Speech by Hayes Mizell on December 9, 1997 to 2800 people attending the annual conference of the National Staff Development Council. The conference was held at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Mizell is Director of the Program for Student Achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.
I come to you this morning as a repentant former school board member.
More than twenty years ago, when the school board on which I served was
faced with cutting the budget, I voted to reduce funding for staff development.
In retrospect, I probably did it because all I knew about staff development
was that periodically teachers from throughout the district would gather
in the school system's largest high school auditorium to hear a speaker,
attend a few workshops, and go home. I had heard teachers complain that
these meetings were not useful. I never heard that staff development improved
teaching or student performance. From this perspective, I thought it was
not only necessary but appropriate to reduce the school system's funding
for staff development.
It was not until later in my tenure as a school board member that I learned
how important effective staff development could be for teachers. I recall
a group of teachers who made a presentation to the school board, describing
how they had spent the summer writing curriculum. With great excitement,
the teachers told us how much it had meant to them to have uninterrupted
time to work and study together, and engage in deep, reflective discussions
about how to strengthen the curriculum. I remember this event clearly not
only because the teachers were enthusiastic, but because this was the only
such presentation I heard during my eight years as a school board member.
As I reflect on these two experiences, on the one hand voting to reduce
the budget for staff development, and, on the other hand, being impressed
at the power of effective staff development, I am now painfully aware of
contextual issues that I did not see or understand at the time.
If staff development had the potential to empower other teachers just as
it had those who made the presentation to the school board, why didn't the
superintendent, or central office staff, or the teachers' association advocate
more forcefully for similar types of staff development? If large meetings
of teachers passively listening to speakers were not effective means for
teachers to develop the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors they
needed to be more effective, why did these meetings go on and on and on,
year after year? If staff development was important, why didn't somebody
tell me? Why didn't the school system act as though it was important?
These questions were not obvious to me then, but they are very much on my
mind now because for some years I have been closely associated, at one time
or another, with a total of ten school systems that the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation has encouraged and supported to implement systemic reform at
the middle level.
Like many people in this country, from the President, to business and political
leaders, to frustrated parents of every race, ethnic group, income level
and social class, I believe that public schools need to be more challenging
and engaging. This is just as true for schools in advantaged suburbs as
it is for schools in disadvantaged urban and rural areas. The need for reform
is even more acute, however, in schools that serve large numbers of students
from low-income families and those whose first language is not English.
These families depend on the public schools to educate their children well
so they will read, write and compute with a high degree of proficiency,
and have the self-confidence and skills to master challenging content and
help solve difficult problems.
Increasingly, families are exercising their power to re-form how they
educate their children both within and outside the public schools. They
aren't waiting on public schools to reform themselves; they are seeking
any means necessary to provide their children with what they believe will
be a better education. Within the public system they will use legal or extralegal
means to get their children in schools or classes with a better reputation,
or in select magnet or charter schools. Outside the public system they will
use private schools, home schools, charter schools, or choice or private
scholarship programs.
Families are no longer turning a blind eye while public schools hold their
children hostage to inadequate education. This underscores the need for
public schools and school systems to implement reforms that will result
in better education for all children, particularly those who are most dependent
on the public schools. Real reform, the reform that parents and citizens
and business leaders and politicians want, results in children learning
at progressively higher levels as they move through each successive grade,
and children being able to demonstrate their increasing proficiency at each
grade level. This is what real reform should be all about. However, reform
is not neat, clean, and convenient. It is not adding another program or
project to make the teachers' jobs easier. It is not about protecting the
privileges and prerogatives of the adults in the school. Reform is about
students, all students, increasing what they know and are able to do, and
demonstrating what they know and are able to do.
Reform is a human enterprise
Reform, then, means personal change. It means teachers and administrators
re-forming what they think, what they know, and what they are able to do.
This is why reform is unpopular, difficult, and slow. Reform is not something
that educators do to schools or students, nor is it laws or memoranda or
binders filled with curriculum materials. Reform is a human enterprise that
depends on real people changing what they think, what they do, and how they
do it. Meaningful school reform, that is, reform that significantly increases
what students know and can do, is life altering for everyone who makes it
happen and for the students who benefit from it.
This reform is hard work and often painful, but it is why staff development
is so important. Staff development is one of the few positive tools school
systems and schools have at their disposal to support educators who must
change themselves as well as their schools and classrooms. Staff development
is important because it can help these educators prepare themselves, and
enlist the support of their colleagues to change what they think, what they
do, and how they do it to benefit the education of students.
I believe this very strongly, but I wonder if staff development is up to
the task of playing this role? Is staff development simply one more bureaucratic
function, one more exercise of going through the motions, just another educational
shell game where substance is forever elusive, or does staff development
stand apart, with a clear purpose, a focus on results, and is it accountable
for achieving those results? Just how important is staff development, not
as an ideal, but as a reality?
One reality is that the general public doesn't know or care much about staff
development. For most parents it is a periodic inconvenience that occurs
several times a year when their children don't attend school for a half
or full day. Newspapers may report on school board meetings, test scores,
school building construction, cute classroom projects, discipline problems,
and the occasional school scandal, but hardly ever is there a story that
mentions staff development.
Even frustrated legislators, seeking leverage for school reform, may mandate
staff development and even support it financially, but they really don't
understand much about staff development or how it can help achieve the goals
they seek. Rarely do they try to find out what school systems did with the
resources the legislature appropriated for staff development, or what results
the school systems achieved with these resources.
There's good reason to worry about the state of staff development
As an external observer, I look at staff development in practice and I worry.
It would be great if the staff development in every school and school system
was the same high quality as the sessions at this conference. It would be
wonderful if all staff developers had the vision and knowledge of most of
you in this room. But you know and I know that is not the case. There is
good reason to worry about the state of staff development in this country.
From my perspective, from the outside, it seems there is still some confusion
about the purpose of staff development. For example, one school system says
its staff development program is "built upon the assumption that education
for all students will be enhanced by continuous growth in knowledge, skills,
and commitment of all staff members in the District." Note that the
program rests on an "assumption, "not on a belief and certainly
not on research. The assumption seems to be that almost anything the school
system chooses to do in the name of "continuous growth" is value
added. The goal of staff development appears to be to enhance the education
of students, but what does this really mean?
One state's regional educational service center defines staff development
"as the totality of educational and personal experiences that contribute
toward an individual's being more competent and satisfied in his/her professional
role." Under this definition, it seems that staff development is everything
and the desired outcome is so broad that it provides no anchor for accountability.
If staff development is everything, does it really amount to anything?
Still another school system described its goals for a specific staff development
activity this way: "1. Provide a comfortable learning environment for
all staff members. 2. Provide for skill development that can be used in
the classroom setting." I don't know why the school system wrote the
goal this way, but it seems to reflect a view that "a comfortable learning
environment" takes precedence over "skill development." Nevertheless,
at least this goal emphasizes the importance of skill development and communicates
the expectation that developing new skills has some relation to the teachers'
classroom performance. But why does the goal statement use the words "can
be used in the classroom setting" rather than "will be used"?
If teachers had the option of applying or not applying the skills they developed,
why did the school system offer the staff development in the first place?
These examples from three different school systems illustrate the confusion
about the role of staff development, confusion that I believe is widespread
among educators and the public alike. However, in at least one state, Minnesota,
the legislature does not appear to be in doubt about what it expects of
staff development. In 1996, the legislature mandated each school board to
create a committee to plan for how its school system would use state funds
for staff development. According to the law, each committee must "adopt
a staff development plan for improving student achievement outcomes."
Here is a clear, unequivocal statement of what Minnesota sees as the role
of state-supported staff development. I suspect that this reflects the views
of most taxpayers, not only in Minnesota but in most of your school systems.
Closer to this meeting, the Teaching and Learning Academy of the Memphis
City Schools also has an exemplary mission statement: "...to guide
the professional growth and development of all Memphis City Schools educators
through high quality professional development experiences in effective teaching
and learning, innovative leadership, and school redesign for the purpose
of ensuring that all students learn to high standards." In this statement,
not only is there no possibility of misunderstanding the purpose of staff
development, but there is potential to hold staff developers accountable,
along with other educators, for the desired result of "ensuring that
all students learn to high standards."
If staff development is important, its purpose has to be clear, certainly
to those of you in this room, but to the diverse publics beyond this room
that support staff development and make it possible. This is not yet the
case, perhaps because in many school systems staff development has no focus.
It is simply unclear what it is seeking to accomplish. Not only can few
members of the public articulate the purpose of staff development, but still
fewer see its effects on students.
Are staff or students the primary beneficiaries of staff development?
This is a central problem. Who should be the primary beneficiaries of staff
development? Staff or students? I am sure this question strikes many of
you as hopelessly naive. After all, this organization is the National Staff
Development Council, not the National Student Development Council. You might
say that while It is possible to organize and deliver staff development
to affect the attitudes, behaviors, knowledge and skills of adults, and
while one hopes students will benefit, there can be no guarantees this will
be the case. I understand this.
What concerns me, however, is that judging from the way many schools and
school systems conceive and implement staff development, it is questionable
whether the intent is to benefit either adults or students. After all, if
the intent is to improve the performance of teachers and administrators,
would so much staff development ignore what we know about learning, regardless
of whether the learners are students or adults? Would so much staff development
be so ill-conceived, so hit-or-miss, so ineffective? Would so many school
systems' staff development centers pride themselves more on the breadth
of their course offerings than on whether teachers become more effective
leaders and instructors in their classrooms? Would so many teachers and
administrators dread staff development rather than seek it?
You may feel that this is an unfair critique. Yes, I do know that more
and more schools and school systems understand what high quality staff development
is and are nurturing it. There certainly is no shortage of information about
how to improve staff development, how to make it more meaningful for teachers
and administrators, and how to use it to improve student learning. I am
concerned, however, that high quality staff development, intended to benefit
both educators and students, is still an exception. I am concerned that
staff development is a precious resource and that it is unfair to educators,
students, and the public at large not to make the best use of it.
Among teachers and administrators there are still too many anecdotes about
short-term, one-shot workshops led by glib presenters with transparencies
where the emphasis is on the efficient sharing of information rather than
learning. There are still too many staff developers scrambling during the
several weeks before the opening of school to find inspirational speakers.
There is still too much staff development that is not directly addressing
teachers' and administrators' needs that must be met if they are going to
improve student performance.
Too often, the focus on student performance gets lost
No, this organization is not the National Student Development Council,
but I believe that the primary purpose of staff development must be to increase
what students know and can do. Many people now say that "of course"
students should be the ultimate beneficiaries of staff development, but
the problem for me is that word "ultimate."
In most cases the links in the chain between the process of conceiving staff
development and the effects on students are too long and too weak. The focus
on student performance simply gets lost in the "delivery" of staff
development. This is particularly the case in schools and school systems
where there is not a strong focus on improving student learning, but it
also occurs even where school reform is a priority. The intentions of education
leaders may be good but they may not give the same attention to reforming
staff development that they give to accountability systems they hope will
improve schools. The result is that staff development stays nestled in the
cozy culture of school system and school operations, largely unexamined
and unchanged.
Staff development does not just "happen." People with authority
and options make decisions about the purpose and means of staff development.
If staff development is going to serve teachers, administrators, and students
better, people in authority have to make different decisions. They have
to decide that improving student performance will be the priority of staff
development. This decision will have consequences. It will mean that staff
development cannot meet the professional growth needs of all the staff.
Some things are more important than others.
When only nine states require mentoring for new teachers, when students
in high poverty and high minority enrollment schools have less than a 50-50
chance of getting a math or science teacher who has a license or degree
in the field, and when more than twenty percent of all newly hired teachers
lack the qualifications for their jobs, the need is clear. There is a higher
priority than staff development offerings about time and stress management,
the requirements of various state and federal regulations, textbook adoption,
or desktop publishing.
This is not to say that staff development can or should substitute for
badly needed reforms in pre-service education and state certification of
teachers. That is not the role of staff development. However, once teachers
become employees of a school system and are responsible for educating students,
the priority of staff development should be to help these teachers become
as effective as they can be in the classroom. Providing opportunities for
self-directed professional development is not enough. The school and school
system must develop and implement coherent staff development strategies
for the explicit purpose of improving student learning.
There is a desperate need to create consensus and new professional norms
among staff developers about the purpose of their enterprise, but it is
also necessary to take a more critical posture about what constitutes effective
and ineffective staff development. Again, staff development resources are
precious and the needs of teachers and administrators are great. The priority
must be improving principals' skills as leaders of whole-school reform and
classroom instruction, and teachers' knowledge of the content they teach
and their effectiveness in engaging students in learning that content.
Not all staff development is of equal value
In this context, not all staff development is of equal value. For example,
there seems to be broad agreement that mandated after-school workshops are,
in the main, a waste of time and effort. Teachers react in much the same
way as students would react if someone decided to extend their school day
by two or three class periods. Teachers are tired and the format of most
after-school workshops does not promote deep engagement by the participants.
We know this is not always the case, because when teachers choose to work
after school in small study groups the effects can be powerful. But many
people agree that mandated after-school staff development is not the best
use of staff development resources. If this is the case, why does it continue?
Why is it going on this very day in some schools, in some school districts?
Even when there are whole days devoted to staff development, it is not unusual
for the opportunity to be misused. Recently an observer at a staff development
day for faculties from schools in one attendance area reported the following:
"Our interviews with teachers and administrators...revealed that the
day's activities were only minimally helpful to them. Most said they were
never aware of the purpose of each of the sessions or how the three sessions
were to tie together. They had been given no overview, in other words, of
what they were to learn and be able to do as a result of the day's activities...Each
session seemed self-contained and insufficiently developed...The afternoon
session at [a school] had not been planned in light of the morning's work
and so did not serve as a strong follow-up. Those in charge of the session
said that they had not gotten instructions about how to focus the in-school
session...Teachers in our sample did not feel that the day was closely connected
to what they need in order to better teach their children."
I should add that this occurred in a school system that is implementing
major education reforms and participates in several national reform networks.
This is a school system where one would expect staff development to make
sense for the teachers who participate in it. It is discouraging to learn
that apparently ineffective staff development grinds on in these ways that
not only disrespect the needs of teachers but erode the credibility of staff
development itself. Yet, apparently these practices are acceptable because
hardly anyone, most notably the staff development profession, speaks out
against them.
So long as there is no professional opprobrium for ineffective practice
it will continue, and policymakers and taxpayers will continue to think
of staff development as marginal to school reform. This will not change
until there is a broad consensus among staff developers, a consensus that
is reflected in practice, about both the purpose of staff development and
what constitutes the most effective means to achieve that purpose. It will
not change until people who care about staff development not only advocate
effective practices but condemn ineffective ones.
Many school districts don't know what staff development resources
they have
For school systems to make the best use of their staff development resources,
they have to know what resources they have and what they do with them. Many
don't. There may be a staff development line in a school system's budget,
but it is likely this only includes allocations from local operating funds.
But staff development resources may also be embedded in categorical funds,
such as Title I and IDEA, and in state mandates for re-certification.
Staff development resources, in other words, may be fragmented throughout
the school system, some clearly identifiable but others less so. Even the
day teachers have to attend the state education association's annual conference
is a staff development resource, but school systems may not think of it
that way because they do not control the content or even know whether teachers
participate.
The effect of fragmented staff development resources is diffuse staff development
activities that have little effect. If school boards and superintendents
don't know where all the staff development resources are, how can they marshal
and focus them to increase student learning? Perhaps this is one reason
why the staff development in many school systems is not as coherent as it
should be.
These school systems would do well to mount an action research project designed
to identify all activities in the school system one might reasonably describe
as "staff development." What is the purpose, mode and intensity
of each activity? What is its source of funding? Who makes the decisions
about how to allocate the resources, and who conceives and plans the staff
development? What specific groups participate in each staff development
activity? The answers to these and other questions should provide a "map"
of the landscape of staff development in a school system, or even a school.
The system may find that its total staff development resources are greater
than it thought but that decisions about these resources are made by many
different people throughout the school system, not always with a common
goal or with a powerful effect. If staff development is important, truly
important, then school systems and schools need to understand in terms of
money and time the total resources available to improve the performance
levels of teachers and administrators, a prerequisite for increasing student
learning.
Evaluation is the Achilles' Heel of staff development
There is another issue that looms large in a consideration of the importance
of staff development. Is it important enough to evaluate its effects? Does
staff development really make a difference, and how do you know? Evaluation
is the Achilles Heel of staff development. The conventional wisdom is that
the process of staff development is too diffuse to evaluate. As most school
systems and schools currently practice staff development, that is true.
They use staff development like the farmer in the Biblical parable used
seed.
Staff developers can learn something from the Gospel of Mark: "A farmer
went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along
the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where
it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.
But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because
they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked
the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good
soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or
even a hundred times." There is some staff development seed that falls
on good soil but there is more that fails to produce a crop because school
systems and schools do not prepare the soil and do not target where they
place the seed. When staff development is not focused, it is difficult to
evaluate its effects.
The need for effective evaluation of staff development is illustrated by
the expectations of those who conceive staff development and those who participate
in it. Judging from the nature of much staff development, a reasonable person
might ask, "Did the people responsible for this really expect it to
have much effect on the participants?" If so, it seems they would have
conceived the staff development activity very differently, devoted greater
care to involving representatives of the potential audience in its planning,
and invested as much effort planning what would happen after the staff development
as in the staff development itself. They certainly would have conceived
staff development with the intention to have a direct effect on student
learning, and, from the beginning, clearly communicated that intent to the
participants.
However, the expectations of participants are also a problem. From their
past experience, the potential participants probably do not expect much.
In most cases, teachers and administrators know they have the option not
to participate because most staff development is voluntary. If they choose
to participate they know they have the option to be passive because most
staff development is not truly engaging or performance-based. Even if they
participate conscientiously, they know it is unlikely anyone in authority
will ever try to determine what the participants learned or whether they
ever applied what they learned. They know that if even if they do apply
what they learned, no one in authority will try to assess the school and
classroom effects.
In this context, where expectations about results are so low among those
who conceive and plan staff development and those who participate in it,
the absence of rigorous evaluation only aggravates the problem. If no one
is asking hard questions there is no incentive for the expectations to change.
I question whether staff development will ever have the impact I believe
it should unless school systems and schools, as well as researchers, become
much more serious about evaluating its effects on the performance of teachers,
administrators, and students. This evaluation will be difficult, but those
who believe staff development is important have to try.
The evaluation process will be easier if persons responsible for conceiving
and planning staff development opportunities force themselves to answer
certain basic questions at the outset. "What do participants need to
know and be able to do to increase student learning?" "What do
they really need to know and be able to do, not what I think they need and
not necessarily even what they tell me they need?" "What kind
of staff development will be most effective in engaging participants in
learning what they need to know and be able to do?" "What kind
of staff development is most likely to cause them to apply what they learn,
and how will I know whether and how they applied it?" "What evidence
will I look for and accept as indicators that the participants' application
of what they learned increased student learning?"
By the way, I should add that when I use the word "learn," I am
referring not only to knowledge and skills but also professional and personal
insights, and changes in attitude and behavior. Asking these questions will
require considerable intestinal fortitude on the part of staff developers,
and getting the answers will demand integrity and hard work. This will not
come easy, and the National Staff Development Council can provide leadership
by encouraging more attention to the issue of evaluation, as well as by
assisting local staff developers in testing practical approaches to evaluating
the effects of their work.
Good staff development needs persistent advocates
Finally, if staff development is important, really important, it requires
visible, vocal, persistent advocates. If you believe that focused, effective,
high quality staff development can be a powerful force to increase student
learning, then you need to take that message to state policymakers, school
boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, school site councils, teacher
unions and taxpayers. As you know, on any given day each of these role groups
is fully capable of acting without knowledge or understanding when it comes
to staff development, much as I did more than 20 years ago. Even worse,
they are capable of perpetuating ineffective staff development practices
simply because that is all they have ever known.
You can change attitudes about staff development, but to do so you must
make your voices heard, particularly by your bosses and your peers, and
by those in other school systems. You have to have the will and the courage
to tell them the hard facts -- that current staff development practices
are not working and that it is essential to reform staff development if
they want to improve student performance.
How important is staff development? When it comes to increasing student
learning, I can think of few things that are more important. Whether they
know it or not, the families of low-performing students are counting on
staff development to help teachers engage insignificant learning. Administrators
who never expected to be and who never prepared to be instructional leaders
and monitors and evaluators are desperate for staff development that will
improve teacher and student performance. The public, whether it knows it
or not, depends on staff development to fill the gaps, no, the chasm of
totally inadequate pre-service education. And even the standards movement
will succeed or fail based on the ability of staff development to help teachers
learn how to enable students to perform at standard.
The challenges to staff development are huge, and it is an open question
whether it is up to the task. As it currently exists in most schools and
school systems, there is little reason to be encouraged. On the other hand,
there is this organization, there are those of you in this room. You have
the vision, you have the knowledge and I can only pray that you have the
will to reform staff development as we now know it.
Thank you.