excerpted with permission from:

What Works in the Middle:
Results-Based Staff Development

Joellen Killion
National Staff Development Council
1999

Introduction


Middle grades shape the academic and personal futures of young adolescents. As one middle school principal puts it, "Merit scholars and prisoners are made in the middle." Producing merit scholars requires middle-grade teachers to have deep knowledge of their content area, use appropriate, content-specific instructional strategies, and understand the developmental needs of young adolescents.

The National Staff Development Council (NSDC), a professional association of approximately 8,000 educators, is committed to ensuring success for all students and aims to address the special needs of adolescents in the middle grades. Therefore, NSDC undertook the initiative Results- Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades. This guide is a result of the initiative and is offered to school staff development committees, principals, staff development leaders, curriculum coordinators, and others who wish to develop content-specific, middle-level staff development programs to improve student achievement at their own middle-grade schools.

The guide has several purposes. First, the guide provides information and resources for selecting, designing, and evaluating staff development to improve student achievement. The guide contains:

1. Descriptions of staff development programs in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and interdisciplinary programs that have successfully demonstrated a contribution to increased student achievement at the middle grades;

2. Guidelines for selecting and/or designing initiatives to improve student performance;

3. Strategies for evaluating staff development; and

4. Information about how the programs selected for inclusion in this guide meet or align with content-area standards and also with the National Staff Development Council's "Standards for Staff Development."

Second, the guide serves as a "conversation piece," a name the National Advisory Panel affectionately gave this effort near its conclusion. Since it is a conversation piece, the National Advisory Panel hopes that practitioners and scholars will use it as a starting point for dialogue, continued study, and research to answer some fundamental questions:

How does staff development impact student achievement?

-- What type of staff development is necessary to extend teachers' content knowledge and content- specific instructional practices?

-- How can schools and districts demonstrate that staff development contributes to student achievement?

-- What types of research designs and evidence of student achievement support a claim that staff development leads to increased student achievement?

Third, this guide will help decision-makers become savvy consumers of staff development by providing:

-- Lists of successful staff development programs that have evidence of increasing student achievement in the four core content areas;

-- Summaries of the characteristics of effective staff development evident across these programs;

-- Cross-referencing of these staff development efforts to national content standards in the core content areas and to the National Staff Development Council's Standards for Staff Development;

-- Guidelines for selecting effective staff development programs; and

-- Suggestions for effective ways to demonstrate the impact of staff development.


NSDC's Mission: Ensuring Success for All Students

One of NSDC's strategic priorities is demonstrating the link between teacher learning and student achievement. This guide, and the initiative that supported it, are about demonstrating that link in the middle grades. The early adolescent years shape lifelong habits of 10- to 14-year-old youths. Improving achievement in the middle grades remains both an urgent need and an enormous challenge. Targeting the improvement of teacher learning at the middle level through content-specific staff development holds promise as an effective intervention.

"Results-Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades" is one way NSDC is taking action to achieve its mission: ensuring success for all students through individual and organization development. According to Dennis Sparks, executive director of NSDC, "The time has come for NSDC to underscore its commitment to high levels of learning for all students and staff members." (Sparks, p. 2).

According to Sparks (1997), NSDC strives for the following results:

-- Every school provides high levels of learning for all students, particularly in core academic areas.

-- Every student has competent teachers.

-- Each teacher has the preparation, professional development, and ongoing support that facilitates teaching competence.

-- And, new and better forms of professional learning are both available and appropriately implemented.

NSDC took a leadership role in demonstrating the link between teacher learning and student achievement when it launched this initiative. Past staff development and school improvement efforts have too often failed to produce results for students. If teachers are to improve instruction and increase results for students, they must have deep knowledge of their content area and skills in teaching content. They also must understand child development and how learning occurs. And, they must have a positive attitude toward teaching in the middle grades. By extending teachers' content knowledge and content specific pedagogical strategies, this project crosses the threshold of the classroom door -the place where learning occurs.

"Results-Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades" aimed to identify staff development efforts that enable middle-grade students and teachers to achieve high levels of learning. In this initiative, NSDC focused on the core subject areas of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. For each core subject area, NSDC identified middle-grade, content-based staff development programs that advanced teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical skills and resulted in increased student achievement.


Support from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation

"Results-Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades," the NSDC initiative that is the foundation for this guide, is one of a number of initiatives that the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has supported to improve the middle school years, especially for urban youth.
The Clark Foundation is committed to improving the educational and life futures of 10- to 14- year-old students. Because "Results-Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades" focused on middle-grade youth, Clark, through its Programs for Student Achievement, agreed to fund the two- year study. Hayes Mizell, director of the foundation's Programs for Student Achievement, highlighted the reasons for Clark's work in middle schools:

First, we believe that low-achieving middle school students can learn at high levels. Second, we believe that for middle schools to significantly enhance the performance of all students, schools must reform themselves. Third, we believe that the cultures of most middle schools must change dramatically so the normative values are high expectations, high content, and high support for all students. Fourth, whole-school reform is necessary; tinkering at the margins will not produce nor sustain the changes needed to increase student achievement. Fifth, school systems must have a vision for middle school reform and lead, support, monitor, and access reform at the building level. Sixth, teachers and administrators in individual middle schools must provide the leadership to plan and implement reform that is consistent with their school system's vision. (1992)

Mizell outlined his hopes for the project in his remarks to the National Advisory Panel at its July 1997 meeting.

There are two major factors that will have to be manifest for middle school teachers to become more effective. The first is will: the will of school systems, schools, and educators to change. If and when school systems, schools, and educators decide-for whatever reason-to make changes that can improve student performance, the second factor comes into play. People must know what to do, how to change, to obtain different results. This is what "Results Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades" is about.

This project is built on the foundational belief that if student performance is going to increase, teacher performance must increase. If students are going to learn at higher levels, teachers must learn at higher levels. The central question of this project is: Assuming the will is there, what are the most effective content-specific staff development programs that result in increased student learning?

It is my hope that this project can help middle school educators focus on what constitutes quality staff development and specific staff development programs that educators with the will to do so can use to improve student performance.


Role of the National Advisory Panel

The NSDC worked with representatives from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Council for the Social Studies, National Council of Teachers of English, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Middle School Association, National Science Teachers Association, ERIC Clearinghouses, and U.S. Department of Education's regional educational laboratories in this effort. A National Advisory Panel comprising representatives of these partner associations, plus a middle school principal, an evaluator, and an urban educator, guided the project.

Stephanie Hirsh, associate executive director of the National Staff Development Council and principal developer of the project proposal, described goals, results, and key features of the project to members of the National Advisory Panel at their first meeting in July 1997 at the headquarters of the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Reston, Virginia.


The project goals were to:

-- Identify and analyze middle-level staff development initiatives that purport to improve teacher effectiveness and student learning and to disseminate information regarding initiatives that prove to be effective;

-- Enable individuals, schools, school systems, regional service centers, and universities to identify and access staff development programs that will lead to the improvement of middle grade teachers' content knowledge, instructional practices, and student learning in the areas of mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies;

-- Provide a central resource/clearinghouse for staff development initiatives that meet stringent criteria and that demonstrate the link between staff development efforts and student learning.


Word of Caution

It is important that the reader understand what this guide is and is not.

-- The guide is a compilation of 26 outstanding staff development programs in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. It is not a comprehensive list of all the staff development programs available for middle grade teachers.

-- The guide reports the results of 26 staff development programs. The programs included in the guide are not, however, endorsed by the National Staff Development Council or any of its partner associations.

-- The guide is a catalog for ideas. It is not a catalog for shopping.

-- The guide identifies common characteristics of the programs included. It is not, however, a meta- analysis of the programs.

-- The guide is a description of what staff development is and has been. Because the programs vary in the number of NSDC standards they meet, the guide is not necessarily a picture of what staff development should be.

-- The guide identifies programs currently used at specific middle schools as examples. It is not a list of exemplary middle schools.

The National Staff Development Council and the National Advisory Panel believe that the information in this resource guide will be useful to all its potential audiences. The guide should assist those who make decisions about staff development to become more aware of the critical nature of their decisions and the need to use the information contained here in a responsible manner. Suggestions for making those decisions are provided in Chapter 6, "How to Use This Guide."


References

Mizell, M. H. (1997, July 8). How Much Longer Must Teachers and Students Wait for Good Staff Development? Remarks made at the meeting of the National Advisory Panel, Reston, VA.

Sparks, D. (1997, September). "What's in a name?" Results. Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council.

To find out more about
Results Based Staff Development for the Middle Grades
visit the NSDC website.




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