 Hello, good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. I'm Maria Heiler, Deputy Director of the Washington DC Office and Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute. I want to welcome you to this one-hour webinar on how investing in teacher and leader professional development can support student success. I'd like to begin by thanking our co-host, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Educational Association, and the School Superintendent Association. During today's webinar, our goal is to share and discuss evidence-based best practices of teacher and leader professional development and why it is so critical to student success. States are currently in the process of planning for ESSA implementation and incorporating evidence-based practices to improve instructional leadership, instructional and leadership quality with the goal of ensuring that all students are fully prepared for college and career. This conversation is particularly important given the continuing threats to cut Title II funding, which is the primary source of federal support for states and districts' efforts to improve educator quality. So our webinar today will feature a presentation from our recent LPI report on effective professional development, a discussion with three expert panelists, and about 10 minutes or so for audience Q&A at the close of the webinar. We encourage you to ask questions using the Q&A box on the right side of your screen and to join the conversation on social media using the hashtag, hashtag invest in educators. I will turn now the webinar over to Madeline Gardner, Research and Policy Associate at Learning Policy Institute. Great, thank you so much, Maria, and hello, everyone. So today I'm going to be sharing some insights from recent research on effective teacher and leader development, and this presentation is based on a couple of recent LPI reports, all of which are available online. But before I begin, I'd like to recognize the other authors who have been involved in this research, Linda Darling-Hammond, Maria Heiler, who's with us today, Danny Espinosa, Ann Podolski, and Lee Sucher. So as these recent headlines demonstrate, there's really been an active conversation this year about both the value and the design of teacher and leader development. And fortunately, research has provided us with some insights on these types of questions. So as you'll see in this presentation today, I'm going to first discuss what we know about effective teacher professional development and then leaders. But there are many through lines and similarities between both sets of findings. So let's start with teachers, often considered the most important in-school factor related to student success. And the research that I'm about to describe looks specifically at in-service professional development after teachers are already in the classroom, and specifically at programs that have been shown to have positive impacts on student learning. So while it's certainly true that some professional development for teachers is not of high quality, we've learned a lot in recent years about what makes some PD programs more effective for teacher and student learning than others. Traditionally, teacher professional development has often been lecture-based, what we might call sit-and-get or drive-by learning, that really offers the same content and strategies to all teachers, regardless of their previous skills and experiences. It's also tended to be largely divorced from teachers' day-to-day practices in their classrooms. But rigorous research indicates that professional development programs with an impact on student learning follow a different model that's defined by seven core elements. So those seven core elements are, first, a content focus. Strong professional development is focused on the content that teachers are teaching in their classrooms every day. Programs might demonstrate this when, for example, they offer opportunities for teachers to construct lessons and units for a curriculum or to investigate how their students learn specific concepts in a subject area. The PD is also active, so unlike lecture-based or sit-and-get professional development, active learning offers teachers a chance to meaningfully engage with new concepts and teaching strategies by actually doing them. So active learning strategies might include analysis, discussion, observation, or even direct practice of certain skills. It's also collaborative, and this collaboration can take many forms with teachers working one-on-one with a coach in a small group or even as part of a professional learning community that extends beyond their school. This can occur remotely using technology or in person, but across the board, this collaboration often occurs in job-emitted contexts, so teachers are allowed to plan together, offer each other feedback, and problem-solve specifically about their students and the work that they're doing every day. The fourth key feature is models and effective modeling by providing teachers with models of effective teaching. Professional development offers educators a clear vision of best practices, and there are many types of models that can be employed to accomplish this purpose, such as curricular resources that will be less in unit plans, student work, teaching cases, or observations of peer or master teachers. Effective professional development programs also offer coaching or other expert support to help facilitate teacher learning. These experts are typically educators themselves and often lead teachers through the active and engaging learning experiences that we've been discussing, but importantly, they also tailor specific advice and counsel to the needs of the individual teachers with whom they're working. Rather than providing a one-size-fits-all experience, this type of coaching enables programs to meet individual teachers where they're at and support their improvement. This type of coaching often entails feedback and reflection on teacher practice, but we found that powerful teacher learning opportunities really regardless of the format they employ offer opportunities to engage in these activities. And while these practices are distinct, they often work together to support teachers as they move towards the expert vision of the practice that have been previously articulated in their professional development. And finally, we know that accomplishing all of this takes time, so effective professional development must be of sustained duration to be effective. Research has not offered any magic number of hours to create an effective program, and instead indicates that providing opportunities for teachers to study deeply and then apply their learning in cycles of inquiry over time is essential. So often this might involve an intensive workshop that sets teachers up to apply new approaches in the classroom and then provides opportunities for teachers to reconnect, debrief and problem solve together. Even the best designed professional development may encounter challenges with implementation that limit its effectiveness. So for example, there are any number of school level challenges that have been shown to be obstacles to effective professional development. One common one is inadequate resources. This includes financial support, but also materials such as equipment for lab experiments or project-based learning. Teachers may also contend with a limited opportunity to use their newly acquired knowledge in their classroom. So in one study we reviewed, for example, a teacher received professional development related to science instruction, only to have time for science removed from the schedule entirely. School culture can also prove a deterrent to effective professional development. So for example, in one school we read about there was a high level of mistrust between teachers and leaders, and therefore the leadership lacked high end to the mandated professional development that was being offered to the teachers. And this is one reason that school leadership, which I'll talk about in just a couple of minutes, is so essential to this formula. The challenges to implementing effective PD extend beyond the school and the classroom as well. So this might mean a lack of alignment between what teachers feel they need to learn to best meet their students' needs and the initiatives and priorities of the district that they work in. Likewise, there may be a disconnect between state and local policies. So for example, states generally require seat time for recertification for teachers, which in turn might encourage districts to organize one-off workshops that are fairly easy to schedule and might require less time, human and financial resources than do evidence-based approaches to PD. Relatedly, few states and districts have robust tracking systems for PD. That includes both quality as well as quantity of the professional learning opportunities offered to instructors. And without these kinds of systems in place, it can be really hard to adopt and implement professional learning for teachers. It's both evidence-based and designed to overcome these types of obstacles. Fortunately, all of these challenges can be addressed both through thoughtful policy and more strategic implementation. And these policy implications are all described in more details in the paper, which is available online. But for today, we just want to preview a few of them. So states and districts could make it easier to offer teachers professional learning that's evidence-based by adopting standards for that learning that can guide the design evaluation and funding of professional development. They might evaluate and redesign the use of time and school schedules to increase opportunities for collaboration or expert coaching. And really key to this are leaders that understand and have the skills necessary to undertake organizational redesigns, which we'll talk about in just a bit. They might also conduct needs assessment to identify what teachers feel they need to learn to help their students learn or identifying expert teachers as mentors and coaches. They might also integrate professional learning into SS School Improvement initiatives, such as using student data to inform instruction or creating positive and inclusive learning environments, particularly in rural areas, though certainly not limited to those areas, they might provide technology-facilitated opportunities that help provide coaching and collaboration using Titles 2 and 4 of ESSA. And finally, they might consider providing flexible funding and continuing education units for learning opportunities that are sustained and high-impact rather than traditional workshops. So while it's crucial to support teacher learning, we also know that school leadership is highly influential. In fact, it's the second most important in-school factor for student success after teachers. Yet many principals find themselves unsupported in their schools. For instance, they might lack the support of any assistant principals due to budget cuts or competition for limited funds. And though investing in principals is a strategy for promoting student success, providing training and support for these leaders is often overlooked in discussions about school improvement. So before diving into the features of effective programs to train leaders, I want to take just a couple minutes to talk more about the key role that they play in our schools. So first, research has shown that principal stability is a factor in student success. So principals who remain in their school are associated with improved student achievement as compared to principals who churn in and out more frequently. Yet a recent analysis of a federal survey of principals and teachers found that in the U.S., one in 10 principals or about 11 percent want to leave the profession as soon as possible or when a more desirable job opportunity comes along. Principals can also improve teacher retention. So a recent LPI review of research affecting teachers' professional decisions found that principal quality is consistently one of the most important reasons that teachers cite in their decision about whether to stay or leave the given school or profession. So this table shows some of the reasons that teachers cited for why they voluntarily lack the profession. You can see here that over one in five said that dissatisfaction with administration contributed to their decision to leave. And many of the other reasons on this list, things like student discipline problems and lack of influence over school policies are also things that principals influence. And that's because effective principals drive whole school improvement by undertaking a number of important practices, including, as you can see here, developing their teachers and other people in this school. As a result, investing in principals can be a very cost effective strategy because they have a very widespread impact across the school. And as we know, states can make investments in principals by using Title II funds, including a 3% leadership set aside. And for those of you that are interested, there is a brief on LPI's website that offers some examples of how states are planning to use that set aside to support their leaders. So as with teachers, research has provided some insights about the features of strong programs that can help to guide these investments in school leaders. We know that professional development for principals can be effective under certain conditions. And unsurprisingly, there are a lot of similarities between teacher and leader development programs that show benefits for students and schools. So specifically, researchers found that effective professional development programs for principals first and foremost, establish partnerships with schools and districts that can help align content and recruit promising candidates. They utilize cohorts and networks to promote deep collaborative learning, again, a common feature of effective teacher and principal programs. They also use applied learning, including internships and on the job coaching that helps you engage educators and learning that's relevant and transferable to the real world context of the schools that they worked in. And finally, they have curriculum or content that's focused on what matters for school improvement, things like instruction, organizational change and using data for change. So these four elements really work together in unison to support the development of strong principals. So to close out, I want to give an example of what these features might look like in practice through a principal residency. So instead of what's common in most principal preparation programs, a residency places an aspiring principal directly under the wing of an expert principal on day one. This way, candidates take classes while also experiencing the daily demands of being a principal. And they do it with the support of an experienced school leader who can model strategies and coach them. Principals often report that this coaching and guidance is among the most valuable learning opportunities that they have, but it's also the one that they are perhaps least likely to experience in many states. In the best programs, principal learning is also supported both during candidacy and even after the awarding of a credential in the form of on the job coaching or mentoring. And it's for principals of all levels of experience that this coaching and mentoring supports them in fostering school improvement, adopting new leadership methods and continuously improving. So in the end, both teacher and principal learning are part of a broader system that seeks above all to really benefit students. And investing in these types of research based practices using federal funds is one really promising way for states and districts to support their learners well. So thank you. And with that, I'm going to turn things back to Maria. Thank you, Maddie. As a quick reminder to the audience, please ask questions or engage in discussion by using the Q&A box in the right side of your screen and use the hashtag invest in educators on social media. So now we'd like to engage our panelists in a discussion given these research findings and the brief, a brief introduction of them we have with us today, Dr. Cade Bumley, the superintendent of the Soda Parish School System in Mansfield, Louisiana. Michelle Dickey, a teacher in the District of Columbia Public Schools, Washington DC, and professional development trainer for the Washington Teachers Union. And Kat Nelson, elementary lead learner for the Visai Elementary School in Visai, Oklahoma, and zone eight director for the National Association of elementary school principals. Thank you so much for joining us. And I'd like to skip started by asking you all a question and please include in your answer a little bit about the work that you're doing. We heard about the seven elements that inform an effective teacher PD and the elements of effective leadership preparation. But could you describe what those elements might look like when implemented in a program or initiative at the district, school or classroom level? Okay, can you go ahead and get us started? Hey, thank you. I think that there's broad agreement that the elements of professional development are needed, but there's just still exist some confusion or challenges on how to actually deliver an effective professional development model. You need to be able to deliver a model that's not disconnected from the teacher's needs is clearly linked to student learning goals or outcomes. And you want to be sure that you're always focused on individual needs of students. So I find it odd that in districts where possibly 60, 70, 80, even upwards of 90% of the district's budget goes into a talent or educators or staff that we don't really spend enough time trying to solve this problem. So I appreciate the work that's taking place here today. In DeSoto where we've had significant results over the last few years, we partnered with the National Institute of Excellence in Teaching or NIT to implement the TAP model in our system. It provides an instructional infrastructure for teachers so that they might become better at honing their craft so that their students might might grow. This includes constant job embedded professional development and includes support for master and mentor teachers. It includes constantly looking at how to best deliver the content that students need as well as the best strategies. Great. Thank you, Michelle. Yes. What I think that there has to be a connection on all levels with district school or classroom. It can't be just removed. And with the district, if they could come in and kind of do a needs analysis with the local schools, that way they can see what the schools need because even in DC we have over 100 schools and the needs are so unique at the school level that the district will be helpful if the district came in to assess those needs. And that way the professional development can be tailored. And sometimes that may lead to the collaboration that we need between schools. There could be six or seven different schools with those same needs and we could come together at specific times to actually go through what we need for professional development so our students could be successful. And of course our teachers can be successful master teachers. And then when we come back to the local school again, you can have five or six different classrooms in a school that have different individual needs based on the students because we have such a vast variety of students. And on that class, school and classroom level is the school again. Just doing the needs analysis, coming in, observing, seeing what's really needed and seeing who can do peer together, who can work together. Is it a school-wide problem? Maybe it's just this classroom needs this and tailored at professional development. And if you use the seven features of the effective professional development, put it together and let it be job embedded, not just in quote job embedded, but really come in with the coaching, come to observe, follow up, quality feedback and just have it ongoing. And the timeline, while I know resource doesn't give a specific timeline, but at least set times where we check in, evaluate, reevaluate to see if it's working because if it's working, you can easily move one to another strategy or something else that's needed. And if it's not, you can come back and revise. That way we can make sure that we're maximizing our student achievement. Thank you, Michelle. And Kat? Thank you, Maria. It is a great pleasure for me to discuss the importance of effective professional learning for both teachers and principals. And as the lead learner at my school, which really describes what I do as a principal, I am the lead learner. This is an issue that I take very seriously because of the impact that that leaders have on improving student outcomes. I really agree a lot with what Michelle said about let's make it really job embedded. And I'm just going to bounce off of what she said because it's a lot of what I had already thought out. So Michelle, you and I are right on here. I like the fact that we check in high quality professional development as we discussed or as we learned earlier in the presentation is not a sit and get it's not a one time, but teachers need to have that time. And if they are managing effectively a chunk of their professional learning or a strategy that they're implementing, then by all means that checking is so important just so that they can move on and continue to learn and grow. And specifically in my school, you know, these seven elements look differently across states and even districts. But in my school, for example, we have a professional learning community and we've identified literacy as a common student learning need at my school. And with that teachers are able to come together and in principle they're able to come together and discuss how we're working school wide and across grade levels to address the various challenges in that particular area. So this is how we start with a shared vision in our school and continue on through improvement. Thank you, Michelle, you shared a little bit about what's going on within your school. Can you share a little bit about how the professional development you've experienced have has reflected the elements and what your personal experience with PD has been, especially how your learning and experiences from programs have improved your practice and student learning. Thank you. Yes, I'm very fortunate to be at a school where the leader is very into effective professional development. Our district gives a guide of what they want professional development to be. They give a great skeleton for you to work with. But she actually tailed it and she allows the coaches in the building to tailor the professional development. So prime example last year I was in a part of a cohort for literacy. Our focus was writing. So we had a new teacher. I'm a 17 year vet. We have another teacher over 25 year experience and the collab and excuse me, a first year teacher. So the collaboration between us and bouncing off of each other. Things that I did not know that the 25 year 25 year vet did that helped me out because some of my students who have a problem with let's say informative writing and those strategies that were given it helped me out. Also, when you make it job embedded, we will require to bring in student work because we know the ultimate goal is for our students to be successful. We took the student work and got different perspectives because sometimes as a teacher I will admit you like I noticed what this child can do. So you may be a little subjective, but having those other eyes who have that common vision like I said the same vision common vision looking at the work using specific standards and rubrics to address it. It really helped out a lot. The coach came in and she really she really tailored it to you. So what she came in my class most or I could have been struggling with something and needed help with a concept. She didn't have to go with someone else's classroom to do because they had a difference in strategy that they needed work with. So just to see that model go on it wasn't perfect, but we're still building upon it and this year we're starting out fresh and they even divided it even more because they work. They realized that they needed to divide it and put people on different pathways. So our pathways were the general pathway was chosen, but now we actually get to individually choose a pathway that we would like to go and the district is also mimicking that with pathways that they're doing. So with that being said, my students, I just looked at Park scores that they had and I had students that honestly I projected that they may have scored a level two, maybe a level three and they were a level four and that actually is a reflection of what I learned in my professional development at the school because it was tailored to me. It wasn't just something to just to get to me, something that I already mastered and didn't know. It took where I needed improvement and it targeted that and that really improved my students practice. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. I can even hear the excitement in your voice when you think about the learning opportunities you've had. So I appreciate you sharing that. I'd like to switch a little bit now to Kate and Cass. You've actually provided professional development to teachers. So could you talk a little bit about your approach to providing PD and how that approach has reflected these elements? And can you share some of your personal experiences in selecting and deciding which PD and how to implement that PD, especially your learning and experiences from the PD that you received? And how has that improved your practice and student outcomes? Sure, I can just go ahead and speak to that just a little bit. This is Cass and the effective indicators that we've talked about being collaborative content focused learning that is sustained and applied through active learning and implementing proven models of success are all part of like I spoke about earlier, the shared vision around continuous improvement and achieving excellence. And my role, I am the principal at the school. I am the lead learner. So it's my responsibility to engage in learning with or alongside my teachers, providing the coaching and support, the instructional feedback or reflection and offer opportunities for that offer opportunities for doing just that for offering or for reflecting and giving feedback. This is how teachers and principals fit together hand in hand. I think not one over the other or not one or the other. But that's why being a leader having having strong leadership skills and having some high quality professional development as a leader is second only to affect the teaching in the classroom when you look at the factors that relate to student achievement like we discussed earlier. Professional opportunities for learning may look different according to which strategies we are pursuing. Some may be school wide at my school. Others are more focused on specific grade level or specific learning goals. But the elements of learning presents themselves in our school through a variety of ways. Some of the things that are some of the high quality offerings that we have seen really be very effective would be mentoring teachers, pairing teachers with each other, letting them do some peer observation. Other things such as high quality book studies, we've chosen books that not only relate to our focus, which is literacy, but we've also chosen books that discuss. Let's see, just creating a culture, creating a good school culture. So those are those have also proven to be very helpful for our teachers. We collaborate with each other, not just not just face to face, not just for collaborative meetings, but we also utilize technology. We utilize apps such as tablets where teachers are able to give each other feedback or leave each other messages or simply communicate about about different goals through technology. Those are just a few. Thank you, Cass. I really like the fact that your title is lead learner as a principal that really gets at the heart of this work around professional learning, not just for teachers, but leaders as well. And so that's a great example of how the culture of where you're at is really focused on the learning and the development of all of the stakeholders in the community. Kate, can you share a little bit about what's going on in DeSoto? Yes, thanks. You know, we tell prospective teachers that if they think that they've already arrived that DeSoto is not the place for them. In fact, if if a teacher wants to hone their craft and be excellent, DeSoto Parish School System is the place to work. You know, there's a lot of talk and the buzz word is organic. Things are organic. But I think in terms of professional development, that's not good enough. I think I think that in terms of professional development, you have to be very strategic in what you're trying to accomplish. And it's an old term, but backwards design still works. We think about where we want our students to ultimately be. And then we plan to get there, given the amount of time and resource that we have to make that happen. So for instance, in DeSoto, we have leadership teams at both the district and the school level. And at the school level, those are focused primarily on content. And so math teachers in a high school will cluster together every week for 90 minutes in professional development, math teachers, ELA teachers, science. And in elementary, that's basically done on a on a grade level basis. And they plan together. They look at student work and data points together. They talk through how how support might be beneficial with them and what support they might need. And they really, really focus on content and trying to understand what are the standards, what the standards actually mean through a real solid deconstruction process of the standard so they know what students need to know. And beyond that, they know what the students know when they're supposed to know those things. Give you a brief example this year with our principal group, we're focused on academic feedback. So something very specific. We found that academic feedback is very inexpensive, but at the same time research will show you that it gives you a great bang for your buck. And so we're trying to work with our principals to understand what academic feedback and feedback in general might look like from the district to the principal, what feedback might look like from the principal to the teacher and what that might look like from the teacher to the student. And we believe that with the laser focus that we have on academic feedback, for a very low cost, we'll make a tremendous difference in the lives of our students. That's fabulous, Kate, especially that sense of cohesion, that everyone is doing it at every level, at the district level, at the school level, all the way down to the class level. So that's really impressive of how it's not only working in the academic sense, but also in building the culture and the cohesion across levels. Thank you. So one of the primary purposes of ESA is to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for historically underserved students and close gaps in those opportunities and outcomes as well. What is the role of educator and leader quality and professional development in fulfilling that purpose? Kate, we're going to go ahead and start with you again. And then Michelle and Cass, if you could join in. Yeah, ESA will do something that hasn't really happened before and that's illuminate results within subgroups that truly need to be illuminated. For instance, and to sort of perish one of the subgroups that we're really looking at moving forward as as our many districts is our special ed student population. And my question essentially to stakeholders within our school community, including our educators was, you know, why are special education results not mirroring the tremendous results we're seeing in regular ed? And so I conducted a number of interviews with educators, students, parents. We held two different think groups within the system to develop a redesign for our special ed programming. And as as we work through that, as we triangulated all the information that we had available, we really came to the idea that we need to understand that we need to move from a deficiency model to a proficiency model. And we also grew to understand that we need to mirror the same things that are taking place in regular ed with our special ed population targeted to those teachers. So truly for the first time, sadly, but truly for the first time in our district, our special education teachers and other associated educators will be receiving professional development that is directly targeted to them. So in the past, unfortunately, in our district and in others, special ed teachers would have to have to hop in to professional development session with, say, an English teacher or a math or wherever they might be more comfortable or they fit best. But in the SOTA this year, we're actually targeting support in a number of different ways to help our special ed teachers help those students grow. And so I think that that's one of the positives of the new ESA is just the fact that it will illuminate some of these subgroups like never before. And it's our responsibility as educators to respond to that accordingly to meet the needs of our students. Thank you, Michelle. Yes. And I'm glad to hear what they're doing in this SOTA, because again, saying here, the special education teachers were lumped in professional developments with us. And some places it was appropriate and sometimes not here in DC, the achievement gap, it's been wide enough for a while. We're seeing small, where's decreasing a little bit, but still not to the degree that I think it should. And I don't think anyone else thinks it should. It's with ESA happening, you're going to have to target the professional development. Like you said, subgroups, they need to be disappearing. And the biggest thing that I saw with improvement with our special ed subgroup at our school is when they actually did a true model where it's a push in model. So they would get, of course, the core instruction from the classroom teacher and the special education teacher came in for that targeted support. And if everyone is trained in that model, it even works with general education students so that we can push these gaps and close the achievement gaps. Something else that could be helpful with professional development is sometimes it's different cultures have different gaps. So I myself have multicultural students. So I try to learn as much about their culture so that way I can reach them that way, which helps to also reach them academically. And I think that should be included also with the professional development when states are writing their ESSA plans and what they're doing to adhere to it. Because as long as we we're not doing that targeted instruction, targeted professional development to develop the quality teachers and students success, the gap will widen and we need to really close that gap because every student should have the opportunity to make a choice of what they want to do. So I'm just looking at just districts making plans to include what is included in effective professional development and making sure that it's targeting every group because no matter it may end up being a lot, every person is a part of some, it may not be an identified subgroup, but just some group where they actually need that targeted instruction, targeted experiences and teachers need to be able to relate to those students, get them the best education that they need. And when we start talking about things like students who are in deep poverty or may have been stuck in an area for generations, maybe drug, alcohol abuse that has done things that may we may not be able to actually decipher yet, but if we can get more research with that, that will help us so much with getting professional development to help us with those students with those issues that we have a lot of and we're not doing the best, we're doing the best that we can, but there's a lot more research that should be done so that we can get the PD to help those students immediately. Yes, thank you. There's just as PD needs to be content focused, there's a need to also have trauma informed PD and PD that focuses specifically on issues such as cultural competency and additional information for educators who are working with our most vulnerable population. Thank you, Michelle. Kat? I absolutely agree with Katie and Michelle and and just want to reiterate that I heard Michelle say that we are doing our best, but we are not able to do the best for each and every child. And that's how I feel in my state. We are doing the very best that we can, but it's not enough. And that's where high quality professional development comes in. And that's where it comes in and targeting each one of those groups. And like like Michelle said, I completely agree. There's we've got to do more. We've got to focus in on each group. Our children deserve it. Our children deserve much better than we're able to give them at this point. But as the lead learner at my school, my role is simply to ensure the equity that the equity is there. We're working with our state and our state is working through their essay right now or through our asset, but just making sure that all students are provided and access to well rounded and complete education. I think that's been this this means spending more professional development time with teachers to identify those needs even within our own school and just going above and beyond what we have on what we are able to for the sake of each of each child. I think we have to remember that. Thank you. I'd like to turn our attention to title two and the fact that many states are relying on title two part a funding to improve educator quality and school performance and describing such efforts in their essay plans. President Trump and Secretary DeVos proposed to completely eliminate the 2.1 billion dollars in funding for this program. What is the likely impact the elimination or even the reduction of these funds would have on states as they implement their essay plans. Michelle, can you go ahead and get us started? Sure. The elimination of those funds would just leave us in disarray. Speaking from my district, who was really headed in the right direction, it took a while. It took a lot of let's try to see if it works, if it doesn't work, let's improve it. And I think we're getting it right. But if those funds get cut, we're not going to have the master leaders that are leading us who are giving us the professional development that we need and the people who are actually coming in to do those analysis of what we really need and with that money being gone and maybe it's going to rely on a local school, but the local school budgets are cut every year. And it puts a lot on a leader who really wants their staff to get the best professional development. But unfortunately, they may not with those funds gone, they wouldn't be able to actually support that. So when we look at that and as to what's every child to achieve, children pretty much will be stagnant. Those who can, they will, of course, but it wouldn't be the best quality that we could get. We need the funding because teachers on their own trying to figure out professional development, trying to choose on their own when you can actually give it to a district where they can actually do the research or figure out what we really need and get masters of content to show us what we need to help our students. It's going to end up being just a school system that fails across foundation. So cutting those funds is really is going to really eliminate successful students, in my opinion. Thank you for that on the ground teacher perspective. Kate, could you talk about that from the superintendent's perspective? Yeah, thanks. This is actually one of my favorite topics. I'll graduate my sixth class as superintendent of the Soda Parish School System this upcoming year. And during that time, that same time period, we've seen about a 40% drop in our overall revenue. So if you just think about the magnitude of that, our revenue has been cut in half essentially over that same timeframe. However, it's forced us to look at new ways of doing things to be as creative, effective, and efficient as possible. And our results show that we've done that well. You know, of Louisiana's 70 plus districts, we were ranked 45th just a few years ago, and now we're ranked 14th out of all of those systems. We berate as many funds as possible. And our title funds are a valuable piece of that, especially considering that our local dollars continuously seem to erode away. In title two, we need to be sure that we're advocating to try and get that restored into the budget. And I would just encourage everyone to have conversations with, you know, senators, congressmen, whoever are the power players in your area, just so that they undersure, I mean, so they ensure that those funds are restored. For us here in DeSoto, we built a differentiated compensation package for teachers so that teachers that are teaching in hard-to-staff areas were market responsive. So high school math, high school science, special education, as well as some of our high-need schools, we're able to provide additional supplements for individuals in those fields. Alongside that, we also use those funds in DeSoto to help with our teacher and student advancement program, our TAP model. And we use some of those funds to provide substitute teachers, high-quality substitute teachers while our regular ed and special ed teachers are clustering together based on their content. So the funds are used so that our teachers have time to plan, and at the same time, kids are still being serviced by a quality instructor in the classroom. Thank you, Kate. Those, that progress that you managed to make is just phenomenal. That's great work that you're doing there. Cass, can you finish us off with the lead learner principal perspective, please? Absolutely. Well, we established that the research shows that teachers and principals are the most impactful on student learning. And so knowing that, how can we not fund high-quality professional development for teachers and principals when we know that they make the most impact on a day-to-day basis on student learning? As a principal, this funding is critical next to Title I in order to provide effective interventions, professional development, teaching strategies, everything that our teachers and myself need to meet our students' learning needs. There simply are not enough funds provided in Title I in that section of the law to pick up, or for the intended purpose, in that section of the law, for the intended purpose, and the goal of Title II in ESSA. So I just think it is imperative that we must use our voices, and I just wanted to briefly share that MAESP partnering with many, many other entities is asking for tomorrow, actually on the 29th, on Tuesday, August 29th, join MAESP, in ASSP, American Federation of School Administrators, there are a bunch of us who are going to be using our voices to tweet out or to contact lawmakers about Title II. So I just wanted to encourage everyone to follow that conversation as well. Thank you, Cass. We have information for that at the end of the webinar, so we'll be able to give folks a link to that event at the end. So I'm just going to ask one quick question to each of the panelists and then go on to our audience questions. So Michelle, as a teacher, can you from that perspective explain why is effective leadership so important? Yes, effective leadership is just important because we're all stakeholders in this, and everyone should share that common shared vision of student achievement. And if we're all sharing a vision that we need to develop our educators, even our para educators during the school, anyone who works with our students, and we all have that common vision, then we will work together to award that vision. And that comes with a principal who understands the importance of professional development, not saying they were a professional developer before or maybe a coach before, but they've gone through and understand the importance of effective professional development so that students can increase achievement, that trust level has to be there, shared leadership has to be there. You have to have a principal who stands their ground and is so sound in their position that shared leadership is looked to as a positive and not a threat because shared leadership with all stakeholders, we have so many ideas, so many successful people with a lot of skill, different skill bases. If all of that shared vision comes together and their shared leadership with the common goal of student achievement and producing effective quality, extraordinary teachers, that is the best. I've worked with a couple of them that when I say shared leadership, they would sometimes put things on the table and we could make those decisions. Of course they had to approve, but when we made decisions that were best for our students and teachers, it really worked. I'm listening to Cass, I'm listening to Cade, and it seems like they are spearheading that in their districts and schools and that is what I like to hear. If we can just have that shared leadership going towards student achievement that leadership is very important because a leader can make a break, unfortunately, and if you have that goal of student achievement, shared leadership, shared vision, shared goals, everything you work out. Thank you, Michelle. Cass, as a principal and lead learner, you talked a little bit about this, but could you focus in on a particular school-wide or improvement goal, that strong professional development has helped to articulate coherence across Title I. Is there a particular example? Sure. As I mentioned, we have been focusing on improving literacy and the strong professional development that I have received through various professional developments that I've been sent to by my district, that has in turn allowed me to lead that through my school. The same is true for, we would think of this as a student. We would think of this this example kind of as a student. We don't expect students to meet an objective after we just introduce it. The fact that the professional development for myself and for my teachers has been ongoing. The fact that we have targeted it on a goal and we continue to move toward that goal. I am able to check in with them. We provide each other feedback. We collaborate. I'm hoping that you can hear a lot of those seven effective effective professional development ideas in there because they are so important, but none of that would have happened if I didn't have the leadership training and professional development as the lead learner of the school. Here teachers are going to seek out information and sure, but it takes a leader. It takes the professional development that makes a leader, somebody that's able to pull all of that together. Somebody who's able to get the building organized and get the teachers on board, build culture, collaborate, provide time for that professional development. Then on the back end, provide time for it to be implemented. All of that, all of that build and makes our work toward literacy at our school, toward improving reading at our school grow each and every day. And some things that we found just through the growth of our students and our teachers, teaching strategies in their classrooms, we are finding that other things are affected through just our cohesiveness of the staff. Our culture has improved. Our parent communications have improved. We're reaching out to parents more and they're reaching out to us more, which is a great thing. You always want parents to feel welcome and part of their child's education. So that's very important. We've noticed that our LEP or limited English students, their proficiency on the WIDA access test has improved. So there are lots of things that just focusing in on a goal and keeping everyone moving forward have, it's kind of a domino effect. Thank you. I think that that point about our leaders, you having to have the experience of having high quality PD is really important because often leaders who don't have the experience don't know how to identify that or create that space for their own teachers. So I think that's a really important key point that you made. Kate, finally, as a superintendent, why and how has John Professional Development Opportunities helped with a school-wide or improvement goal to articulate coherence across Title I? Yeah, thanks. First of all, this just really matters. I know that's simple, but professional development that's high quality, job-embedded, it really matters and it matters for our students. And there are a couple of things I think have made a tremendous difference for us. One of those being strategy and the second being talent. And talent is your largest financial investment in your students. And so if you're going to do talent right, then you have to have a plan to make that happen. And so what educators want in order to come to a district or to stay in a district? They need an acceptable leader and their school principal. They need a supportive culture where they can grow and be the best teacher that they can be. And they need a compensation package that makes sense. If I look specifically at number two, a supportive culture for growth, I think about our TAP model that we deliver to guide our professional development processes. And we encourage a growth mindset in all of our educators. And there's a statement out there. There's a question, rather. What does it take to get there? And we like to believe in the power of yet, YET. So we believe that we are who we are not yet. And in the disorder pair school system, we have not arrived, but we will continue to work to be the leaders, to be the learners, to be the teachers that our students need in order to be successful. Great. Thank you so much, Cade. And now we have about four minutes left to the webinar. But so we want to get to some of the audience questions. So we'll start going through and get as many as we can. On the first one, some Larry is to Maddie action on the research as opposed to effective structural improvements for admin prep programs. Did you investigate in-service supports for principals and instructional leaders? Yeah, that's a great question. So this is Maddie again, chime in back in. And I would say in this report on strategies for supporting effective leaders in schools, you'll see there are examples from both in-service and preparation programs. So for example, San Diego Unified has an in-service preparation program that really exemplifies a lot of these strategies as well. It includes mentoring and network learning among principals in the district. So if anyone's interested in those types of examples, I'd really encourage you to look through the report because they're definitely in there. And the features that we were describing are certainly, I think, equally valid for both in-service and preparation. Thank you. Kate, a question for you from Corey. What advice do you have regarding how a district can track and assess PE quality across schools? Very good. Thank you for the question, Corey. One of the things that I would suggest that any district do is to make sure that they have one at the district level who is specifically overseeing the professional development for the district. I would also suggest that the superintendent not be too far away from that individual because this is the person that's ensuring quality control of all of these practices throughout the district. So for us, we have what's called an executive master teacher. Again, you put your money in terms of your budget in areas where you think you can do the most good. And so we spend a lot of money in professional development in terms of a percentage of our budget. And so our executive master teacher works with our school-based master teachers to make sure that they're planning effectively for leadership team meetings, for clustering, for follow-up support. And so then they report back directly to our director of student learning who reports back to me. And we all just hold each other accountable for that work. Excellent. Thank you. Michelle, are there any examples of needs assessment surveys that state agencies can use to discover the needs of educators? Did you have any surveys given to you? That's a question from Patty. I have had surveys given to me. They were created in-house from the local school level. So and also the district was in a survey that they have an official one that they sent. And I think it may have come from new teacher project surveying the needs of the school or the needs met those types of things. But our needs assessment from the local school was made locally from my leaders. That's great. And actually a good advice for how to get the types of questions for educators that are very context specific. We actually are out of time for questions. But I wanted to remind participants that the slides and a recording of the webinar will be posted on LPI's website afterwards as a resource to you. I can hear the virtual round of applause for all three for our panelists today. Thank you to all of you for participating. If there are questions we'll do we didn't get to we'll do our best to get back to you. And the present presenters have shared their contact information and I'm sorry to follow up with them directly if they can be helpful. So thank you again for joining this webinar hosted by the American Federation of Teachers Learning Policy Institute National Association of Elementary School Principles National Association of Secondary School Principles National Education Association and the School Superintendent's Association. We wanted to make you aware of the Title II day of action tomorrow hosted by NAESP and NASSP in support of maintaining Title II funding. You can find more information about this event using the link that just posted in the Q&A box. We'd also like to encourage you to save the date for our next LPI event focused on teacher turnover and what we can do about it on September 19th and that'll be held in Washington, D.C. You can find the report highlighted for the highlighted at this event using the link that just posted in the Q&A box as well. We hope this webinar was helpful to participants as you consider best practices for teacher and leader professional development. We'll post the recording and slides from today's webinar on LPI's website in a day or two and email attendees when they are available. Thank you again and have a great rest of your Monday.