Teachers Who Learn, Kids Who Achieve

What does it take to translate teacher professional development into impressive learning gains for students?

A research study of eight schools that won the U.S. Department of Education’s National Award for Model Professional Development has been distilled into this brief and compelling story of successful school reform. A culture of learning — for teachers, students, the entire community — pervades these schools, and this book provides a glimpse of what it looks like. Teacher voices and vignettes give life to the guiding principles that researchers identified across these disparate sites. Annotated lists of resources provide concrete help in putting these principles into practice. And profiles of each school’s journey demonstrate that extraordinary results can be achieved from even modest beginnings.

In directing this project, Nikola Filby, who coordinates the WestEd Regional Educational Laboratory, hoped to capture the experience of effective professional development for the full range of teachers who pulled together for their students. "Teachers Who Learn, Kids Who Achieve is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with teachers, teacher aides, teacher leaders, and principals," as Filby reports. "The lessons we learned can be applied in any school, but the vision and discipline to stick with them require school staffs like those we met, educators whose goals never waver from what their students need. The people in these schools didn’t succeed because they’re superstars or over-achievers. They’re good, to be sure, and they worked hard, but they succeeded because they had concrete plans that let them turn their caring for their kids into learning and achievement, for themselves as well as their students."