The Shaffer Evaluation Group works in partnership with school districts, colleges, universities, educational agencies, government, and non-profit organizations to build successful programs informed by evidence. As accountability expectations have continued to increase, we are increasingly asked by our partners to support Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB), which Stockdill, Balzeman, and Compton (2002) define as “the intentional work to continuously create and sustain organizational processes that make quality evaluation and its uses routine.”
For our school district partners, expectations related to professional learning programs have been redefined. According to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed into law in December 2015, professional development activities are “sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data driven, and classroom focused” (S. 1177-295). ESSA also notes that professional development activities should be “regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievements, with findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development” (ESSA SEC 8002).
In an effort to support the ongoing work of our partners, the Shaffer Evaluation Group is pleased to offer a selection of targeted workshop options to assist our partners in improving their ability to measure and strengthen the impact of their professional learning initiatives on teacher beliefs, dispositions, and practices. Workshop participants will learn about valid assessment instruments that are available for low or no cost, as well as other available resources to assist in developing a plan for documenting and monitoring the effectiveness of professional learning efforts and their impact on student performance outcomes. Workshops are available in a half-day or full-day format.
Workshop outcomes include:
increased facility and understanding of high-quality data usage to measure impacts of professional learning on classroom practices and student performance outcomes;
increased skill in developing measurable outcomes for school-based initiatives;
increased skill in identifying and/or developing tools for measuring program outcomes;
increased knowledge of how to utilize instructional and performance data to determine the effectiveness of initiatives to identify professional learning targets;
increased awareness of effective, appropriate, and feasible strategies for data collection; and
development of a draft professional development plan.
Call us today for more information about planning a workshop for your school district.