Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id hB5MjJm23116; Fri, 5 Dec 2003 17:45:19 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 17:45:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <19e.1dcdbe34.2d02637d@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: MWPotts2001@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2618] professional development X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Mac sub 39 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Status: O Content-Length: 3720 Lines: 101 Colleagues, While the following article refers to Professional Development in K-12 schools, much of the message is true for those of us in adult education: The Key to ensuring that teachers, and other educators have the knowledge and skills they need to meet the challenges of today's classrooms is ensuring that they have access to sustained, intensive professional development. To ensure that adult education professionals receive the content and process information that is required to implement the EFF initiative, the EFF National Center continually aims to improve the quality of the professional developers available to programs across the country. Recently, the EFF Center published a list of Nationally Certified EFF Facilitators: Joani Allen, Caroline Beverstock, Donna Curry, Lisa Levinson, Emily McDonald, Jane Meyer, Andy Nash, Meta Potts, Mary Dunn-Siedow, Dougie Taylor, and Amy Trawick. Most of them will continue their own professional development at the upcoming EFF Institute to be held in Knoxville, TN, Dec 7-10. They are ready to assist you with quality professional development, too. Contact Diane Gardner at EFF Center for Training and Technical Assistance Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee 600 Henley Street, Suite 312 Knoxville, TN 37996 865- 974-8426 eff@utk.edu This article is from the PEN Weekly NewsBlast for December 5, 2003. DELIVERING, FINANCING & ASSESSING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Professional development, including both pre-service and in-service training, is a critical component of the nation’s effort to improve schools and student achievement. Key to ensuring that teachers, principals, and other educators have the knowledge and skills they need to meet the challenges of today's classrooms is ensuring that they have access to sustained, intensive professional development. A new paper from The Finance Project examines how the financing of professional development directly affects what professional development takes place, how it is made available, who participates, who pays, and what impacts it has. In their view, improving professional development in education depends on better information about how cost-effective those investments are. With the goal of concisely synthesizing a range of information not otherwise accessible in one place and disseminating it to the field, this paper examines what pre-service and in-service professional development is required and how it is delivered, financed, and assessed for teachers as well as principals and superintendents. While the status quo of how professional development is delivered around the country and efforts to measure its effectiveness can give a bleak picture when taken as a whole, this paper is in no way intended to condemn what all school systems are doing. To be sure, there are a significant number of districts, schools, and individuals who are doing it right. The focus of The Finance Project’s work in this area is to highlight promising practices and how they are financed, in order to provide models to others who need information to make positive changes. http://www.financeprojectinfo.org/Publications/prof%20dev%2011-2-03.pdf Another article with a similar message can be found in this article by Richard Elmore for the Albert Shanker Institute, in which he discusses the key role of professional development in ensuring the success of standards-based educational improvement efforts. <A HREF="http://www.shankerinstitute.org/Downloads/Bridging_Gap.pdf"> www.shankerinstitute.org/Downloads/Bridging_Gap.pdf</A> All the Best, Meta Potts, Moderator 4-EFF List FOCUS on Literacy Glen Allen, VA mwpotts2001@aol.com
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