central office administrators make quiet but fateful decisions, perhaps unconsciously, that affect the context, process, and content of staff development. This is not likely to change until the school board and the superintendent understand and embrace NSDC’s standards, and expect central office staff to use them to benchmark routine decisions that impact professional development.

The standards also can be a valuable tool for teachers and administrators who are dissatisfied with the current state of staff development and want to initiate change. The principal and the school’s site-based decision making team can use them as a catalyst to examine how staff development functions in the school and how it could serve teachers and students more effectively. Because the standards are a guide, not a recipe, school systems and schools have great latitude in determining where and how to begin reforming their staff development.

The first step is for teachers and administrators to have the standards in hand, to make time to review and discuss them, and to understand the implications for teachers’ efforts to help students meet academic goals. With that impetus, the school’s leaders can plot a course for beginning to bring their staff development in line with the standards. This will take time, and it will be a struggle to keep the standards and the goal of strengthening staff development near the top of the school’s agenda. The important thing is to begin and to sustain the effort to bring the standards to life in the school’s decisions affecting teachers’ professional development.

The standards are not self-implementing. In spite of NSDC’s best efforts, many people will not know about them or will be so leery of anything called "standards" they will dismiss these as one more attempt to homogenize professional practice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, NSDC knows that one of the limiting conditions of current staff development is that it functions within a very narrow range of methodology and quality. The standards seek to expand the options of staff developers and the teachers and administrators who participate in professional development.

But nothing will change without the initiative of individual teachers, administrators, and central office staff. Will a teacher bring the standards to the attention of his or her principal? Will a principal dare suggest to central office staff that it appears there is a disconnect between the standards and the staff development practices of the school system? Will a school board member or legislator take the time to read the standards and urge his or her colleagues to do so? Will a superintendent organize a task group of central office staff, principals, and teacher union representatives to study the standards and develop a plan for the school system and its schools to use them? Or will the standards become tightly wedged in educators’ and policy makers’ bookshelves already stuffed with more useful knowledge than has found its way into practice?

The new standards are much more than a document. They are a call to action to NSDC’s members and to the entire field of professional development. For teachers, administrators, and policy makers, they are a call to break out of old patterns of settling for just anything labeled "professional development." The standards are about new expectations and challenging opportunities, but how high they will elevate the practice and results of staff development depends on how seriously NSDC members use them and how forcefully they advocate that others apply them.