Articles & White Papers

Staff Development: The Need for a New Paradigm in School Districts

By Dennis Reussow & Rachel Niles

Abstract: School Districts face enormous challenges in terms of teacher development and teaching effectiveness. While these challenges are not new to educators, the need for effective teacher and employee training is increasing as the pool of qualified educators becomes smaller. School districts that are able to properly train teachers will outperform other school districts by developing effective educators and increasing the skill of current educators. School districts cannot simply rely on hiring educators who are already successful.

An effective staff development program will incorporate both: 1) a curriculum that provides skill-development necessary for classroom success and 2) a management system that provides tools to assist in registration and administration of staff development programs.

We are entering a new era of staff development in our school districts. The old paradigm no longer works, and the consequences of that failure are played out in the media on an almost-daily basis. While the new paradigm is not yet wholly developed, the definitions are being written and tested in those places where the failures of the past are understood, and where the inevitability of change is seen as an opportunity rather than a threat.

The Need for Change

School districts are no longer able to hire an adequate number of teachers with sufficient skills. What has yet to be determined is the "right" response to this problem. Many educators and legislators are trying to find ways to make the old paradigm fit the new reality. That is impossible. The constructs of a new staff development methodology are found in the reasons why the old paradigm no longer works.

Changes in the labor pool. For most of the past 150 years, preK-12 schools in North America have been able to survive and prosper because they were the beneficiaries of artificial barriers imposed in the labor market. Until the last quarter of the 20th century, the schools had nearly unlimited and unchallenged access to women. Stated very simply, the schools had a lock on an endless supply of highly talented, yet cheap labor. Without this economic reality, there is little doubt that our educational system would have evolved into a completely different model.

The circumstances that created this temporary labor advantage changed very quickly over the past thirty years and the consequences for the schools are dramatic: The cheap labor supply is gone; without it, the model that worked in the past will work no longer. Classroom dynamics are increasingly complex, requiring new and previously underdeveloped skills. This is more that just a mandate for change. It is the signal for a restructuring of how educational services are provided. A model that is built on the assumption of a constant supply of high quality and inexpensive labor will not work now that the assumption is no longer valid.

Although this is a new experience for school districts, it certainly is not unique to the marketplace. The increasing complexity of society and industry has contributed to a shift in thinking; those who once viewed the structure of an organization as a series of separate and fragmented departments have adopted a systems perspective, where departments are interconnected. Understanding the relationships within and among organizations makes addressing complexity and change possible. School districts aside, most companies have come to understand that employees new to the workforce do not generally bring with them the skills necessary for immediate success. The result is that internal training programs are common throughout most organizations. If school districts expect to have great teachers in their classrooms, they will have to accept the responsibility to develop them through great training programs.

Changing state mandates. Interestingly enough, one of the strongest signals of the current system's failure is being sent from the various State Departments of Education, traditionally the only agencies authorized to issue teaching certificates. The teacher-certification process has already begun to be decentralized, to the point that certain school districts are now permitted to issue certificates in a small number of controlled situations. This means that the districts must have the processes in place to ensure that teachers who apply for certification are indeed capable of effective teaching. This alone will require school districts to reengineer their training departments.

Concurrent with this probable decentralization of the teacher-certification process is a complicating secondary issue: The colleges and universities are not able to provide replacement teachers in the numbers that are needed. If they are going to have qualified teachers in the numbers they need, school districts will have to find new qualified teacher sources. One suggestion has been to find applicants trained in other disciplines who have an interest in teaching. The premise is that there are scientists who will become science teachers or mathematicians who will become math teachers. Yet even if it is possible to find enough who are willing to accept the financial implications of such a career change, some entity will have to provide additional training if the transitions are to be successful. Once again, it is probable that this duty to train will also fall to the school districts. As a consequence, major changes in staff development programs will be necessary.

Two choices. School districts have two options: to become proactively involved in training their teachers and other employees, or to rely more and more on marginally and even poorly trained employees to provide instructional services. It is virtually impossible to believe that the second option can be seen as even remotely acceptable. It follows, therefore, that all school districts will have to make massive revisions to their staff development systems. Even though the new model has not yet been implemented, we can predict some of the fundamental principles upon which it must be based.

The New Paradigm

A systems view of staff development and the industry of education is essential. Its purpose would be straightforward; to create and nurture great teachers. While some type of certification may be a part of the outcome, it can only be a secondary consideration, not the primary purpose.

Two components contribute equally to the ultimate success of such a system: an effective curriculum, and the management system that supports the curriculum.

The Curriculum. The content of an effective training program must focus on the skills necessary for success in the classroom; not on subject matter expertise. This allows school districts to teach what they know best. If, for example, a person is interested in becoming a math teacher, it is not reasonable to assume that the hiring district should be expected to raise the prospective candidate's knowledge of mathematics to an acceptable level. In the first place, there are other agencies more qualified to provide that instruction; and in the second place, it is fair to expect that candidates will present themselves with some degree of qualification for the position in which they are interested.

The role of the districts will be to provide training necessary to enable teachers to teach in the specific situations that they will face in the classrooms of that particular district. It is necessary to provide specific - not generic - training that is relevant to the actual district environment in which the teacher or employee will be working. While it is true that nearly every district in the country will have to build this curriculum from the ground up, they begin with two huge advantages: First, they are in the best possible position to know exactly what skills teachers in their particular schools need to be effective. Second, they have the ability to provide training that is consistent with their core competency. Teaching is what they do.

Both administrators and classroom teachers have a stake in assuring that the best possible training comes out of this, and both have a need to ensure that their needs are accommodated. Instruction must reflect an understanding of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed by a classroom system as well as requirements of the district supra-system. Even after the best possible training curriculum has been created, however, success will be greatly limited without an effective management system.

The Management System. School districts are labor-intensive organizations, and teachers are the largest single group within any district. This fact, combined with the expectation that all teachers will become heavily involved with the training program, requires all training programs to incorporate an automated management system to facilitate teacher access to the training and to ensure that necessary records are maintained. This cannot be done with notices tacked to bulletin boards, ledger pads, and electronic spreadsheets. Such primitive support (or non-support) provides less than acceptable levels of service and requires an unnecessarily immense investment in clerical staffing. It is not only expensive, it fails to leverage the time, effort, and money that have been expended to create a world-class training program. Technology provides the clear solution.

As part of the empowerment of teachers, an effective management system would allow teachers and other course-eligible personnel to:

• Register for courses at any time (24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year). Access must be universally available for all staff. Telephone and Internet access together make that possible.

• View a catalog that is updated constantly and instantly. This eliminates print as a viable medium and emphasizes the need for a web-based solution.

• Manage their current schedule with ease at any time including withdrawing from classes, receiving notification of changes to their schedule, and viewing their historic attendance information.

• Track their own progress against state and district re-certification requirements and a pre-determined list of required courses such as those needed for a permanent teaching assignment or to correct an identified deficiency.

• Securely access the management system in order to update contact information without involving a second person to complete the task.

To further reduce the labor-intensiveness of administering staff development, an effective management system also must:

• Employ the concept of "one-time-only" data entry.

• Require little or no specific training before teachers are able to use it.

• Empower instructors by informing them at all times of exactly who is enrolled in a class and allowing them to assume part of the task of recording attendance information.

• Maintain waiting list capabilities, including adding from the waitlist automatically in case of cancellations and permitting the addition of supplemental offerings when warranted by demand.

• Provide a complete history for the participation of every registrant along with the instant on-line capability of updating this information.

• Provide tracked data in a variety of formats to meet diverse reporting needs including sign-in sheets, certificates of completion, transcripts, and statistical measurements.

There may be other features that would enhance a particular management system, but a district will fail if it attempts to implement a comprehensive staff development program without at least having the options listed above. To provide an adequate supply of competent teachers and enable districts to achieve their overall instructional missions, an automated teacher training management system is crucial.

A Call to Action

Albert Einstein once said, "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We have to learn to see the world anew". The role of staff development in school districts has changed. Even the programs that exist today are less than optimally successful, largely because the supporting infrastructure is not in place. The limiting aspects of the old paradigm contrast sharply with the two essential components of the new paradigm: world-class curriculum and an effective management system. It is time to take action by initiating appropriate curriculum development and selecting a management system with the features described above.

Today, the consequences of not providing an adequate curriculum and an appropriate management system are both serious and unnecessary. Failure to provide these essential components will have a tremendous negative impact on the districts ability to successfully meet its instructional purpose.

About eSchool Solutions (www.eschoolsolutions.com): eSchool Solutions Inc. is a leading provider of integrated technology solutions for the preK-12 education market. The company serves over 500 school districts encompassing 20,000 schools in North America providing automated solutionsand consulting services.

To learn more about our staff development management systems, or other applications provided by eSchool Solutions, please contact Shelley Schmidt, Sales & Marketing Administrator at 888-388-8774, ext 213 or sschmidt@eschoolsolutions.com

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