Leadership Matters - January 2013

New Year’s resolution: How about professional development for staff?

Dr. Richard Voltz, Assoc. Director of Professional Development

As we ring in 2013, it’s already time to start planning for the 2013-14 school year, so I

Lessons Learned From Five Case Studies in Five

would offer for your consideration one over- arching resolution for the New Year: Develop a professional development plan for your staff. The challenges facing superintendents at this time of year are pretty daunting, including such things as: • Making school finance predictions • Determining staffing and student enrollment levels • Making facility renovation or building plans • Trying to figure out how to cut transportation costs • Starting or tweaking a district strategic plan • Finalizing curriculum plans for the coming year • Determining how you will communicate the ISBE Climate Survey results to your Board and community • Planning how to deal with some prospective new school board members, and a whole variety of other issues. But don’t forget about professional development. It can lay the foundation for addressing the issues facing school districts. Full implementation of the teacher performance evaluation process is right around the corner, and I believe that this implementation could be the most challenging personnel and collective bargaining processes you will deal with in your entire career. There already have been more strikes and strike threats this school year than in the last several years, probably because of two main factors: lack of money at the district level, and conversation about changing the teacher performance evaluation system. This will only get more contentious as we get closer to the 2016 deadline for full implementation. The Illinois Education Research Council and the University of Chicago recently released a study titled “Designing and Implementing the Next Generation of Teacher Evaluation Systems:

Illinois Districts.” This research study pointed out four specific challenges. Those challenges and our recommendations to address them include: 1. Cultivating Buy-In and Understanding: Bring in an outside consultant to start a process to train your teachers on the Danielson Frameworks for Teaching. You could do this training with your own staff, but we have found that an outside consultant’s training often is received better than in-house training. IASA offers this as a service to school districts as does the Consortium for Educational Change (CEC). In addition to training for teachers, IASA offers the services of a consultant to sit down with the district Joint Committee as you discuss implementing and approving the teacher evaluation plan and process. 2. Using Evaluations for Instructional Improvement: IASA offers a workshop titled “Coaching for Evaluative Purposes.” Administrators need training in conducting reflective and coaching conversations with personnel they supervise. Principals will need to conduct these conversations with teachers, and superintendents will need to conduct conversations with principals. IASA will provide this training by a master coach with workshops scheduled to begin in the spring of 2013 and continue through the summer. 3. Reducing the Burden on Principals: IASA plans to offer a one-day training seminar on incorporating lessons learned from the Wallace Foundation on effective use of principal time. 4. Incorporating Student Growth into Teacher Evaluation Systems: IASA is teaming up with the Value Added Research Center (VARC) and the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendent of Schools (IARSS) to offer training for student growth and to also develop a plan of action for your school district. This training will consist of a half-day introduction into the (Continued on page 15)

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