NEW: Evaluating Professional Development Workshops

The Shaffer Evaluation Group works in partnership with school districts, colleges, universities, educational agencies, government, and non-profit organizations to build successful programs informed by evidence. As accountability expectations have continued to increase, we are increasingly asked by our partners to support Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB), which Stockdill, Balzeman, and Compton (2002) define as “the intentional work to continuously create and sustain organizational processes that make quality evaluation and its uses routine.”

For our school district partners, expectations related to professional learning programs have been redefined. According to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed into law in December 2015, professional development activities are “sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data driven, and classroom focused” (S. 1177-295). ESSA also notes that professional development activities should be “regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievements, with findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development” (ESSA SEC 8002).

In an effort to support the ongoing work of our partners, the Shaffer Evaluation Group is pleased to offer a selection of targeted workshop options to assist our partners in improving their ability to measure and strengthen the impact of their professional learning initiatives on teacher beliefs, dispositions, and practices. Workshop participants will learn about valid assessment instruments that are available for low or no cost, as well as other available resources to assist in developing a plan for documenting and monitoring the effectiveness of professional learning efforts and their impact on student performance outcomes. Workshops are available in a half-day or full-day format.

Workshop outcomes include:

• increased facility and understanding of high-quality data usage to measure impacts of professional learning on classroom practices and student performance outcomes;

• increased skill in developing measurable outcomes for school-based initiatives;

• increased skill in identifying and/or developing tools for measuring program outcomes;

• increased knowledge of how to utilize instructional and performance data to determine the effectiveness of initiatives to identify professional learning targets;

• increased awareness of effective, appropriate, and feasible strategies for data collection; and

• development of a draft professional development plan.

Call us today for more information about planning a workshop for your school district.

Upcoming workshop on evaluating professional learning

Evaluation is the key to determining the impact of teacher professional development (Guskey, 2000). Shaffer Evaluation Group will deliver an interactive concurrent session on evaluating professional learning at the 22nd Annual SURN Leadership Conference, June 18, 2018, in Williamsburg, VA. The SURN Leadership Conference offers a forum to learn and exchange ideas on the campus of the William and Mary School of Education. Leading education writers, researchers, and consultants provide international and national perspectives on their work. The opportunity to share with other educators, discuss topics with leading researchers, reflect on the prior school year, be inspired, and plan for the upcoming year are all reasons individuals and school district teams attend.

During this 90-minute session, school and district leaders can improve their ability to measure and strengthen the impact of professional learning initiatives on teacher beliefs, dispositions, and practices. Participants will learn strategies to develop a plan and discover low- or no-cost assessment instruments for documenting and monitoring the effectiveness of professional learning efforts on student performance outcomes. Importantly, the session will help school and district leaders meet ESSA requirements, which call for professional development activities to be “regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievements, with findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development” (ESSA SEC 8002).

Registration for the SURN Leadership Conference is now open -- come join us!

Evaluating Literacy Interventions

We are evaluating several educational initiatives led by school districts that seek to improve reading

achievement by refining their approach to literacy intervention, specifically targeting students with disabilities. One approach used by two of our district partners is the Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) deployed specifically by special education teachers. Districts invest in ongoing teacher professional learning and resources to bolster special education teacher’s access to high quality reading resources and confidence to deliver targeted and intensive reading interventions.

During initial phases of implementation, ensuring the intervention is delivered with fidelity is a priority for project teams. In our role as evaluators, we collaborated closely with school district staff to develop tools, such as classroom observation protocols, and often train district staff to utilize those tools. Training a team of observers builds inter-rater reliability for consistent identification of strategies observed across classrooms. This type of data is useful for identifying program elements that are being implemented successfully, and those that are not. Analysis of fidelity data allows project teams to target continued support and professional learning to close the gaps. Formative data collection, such as professional development feedback, annual staff surveys, and focus groups, provides additional insight on classroom implementation successes and challenges and overall efficacy with the intervention. Triangulation of the data sources enhances data validity and reliability, ensuring our district partners are able to make informed decisions.