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ERIC Number: EJ978911
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Feb
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0276-928X
EISSN: N/A
The Bottom Line on Excellence: A Guide to Investing in Professional Learning that Increases Educator Performance and Student Results
Killion, Joellen; Hirsh, Stephanie
Journal of Staff Development, v33 n1 p10-16 Feb 2012
What percentage of their budgets should schools and districts invest in professional learning? To answer that question, schools and districts must first know how much they are spending on professional learning and be able to connect that spending to student achievement. Knowing what is invested in professional learning requires understanding the multiple sources of funding for professional learning, how those funds are dispersed, how the funds are coded, and who manages the expenditures. Understanding what is invested in professional learning requires consensus on what constitutes an expense, consistency in coding expenditures, and sophisticated accounting systems that can aggregate and analyze expense categories across multiple income areas by program, school, or income source. Adequate accounting systems increase districts' and schools' ability to analyze, prioritize, coordinate, and monitor resources for professional learning. This article presents a list of principles that will guide districts and schools in allocating and assessing resources in professional learning. For many districts and schools, these principles require a shift from how they have traditionally supported professional learning to emphasize structures and policies that lead to practices linking educator learning to student learning. The bottom line is that truly focusing professional development requires administrators to figure out where their dollars are spent, whether those patterns align to strategic goals for teacher improvement, and, if not, institute changes to the spending.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A