Traditional professional development programs require teachers to be absent from the classroom or worse - schools to be shut down for the entire day — despite knowing that teacher absences from the classroom, for even the best of reasons, are tied to a decrease in student learning. Taking teachers out of the classroom to increase student achievement and knowing that teachers absences will result in a decrease in student learning is an educational paradox that should no longer be tolerated.
Districts often mandate 3-5 staff development days requiring school closures as well as periodic (average 5 days) trainings during the school day scattered throughout the year. This means that teachers are pulled from the classroom for as many as 10 days each year — over the course of a students K-12 career — with each child losing almost an entire year of instruction — under the assumption the teacher will be "better" when they return from the training. However, a report by the National Staff Development Council, Professional Learning in the Learning Profession (2009), notes that most teachers (9 out of 10) in the United States participate in professional development consisting mostly of short isolated workshops and conference sessions. Based on these sporadic, disconnected, random training events, teachers testify that district initiatives are not sustained or supported and that one-shot professional development does not change or improve their practice.
Time after time, research concludes that only high-quality, sustained, collaborative, and intensive professional learning directly and positively affects student achievement (SEDTA, 2008). "It's time," declares Linda Darling-Hammond, the principal researcher in the study, "for our education workforce to engage in learning the way other professionals do — continually, collaboratively, and on the job — to address common problems and crucial challenges where they work." Given the amount of dollars expended on human capital both in terms of personnel dollars and professional development dollars, districts must work to establish highly-effective professional development systems for teachers and administrators focused on delivering quality training aligned to crucial competencies and skills.