As policy-makers and the public sharpen their focus on educational practices, standards, and accountability, leaders in many nations are rethinking their approaches to education for the 21st century. In light of this enhanced scrutiny, school and district leaders must keep sight of the impact that quality teaching and professional development have on student learning.
With the new accountability mandates inspired by the No Child Left Behind Act, U.S. educators must improve the performance of not just individual schools but also entire school systems. That requires a persuasive, effective, and continuous system of professional development for teachers districtwide. Meeting the demands of high academic standards requires teachers who know their subjects, know how to teach their subjects, and know how to assess their students' learning.
Because better teaching is a key to higher student achievement, improving the quality of our teachers and their teaching is one of the most important challenges facing the education profession. If student achievement is going to increase, teachers will have a pivotal role in making it happen.
However, most schools and their districts do not effectively use professional development to raise teacher performance levels. Too often, professional development is not carefully conceived to help teachers develop and use specific skills needed to increase student achievement. Also, most professional development is not rigorously evaluated to determine what teachers learned and how effectively they applied that learning in their schools and classrooms.
As educators heed the call for a research-based approach to professional development, they must redesign their programs to provide an effective system of instructional support for teachers. This new approach to professional development must be linked to concrete teaching tasks, organized around problem solving, informed by research, and sustained over time.
To scale up quality teaching, school and district leaders must share their vision of improved classroom practice and craft coherent strategies that carry out the changes that are envisioned. Effective professional development, when tied closely to actual classroom practice, can be a useful tool for improving the quality of student performance.
Strong professional learning cultures do not occur by chance but are vital to school improvement and raising student achievement. It's critical that teachers be equipped with knowledge and skills that enable them to build and sustain performance-oriented cultures. School programs and policies should support teachers' professional growth; empower them to make instructional decisions to improve student achievement; and allow time for them to meet, plan, and reflect on practice (Bobbett, 2002).
Educational leadership today requires the ability to mobilize constituents to do important but different work under conditions of ongoing change, overload, and fragmentation. The ability of education leaders to create a professional culture in which teachers thrive and grow throughout their careers is essential in ensuring quality teaching.
As Linda Darling-Hammond (1998) opines, "Creating a profession of teaching in which teachers have the opportunity for continual learning is the likeliest way to inspire greater achievement for our children."