School Type: Public	School Setting: Urban
Level: K-12	School Design: Traditional
Content Presented By:
National Awards Program for Model Professional Development

Summary

The practice: Professional development should provide learning opportunities that relate to individual needs but are, for the most part, organized around collaborative problem solving.

• Critical feedback from 24 other "model schools" is used to refine the school improvement plan
• Three days a year are used by the district Professional Development (PD)
• One day for special education issues PD
• Four days for individual schools' PD
• Early release and creative scheduling created to focus on the high-priority areas
• In the mid 1990s, 80% elementary teachers spent on average 30 minutes a week on science. In 2000, they spent 140 minutes on science
• Middle school offered three years of science in 2000 compared to a year and a half in 1990

Serving a diverse student population, San Francisco Unified School District has discovered that professional development pays dividends in terms of increased student achievement.

In its comprehensive Professional Development Initiative, San Francisco Unified links 25 "model schools" in a "critical friends" network. Teams from each of the model schools develop draft professional development plans and present them to the network for feedback, critique, and recommendations. In the network, schools discover how their needs and goals overlap and how to share resources and support with those schools whose needs and goals are similar.

Throughout the district and at individual schools teams of staff members meet to analyze student performance data, examine instructional strategies and curriculum, and develop school improvement and professional development plans to increase student and teacher learning. The success of the Professional Development Initiative is based on the collaboration among teachers, administrators, parents, and support staff. Working together, they contributed to comprehensive improvement of teaching and learning within the San Francisco Unified School District.

This site also exemplifies the following practice(s):

• Professional development should be connected to a comprehensive change process focused on improving student learning.  

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This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu