Part of the reason many districts fail to achieve the promise of high-quality professional learning is that they operate with what the authors call a "PD mindset." This mindset manifests in sporadic, one-time events, inservice sessions, guest speakers, webinars, and workshops that are not part of a larger plan or vision. The authors…

Professional learning usually means growing an educators' knowledge base, abilities, and mindsets for the purpose of benefiting students. But Harford County Public Schools in Maryland has reframed it with a much broader scope. Professional learning is now called organizational development, reflecting the district's aim for everyone in all…

To make a difference for educators and students, workshops must be an integrated part of a larger professional learning strategy. In working with schools and districts, the authors have seen how workshops can go wrong -- but also how they can go right, anchoring and forwarding a professional learning strategy that is grounded in Standards for…

The instructional coaches in Kildeer Countryside School District 96 (KCSD 96), outside Chicago, are like tugboats, a key part of a maritime navigation system. Just as tugboats nudge and guide barges and ships that need steering assistance to navigate tricky waters, the coaches in KCSD 96 nudge and guide educators to navigate toward school and…

Building a culture of equity requires ensuring that leaders and school staff have a shared vision for what educational equity means, what it looks like, and how to get there. It also necessitates a willingness to hold people accountable to the vision and the work needed to make it a reality. This takes a clear road map for achieving the consistent…

Learning Forward's Professional Learning State and District Planner is a guide to help state, district, and school leaders implement professional learning to support high-quality curriculum and instructional materials. Grounded in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) definition of high-quality professional learning as intensive, data-driven,…

What drives many educators is the need to advocate for students for whom the system does not work. Educators need to find ways to close the equity gap for English learners and kids living in poverty, and that means they need to find ways to improve their access to a high-quality education. As a key strategy for building teachers capacity to…

Educators often shy away from evaluating professional learning experiences because they believe the process requires knowledge and skills they don't possess. As a result, they either neglect evaluation procedures completely or leave them to "experts" who come in at the end and gather data to determine if anything made a difference. But…

The path to principalship in Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida is not one taken lightly. After receiving the Wallace Foundation Principal Pipeline Initiative grant, Hillsborough was one of six districts that developed a comprehensive principal pipeline based on four key components: leader standards that define the role of principal;…

Imagine teachers, administrators, and university mathematicians and staff learning together in a lab setting where students are excited about attending a week-long summer math event because they are at the forefront of the experience. Piloted in three New Mexico classrooms during summer 2014, MathLab expanded into 17 lab settings over six…