Professional Development Standards

Professional development is a system designed to provide continuous growth and learning in order to improve the capacity of an education community as it responds to the needs of all learners. It is of utmost importance that all adults in all learning communities experience high-quality professional learning on an ongoing basis.  Below you will find the Rhode Island Quality Standards for Professional Development followed by the No Child Left Behind Federal Definition of High Quality Professional Development.

Rhode Island Quality Standards for Professional Development

Context Standards

• Learning Communities: organizes all adults involved in educating students into learning communities with goals that are aligned with those of the School Improvement Plan and the District Strategic Plan.
• Leadership: requires effective district leaders who are goals driven and guide continuous instructional improvement through ongoing professional development.
• Resources: requires appropriate resources that are consistently provided to support adult learning and collaboration.

Process Standards

• Data-driven: uses multiple sources of student data to determine adult learning priorities, monitor progress, and help sustain continuous improvement.
• Evaluation: continuously uses multiple sources of information to demonstrate its impact in order to guide improvement.
• Research-based: prepares educators to apply research to all aspects of learning and teaching.
• Designs and strategies: uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal. Acknowledges the importance of new practices as well as existing effective practices. Uses a systematic design that allows for implementation over time and builds in support systems and necessary extended activities to sustain change.
• Learning: applies knowledge of human development, learning and change, in order to acknowledge distinct attributes and characteristics of adult learners.
• Professional communities of learners and practice: provides educators with the knowledge and skills needed to foster and develop collaborations and partnerships.

Content Standards

• Equity: prepares educators to understand and appreciate all students, create safe, orderly, and supportive learning environments, and ensures the attainment of high academic standards by all students.
• Engaging Families and Communities: provides educators with knowledge and skills to initiate positive interactive relationships with families, community members, and other stakeholders as they participate in the education of their children.
• Quality teaching: is informed by individual, school and district goals to deepen educators’ content knowledge, provide them with research based instructional strategies to assist all students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepare them to implement a variety of classroom assessments appropriately.

No Child Left Behind Federal Definition of High Quality Professional Development

• Improves and increases teachers’ knowledge of the academic subjects the teachers teach, and enable teachers to become highly qualified
• Improves classroom management skills
• Supports the recruiting, hiring, and training of highly qualified teachers, including teachers who became highly qualified through State and local alternative routes to certification
• Is designed to give teachers of limited English proficient children, and other teachers and instructional staff, the knowledge and skills to provide instruction and appropriate language and academic support services to those children, including the appropriate use of curricula and assessments.
• Provides instruction in methods of teaching children with special needs
• To the extent appropriate, provides training for teachers and principals in the use of technology so that technology and technology applications are effectively used in the classroom to improve teaching and learning in the curricula and core academic subjects in which the teachers teach
• Includes instruction in the use of data and assessment to inform and instruct classroom practice
• Includes instruction in ways that teachers, principals, pupil services personnel, and school administrators may work more effectively with parents
• May include activities that create programs to enable paraprofessionals (assisting teachers employed by a local educational agency receiving assistance under part A of title I) to obtain the education necessary for those paraprofessionals to become certified and licensed teachers
• May include activities that involve the forming of partnerships with institutions of higher education to establish school-based teacher training programs that provide prospective teachers and beginning teachers with an opportunity to work under the guidance of experience teachers and college faculty
• Advances teacher understanding of effective instructional strategies that are based on scientifically based research (except that this sub-clause shall not apply to activities carried out under part D of title II)
• Advances teacher understanding of effective instructional strategies that are strategies for improving student academic achievement or substantially increasing the knowledge and teaching skills of teachers
• Gives teachers, principals and administrators the knowledge and skills to provide students with the opportunity to meet challenging State academic content standards and student academic achievement standards
• Is aligned and directly related to State academic content standards, student academic achievement standards, and assessments
• Is aligned and directly related to the curricula and programs tied to the standards described in the above except that this sub-clause shall not apply to activities described in clauses (ii) and (iii) of section 21123(3)(B)
• Is integral part of broad school wide and district wide educational improvement plans
• Is high quality, sustained, intensive, and classroom-focused in order to have a positive and lasting impact on classroom instruction and the teacher’s performance in the classroom
• Is not 1-day or short-term workshop or conference
• Is developed with extensive participation of teachers, principals, parents, and administrators of schools to be served under this Act
• Provides follow-up training to teachers who have participated in activities that are designed to ensure that the knowledge and skills learned by the teachers are implemented in the classroom.
• As a whole, is regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievement, with the findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development

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