May 31: Last day to save $75 on registration for 2012 Annual Conference in Boston More Info June 30: Board of Trustees nomination deadline More Info July 22-25: 2012 Summer Conference in Denver More Info

Design staff development with student needs in mind

By Joellen Killion
RESULTS - April 1999

The standard: Effective staff development bases priorities on a careful analysis of disaggregated student data regarding goals for student learning.

We've gotten into the habit of beginning our staff development planning with an annual needs assessment that results in a diverse "wish list" of topics staff members want to learn more about. The staff development committee juggles this list and builds a plan that is likely to please some and frustrate others. This is the wrong starting point for staff development planning.

Staff development in schools today should be less what "I want to learn" and more "what I need to learn" to improve the learning of all students. Such staff development planning begins with the end in mind. It focuses on what students are expected to know and be able to do and includes a thorough analysis of where students are in relationship to where we want them to be.

To plan staff development backwards, teams first become familiar with the standards or expectations for student learning. This means studying the curriculum, reviewing district, state, and/or national standards, and analyzing the scope and sequence.

With this baseline knowledge, staff development planners next must carefully and thoroughly disaggregate student performance data. This analysis requires examining multiple forms of student performance data rather than a single test. For example, schools should collect and analyze norm-referenced tests, state assessment tests, district and classroom performance assessments, student work, and other evidence.

Data analysts should answer several questions: What patterns emerge from the various data? What student performance deficits emerge across multiple sources? In what areas of the discipline are students strong and weak? For which students are these deficits and strengths most apparent? What is our best educated guess about what causes these results?

Knowing students are weak in mathematics is insufficient as a starting point for planning staff development. Planners need more specific information so they can select content for staff development and design appropriate learning experiences for teachers. Knowing the subskills or key concepts that students lack and which students need attention in these areas is critical to further planning in staff development.

Too often, schools' staff development plans are based on broad areas of deficit. For example, if a middle school's reading scores are low, the school's staff development activities may focus on reading for the year. This is admirable, but it misses the point. The school needs to know that students, especially male students, are weakest in their comprehension of non-fiction. Without that information, the school can't effectively develop a staff development plan to improve student reading.

Hypothesizing about the root causes gives us information in our search for appropriate staff development. If we know male middle school students need help understanding non-fiction, we must be able to make some guesses about the causes in order to plan effectively. If a lack of appropriate library resources is the root cause, we won't need an extensive workshop on comprehension of content area texts. If we hypothesize that students lack skills to understand text structure and that teachers lack the strategies to help students acquire those skills, we know enough to design a staff development plan.

Such specific student information rarely emerges from an open-ended needs assessment. Teachers may know reading is a problem but, without carefully examining student performance data and comparing student needs to curriculum standards, schools will be in the dark about how to design staff development that will improve student performance. As a result, the impact of any staff development efforts will be insignificant.