The National Staff Development Council has revised its Standards for Staff Development which reflect what NSDC and the broader staff development community have learned about professional learning since the creation of the original standards in 1995.

The revision of the standards was guided by three questions:

• What are all students expected to know and be able to do?
• What must teachers know and do in order to ensure student success?
• Where must staff development focus to meet both goals?

Staff development standards provide direction for designing a professional development experience that ensures educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. Staff development must be results-driven, standards-based, and job-embedded. The 12 revised standards (reduced from the original 27 standards) are still divided into the three categories of context, process, and content.

Content refers to the new knowledge and skills that all stakeholders will need as schools implement professional development programs. Content can include such topics as Core Learning Goals, higher expectations for students, research-based instructional strategies, new assessments, and other practices. Context are the conditions that surround the required changes in professional practices. Concepts such as the belief in continuous improvement, leadership and advocacy, and time for learning are context issues. Process describes the “how” of staff development.

You may want to view the standards and other resources on the NSDC Web site.

Though you may have delegated to a teacher on staff or a staff committee the responsibility for planning and implementing your staff development activities, it remains your responsibility to identify the priority areas for training aligned with your school improvement goals and staff needs in relationship to those goals. You cannot provide teachers all the training you or they think they need. You will have to prioritize top needs based on school data and school improvement goals. If you consider it a priority to meet state standards, then understanding how the state assesses performance is critical knowledge for all staff to have. It is the best chance students have of being told what those assessments measure and, therefore, being prepared to be successful. They must also know how to teach and assess the content standard indicators. Your problem clarification process and the strategies you identified to solve your problem should also direct your professional development priorities.

The following examples of activities may be a piece of your professional development plan.

1. Using templates of indicators on MDK12, have staff identify for their teaching assignment the indicators they teach, during which unit, and how frequently they assess it. They might ask the following reflection questions at the end of the exercise.
   • Which indicators do I cover in my teaching?
   • Which indicators do I minimally or not at all cover?
   • Am I collecting enough assessment data on the indicator to monitor progress?

2. Provide 6 student responses to a stance question to a table of 5 to 10 teachers. Ask them to score the papers on a three point scale. When they are finished, give them a scoring tool and anchor papers and ask them to rescore them. Show them how scorers awarded points to the same papers. You can do the same exercise with high school student responses by giving them the rubric and anchor papers for the corresponding question.

3. Introduce the staff to the interactive scoring tool on the mdk12 site. Have them try their hand at scoring actual student responses and compare their scores to the scores provided by the real scorers.

 
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