Professional Development Guidelines

According to federal guidelines, acceptable professional development activities

• Improve and increase teachers' academic knowledge;
• Are an integral part of broad schoolwide and districtwide educational improvement plans;
• Give teachers, principal, and administrators the knowledge and skills to provide students with the opportunity to meet challenging state academic content standards and student academic achievement standards;
• Improve classroom management skills;
• Are high quality, sustained, intensive and classroom-focused in order to have a positive and lasting impact on classroom instruction and the teacher's performance in the classroom; and are not 1-day or short-term workshops or conferences.
• Advance teacher understanding of effective instructional strategies that----

1. are based on scientifically-based research and strategies for improving student academic achievement or substantially increasing the knowledge and teacher skills of teachers; and
2. are aligned with and directly related to state academic content standards, student academic achievement standards and assessments, and the curricula and programs tied to the standards:

• Are developed with extensive participation of teachers, principals, parents, and administrators of schools to be served under NCLB;
• Are designed to give teachers of limited English proficient children, and other teachers and instructional staff, the knowledge and skills to provide instruction and the appropriate use of curricula and assessments;
• To the extent appropriate, provide training for teacher and principals in how to use technology in the classroom to improve teaching;
• As a whole, are regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievement, with the findings used to improve the quality of professional development;
• Provide instruction in methods of teaching special needs children;
• Include instruction in the use of data and assessments to inform and instruct classroom practice, and
• Include instruction in how school staff can work more effectively with parents.

Other activities that might be included are activities to help Title I paraprofessionals become certified and follow-up training to ensure that teachers are able to implement what they have learned in the classroom.