Much has been said in the press and through the reform movement about Accountability and Pay for Performance these days when it comes to teacher effectiveness. KDS believes that Strategic Professional Development as part of a strategic management of human capital initiative provides the support needed to build capacity in teachers and administrators, scale initiatives in as little as 6 weeks, reduce the cost of professional development and increase student achievement. Delivered online to all teachers for high yield strategies and individualized to support development of staff against gaps in competencies, strategic professional development uses the following approach to build capacity, at scale, with the perfect amount of accountability and support.
Here are the key components:
- Discovery — KDS works with your district to understand key challenges and deploys surveys and competency based assessments to understand needs at the district, school and individual employee level.
- Plan — KDS works with your district to deploy online professional development, district-wide on core areas of need and then individualizes course deployment to meet competency gaps for teachers and administrators.
- Eclassroom — Core professional development is taken online and delivered at the depth level of understanding, delivered by national experts and supported by district coaches and mentors, as well as school level leadership teams.
- Support — Efficacy of implementation is critical. KDS provides facilitator guides to support blended models, as well as, tools to track engagement of school leaders, coaches and mentors in supporting online learning content for differentiated instruction and support.
- Assessment — KDS provides observational assessment tools to capture "look fors" and assess competencies on a formative basis in support of district-wide or individualized professional development efforts. KDS also provides performance management tools to support accountability measures around teacher effectiveness. The tools are flexible and can support collecting evidence for any reform initiatives you put in place.
- Reporting — Any good system of support has accountability measures in place to be able to establish a "chain of evidence" that there is a change in practice. KDS incorporates reporting at all levels of the process so that you can maximize the continuous improvement process.