When teachers receive quality professional instruction, does it directly affect their students’ learning and test scores? That’s the question many schools want to answer - before they invest scarce resources in professional development programs.
A new independent national study has attempted to answer this question for one program, PD 360.
The study of 100 high-utilizing PD 360 schools shows statistically significant improvement in student achievement in both math and reading. Only schools that reported a high use of PD 360 were analyzed. When comparing these schools to their collective district benchmark from the prior year, students showed 72% greater improvement in reading (p<.001) and 399% greater improvement in math (p<.001). Results broken out by elementary, middle and high school levels also support a statistically significant growth in student achievement in schools. Elementary schools results increased by 235% for math and 74% for reading in the schools with high use of PD 360 compared to benchmark schools. In middle schools increases were 298% for math and 72% for reading. In high schools increases were 749% for math and 56% for reading (p<.0-01 for all four percentages).
"Statistically, the data clearly validates the impact of PD 360 on student performance and teacher efficacy,” said Dr. Steven H. Shaha, PhD, D.B.A. The author of two books and over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Shaha has over 25 years of experience in organizational performance and data analysis and has worked with national, state, international and local education departments.
Educators use PD 360 to access short video segments that present real classroom, best-practice examples. In addition to its content library, PD 360 provides integrated follow-up tools, reflection activities, tracking, and collaboration and community discussion forums and file sharing.
“This study validates the results we found with our initial research study on the impact of PD 360 on achievement,” said Chet Linton, CEO, School Improvement Network. “Educators should be especially excited with the large gains seen in students’ math scores. This data speaks to the tremendous growth in both confidence and teaching effectiveness that PD 360 gives teachers.”
