Evaluating Staff Development

As budgets tighten, stakeholders are demanding more accountability from school districts. Determining whether staff development investments are working is becoming a big of a piece of the planning process.

""In the age of accountability, organizations must prove the value of professional development investments. Real proof of value goes beyond enjoyment of participants and consists of significant improvements in skills, knowledge, and attitudes for participants and for their students, the ultimate value proposition." Steven Shaha, Valerie K. Lewis, et al. outline a very scientific process for evaluating programs in "Evaluating Professional Development: An approach to verifying program impact on teachers and students”, as published by the National Staff Development Council.

Evaluation can fall into a couple of different categories. One type is formative while the other type is called summative.

-NCREL's "Evaluating the Success of Professional Development" offers the following distinctions:

"Formative evaluation is used to modify or improve a professional development program. It is conducted throughout a professional development program to provide feedback and to determine changes to be made during the program to make it more valuable to participating educators. "

"Summative evaluation is conducted at the conclusion of a professional development program to determine its overall success, again in reference to the goals determined during the earliest stages of planning. Summative evaluation focuses on long-term changes in the educators through surveys, interviews, and peer evaluation. "

Northern Arizona University's Dr. Michael Blocher simple comparison chart showing the difference between the two types.