For the teachers on here - how you feel about this article

[TexMichFan]

Could the money spent here be used in a better way? My has been to some staff developments that are great but for the most part she is not a fan.

Teaching Teachers: Big Costs, Little Payoff
We're wasting billions on professional development, as a new study documents. What can be done about a culture of low expectations.

"The Mirage," was based on surveys of 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, along with interviews with more than 100 staff involved in teacher development. The surveys and interviews were conducted in three large school districts and a mid-sized charter-school network.

Improvements in performance that were found seemed to stem more from learning the job, almost invariably coming in the first few years of a teacher's career. The difference in effectiveness between the average fifth-year teacher compared to a rookie was more than nine times greater than the difference between the average fifth-year teacher and those in their 20th year.

There is plenty of room to improve. Using multiple measures such as teacher evaluations, classroom observation and student test scores, TNTP rated about half the teachers in their 10th year or beyond as below "effective" in core instructional practices such as developing students' critical thinking.

For this to change, districts need to begin by improving communication with teachers about their performance and areas where improvement is needed. The vast majority of teachers studied received ratings from their districts or charter operator of "meeting expectations" or better. Amazingly, fewer than half the teachers surveyed agreed that they had any weaknesses in their performance. Even among the few teachers who earned low ratings from their own school districts, 60 percent gave themselves high performance ratings.

The line from the study that jumps off the page is that the findings suggest "a pervasive culture of low expectations for teacher development and performance."

The problems are certainly not due to a lack of resources. The districts and charter-school network that were the focus of the study spent nearly $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development. They also dedicated 19 full school days, about 10 percent of a typical school year, to the programs. Based on these findings, TNTP estimates that the 50 largest U.S. school districts alone spend about $8 billion annually on teacher development, far more than was previously thought.

TNTP makes several common-sense recommendations for fixing the problem. In addition to giving teachers a much better picture of their own performance and progress, districts must explore alternative approaches to professional development. They should evaluate the effectiveness of all teacher-development programs based on the programs' ability to yield measurable progress toward a clearly defined standard for teaching and student learning. Resources should be reallocated to the programs that yield the greatest improvement.

"The Mirage" is no outlier. Over the last decade, two federally funded studies of teacher-development programs reached similar conclusions. School leaders should heed TNTP's recommendations, which would make for a good start toward changing that "pervasive culture of low expectations."

 

[kcoop35]

PD is miserable just like all other job trainings that other people have to go through. Most jobs have them. I think you could say " we are spending Billions to train _________ and it isn't worth it!"

 

[TennesseeWaltz1]

Could the money spent here be used in a better way? My has been to some staff developments that are great but for the most part she is not a fan.

Teaching Teachers: Big Costs, Little Payoff
We're wasting billions on professional development, as a new study documents. What can be done about a culture of low expectations.

"The Mirage," was based on surveys of 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, along with interviews with more than 100 staff involved in teacher development. The surveys and interviews were conducted in three large school districts and a mid-sized charter-school network.

Improvements in performance that were found seemed to stem more from learning the job, almost invariably coming in the first few years of a teacher's career. The difference in effectiveness between the average fifth-year teacher compared to a rookie was more than nine times greater than the difference between the average fifth-year teacher and those in their 20th year.

There is plenty of room to improve. Using multiple measures such as teacher evaluations, classroom observation and student test scores, TNTP rated about half the teachers in their 10th year or beyond as below "effective" in core instructional practices such as developing students' critical thinking.

For this to change, districts need to begin by improving communication with teachers about their performance and areas where improvement is needed. The vast majority of teachers studied received ratings from their districts or charter operator of "meeting expectations" or better. Amazingly, fewer than half the teachers surveyed agreed that they had any weaknesses in their performance. Even among the few teachers who earned low ratings from their own school districts, 60 percent gave themselves high performance ratings.

The line from the study that jumps off the page is that the findings suggest "a pervasive culture of low expectations for teacher development and performance."

The problems are certainly not due to a lack of resources. The districts and charter-school network that were the focus of the study spent nearly $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development. They also dedicated 19 full school days, about 10 percent of a typical school year, to the programs. Based on these findings, TNTP estimates that the 50 largest U.S. school districts alone spend about $8 billion annually on teacher development, far more than was previously thought.

TNTP makes several common-sense recommendations for fixing the problem. In addition to giving teachers a much better picture of their own performance and progress, districts must explore alternative approaches to professional development. They should evaluate the effectiveness of all teacher-development programs based on the programs' ability to yield measurable progress toward a clearly defined standard for teaching and student learning. Resources should be reallocated to the programs that yield the greatest improvement.

"The Mirage" is no outlier. Over the last decade, two federally funded studies of teacher-development programs reached similar conclusions. School leaders should heed TNTP's recommendations, which would make for a good start toward changing that "pervasive culture of low expectations."

They waste money better served on student programs...it is nothing more than a damn rah rah session...I slept through most of mine. Funny thing there was a consulting company in GA that contacted me via my LinkedIn site about becoming a presenter. I wasn't interested simply because I hated it but thought I would bite on it...they wanted to train me to do sessions all over the South...after I paid them 5k to sign up. Most of these so called motivational speakers are Joel Osteen swinging dick types. Now if you want to get me started on a rant start a thread about schools that lay off teachers but have 4 administrators and 5 counselors in a school.

 

[Tom Paris]

I think most inservices are a big waste of time and money. I think early out Wednesdays are a waste of time and money. I understand I am an unimportant PE teacher, but very few of these hours spent pertain to what I do. I would much rather spend the time with my students.

 

[BioHawk]

It really depends on what is being done. For the first part of my career, they'd always spend money to bring some motivational speaker who "taught" us to use the same techniques we all learned in college. He/she would end up just trying to spread a positive message and would wrap up the session by singing a silly song. I agree, that was a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and the money would have been better served going towards students or other needs.

However, more recently, as our school budget has dwindled and major changes to curriculum have been implemented our administration has started to do a much better job identifying needs and started doing inservices with purpose. Instead of hiring some overpriced speaker who couldn't hack it in the classroom and decided to go on the "consultant" circuit for 10k an appearence they started sending faculty from the school to conferences to be trained in specific things. These folks would come back and then train the rest of the faculty. With the changes in technology (going one-to-one student computers), common core (like them or hate them, we're mandated to teach them so we need to know how to do it), and the Next Generation Science Standards many of the inservices I have been to have been very useful and are definitely not a waste of taxpayer money. Our school also has a high poverty rate so there have been inservices on how to better teach to students who come from poverty. Those have also been helpful. There are several other inservices we have done that have been worth the time as well.

Basically, like anything else, the value of the inservices is dependent on the administrators understanding what the school needs and then finding ways to address those issues. If you have administrators who just go find somebody for the sake of filling some time that is mandated or otherwise, it is a waste.

 

[TexMichFan]

It really depends on what is being done. For the first part of my career, they'd always spend money to bring some motivational speaker who "taught" us to use the same techniques we all learned in college. He/she would end up just trying to spread a positive message and would wrap up the session by singing a silly song. I agree, that was a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and the money would have been better served going towards students or other needs.

However, more recently, as our school budget has dwindled and major changes to curriculum have been implemented our administration has started to do a much better job identifying needs and started doing inservices with purpose. Instead of hiring some overpriced speaker who couldn't hack it in the classroom and decided to go on the "consultant" circuit for 10k an appearence they started sending faculty from the school to conferences to be trained in specific things. These folks would come back and then train the rest of the faculty. With the changes in technology (going one-to-one student computers), common core (like them or hate them, we're mandated to teach them so we need to know how to do it), and the Next Generation Science Standards many of the inservices I have been to have been very useful and are definitely not a waste of taxpayer money. Our school also has a high poverty rate so there have been inservices on how to better teach to students who come from poverty. Those have also been helpful. There are several other inservices we have done that have been worth the time as well.

Basically, like anything else, the value of the inservices is dependent on the administrators understanding what the school needs and then finding ways to address those issues. If you have administrators who just go find somebody for the sake of filling some time that is mandated or otherwise, it is a waste.

The district my wife teaches in is starting to go this route also. She is actually presenting a workshop for the district next week on using CGI.

 

[naturalmwa]

They waste money better served on student programs...it is nothing more than a damn rah rah session...I slept through most of mine. Funny thing there was a consulting company in GA that contacted me via my LinkedIn site about becoming a presenter. I wasn't interested simply because I hated it but thought I would bite on it...they wanted to train me to do sessions all over the South...after I paid them 5k to sign up. Most of these so called motivational speakers are Joel Osteen swinging dick types. Now if you want to get me started on a rant start a thread about schools that lay off teachers but have 4 administrators and 5 counselors in a school.

Wait, so they got you to pay them $5000? What's your linkedIn site?