PDPolicyUpdate4-10-05

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Policy Platform Update 4-10-05
Goal:

The adoption of policies at the national, state and local level that support adult basic education, adult ESOL, and adult secondary education practitioners (including program directors) to access and benefit from professional development sufficient to help them be effective teachers, tutors and administrators.


Policies in Support of Adequate and Effective Professional Development:

1) Paid Professional Development Release Time: Every teacher practitioner should have a minimum of 2.5% of their annual working time as paid professional development (e.g., a full-time teacher, working 40 hours a week at 40 weeks a year—summers and holidays off—would work 1600 hours a year, so 2.5% would equal 40 hours of paid professional development a year (equivalent to 5 paid days).


2) Expectations for Participation in Professional Development: Every program and state should set and publicize the expectation that all teachers, no matter how experienced, must have a relevant professional development plan and are expected to continue learning throughout their careers.


3) Professional Development Plans: Each program should be funded at 1% of its annual staff hours to conduct a process for teachers to develop an annual professional development plan that dovetails with the program’s improvement process (which starts from students’ needs for improvements in instruction and services). All teachers should be required to have PD plans, and programs should be monitored to see that these are real and meaningful to teachers and to the program.


4) Participation in Program Improvement: A minimum of 2.0% of each program's budget should be set aside for teachers to participate in program improvement [such as designing a new curriculum (not just lesson planning), recruiting, designing a new student orientation, etc.], that starts with the students' needs for improving program structures and services. Programs should systematically set and evaluate program improvement goals, and as part of their program improvement plans to describe the role, resources and major activities of PD which will enable teachers to acquire the needed knowledge and skills.


5) Teacher Evaluation: Programs should conduct a teacher performance evaluation that asks teachers to show evidence that they have acquired new skills and knowledge described in the goals of their professional development plans.


6) Tuition reimbursement: Programs should be funded to provide tuition reimbursement at the equivalent of one college course per semester to teachers who have higher education attainment as a part of their professional development plans.


7) Relevance of Professional Development Activities: Every state literacy resource center or professional development system/agency and every program must use the professional development plans of the practitioners in their state or program to plan professional development activities relevant to teachers’ and (ultimately) students’ needs.


8) Orientation for New Teachers: Every new teacher should have an orientation to teaching in the field of adult basic education within the first 6 months of their teaching. Orientations include an introduction to adult learning and a brief history/overview of the funding, structure, institutions and history of the field, as well as basic training in curriculum development, lesson planning, and teaching reading, writing, math, and speaking skills for the types of adult learners that teacher serves most frequently.


9) Access: Every practitioner should have access to professional development, throughout the year, both inside and outside of his/her program, and every practitioner should have access to a variety of types of professional development (conferences, workshops, study circles, etc.) on a variety of content, organized at a variety of times and locations, including on-line options.


10) Professional Development System: Each state should have a funded state literacy resource center or other agency that provides direct professional development to practitioners AND technical assistance to help programs organize in-house professional development.


11) Quality of Professional Development: Facilitators of professional development should have completed some preparation (a course or other type of training) about the research-based principles of effective professional development design and facilitation, and every facilitator should be observed at least once conducting training and provided feedback about his/her design and facilitation skills.


12) Teachers’ Working Conditions: In addition to paid professional development release time, programs should have sufficient resources to fund adequate working conditions that will allow teachers to make change as a result of the professional development they attend, including:
  • Benefits for all teachers (including part-time),
  • paid prep time for all teachers (including part-time),
  • access for all teachers to at least one hour a week of sharing time with either colleagues or a coordinator who supports their teaching, and
  • at least monthly mechanisms (staff meetings, meetings with director) for voicing their input/decision making within the program.


13) Teachers’ Involvement in the Field of Adult Education: Every practitioner should receive at least 1% of their annual working time to participate in activities as a member of the field, including:
  • providing professional development to other teachers inside or outside of the program,
  • working towards addressing students’ needs (transportation, child care, health services, job assistance, etc.) that may prevent students from participating in the program, and
  • building community partnerships (with the health care system, K-12 system, libraries, local businesses, career centers, etc.) to improve services to adult learners.
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Examples/Recommendations

A) Examples of Professional Development Activities:

Build in sufficient paid time for teachers and administrators to engage in professional development activities as a part of paid professional development release time:

1) Encourage participation in substantive PD, such as: adding a major new set of teaching skills; learning a major new area of content to teach; peer evaluation, peer mentoring, and/or systematic supervision; conducting classroom and other kinds of research; writing a journal article; learning to use -- and integrate -- new technology for student learning; or adding a new dimension to the role of teacher such as counselor, public policy advocate, assessment specialist, or LD specialist.
2) Encourage participation in workshops, conferences, and short courses, but consider this as a lesser priority than participation in more significant professional development activities (like those listed in 1 above) which are sustained over time.


B) Examples for Establishing Expectations to Participate in PD:

Administrators, including supervisors, and other colleagues can encourage teachers to grow professionally, for example, by providing paid work time for PD, by including PD activities as part of a teacher job description, by putting PD on the agenda at staff meetings, and by setting aside a time (a day a month, for example) for PD work and staff discussion about it.

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Policies In Practice

a) Here is one example of how the program improvement policy might be put into practice in relation to paid professional development release time and professional development plans. If:

  • .5% is allocated for developing a PD plan for each teacher;
  • 2.0% is allocated for teachers to be involved in program improvement; and
  • 2.5% is allocated for each teacher to participate in professional development;

then...

For full-time teachers, who teach 40 weeks a year at 40 hours a week (1600 hours a year) this would be about 80 hours a year: 40 hours in their own PD, 8 hours a year to develop their PD plan, and 32 hours to be involved in program improvement. If a teacher teaches for 40 weeks a year, that's 2 hours a week out of her full-time job spent on professional development and program improvement.

For part-time teachers, while all of this is proportional, there should be a minimum: If a teacher teaches 8 hours a week or less over 40 weeks, then the teacher would be able to participate a minimum of 12 hours of PD for the year, and a minimum of 8 hours to be involved in some type of PI. The full percent would be in place if a teacher teaches over 8 hours per week. For example, if a teacher teaches 15 hours a week or more, then the full % is in play (15 X 40 = 600 hours teaching = 15 hours PD, 3 hours developing a PD plan, and 12 hours participating in program improvement).


B) Here is one example of how the paid professional development release time policy might be put into practice:

The state could communicate to programs in the Request for Proposals (RFP) they release that programs must allocate 2.5% of each teacher’s total annual teaching hours for staff development, and the program director is to write that into the budget proposal. Then, the state funds the program’s budget, which includes the 2.5% for each teacher, and the program spends the money that way. Each state would have a policy for paid professional development with a minimum of 2.5%, they include it in their RFP and require programs to write it in their budget, and then they fund it.

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