They're still NSDC to us (smile) but we're beginning to adjust to the new name of the National Staff Development Council: Learning Forward. At their annual conference in Atlanta this week, the professional development association honored TLN  charter member Bill Ferriter and co-author Parry Graham with their award for Staff Development Book of the Year.

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: The First Year is — as Bill says in this blog post commenting on the award — "a practical book designed to support schools in their first year of PLC implementation by sharing stories, approachable research and a heaping cheeseload of handouts." And that's so true - the book is supported by 30 reproducibles that any teacher or principal can download free from the website. You don't even have to buy the book.

Bill, by the way, is a middle grades teacher in the Wake County (NC) Public Schools, where he and his principal Parry Graham led the development of a high-functioning professional learning community at newly opened Salem Middle School. The resulting book from Solution Tree (publisher of the DuFour series on PLCs) grows out of that authentic experience. Or, as Bill might say, it has cred. The folks at Learning Forward obviously thought so.

In a bold new report describing the conditions in many high-needs schools that interfere with student and  teacher success, 14 accomplished teachers are proposing a policy and practice framework they believe will move America beyond the achievement gap "blame game" toward meaningful and sustainable school reform.

Drawing on the latest research and their own experiences in urban schools across the nation, this TLN TeacherSolutions team has put together a dynamic blueprint that runs counter to the narrowly focused, test-driven reform strategies that currently control efforts to educate an increasingly diverse student population in undersupported schools.

 The report, Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System That Students and Teachers Deserve, is the product of more than a year of close study and debate, including virtual conversations with leading scholars representing a variety of perspectives. It is the latest in a series of TeacherSolutions reports supported by the Center for Teaching Quality that showcases reform proposals developed by outstanding teachers.

An e-magazine version of the report, with embedded video and audio commentary by the teachers, can be accessed here. Or download the PDF version here.

The teacher-authors include: Eldred “Jay” Bagley (Philadelphia); Glenda Blaisdell-Buck (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Mitzi Durham (Clark County, NV); Larry Ferlazzo (Sacramento, CA); Brian K. Freeland, Jr. (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Lori Fulton (Clark County, NV); Leona Bost Ingram (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kristoffer Kohl (Clark County, NV); Mona Madan (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kathie Marshall (Los Angeles); Delores Maxen (Charlotte- Mecklenburg, NC); Susan “Ernie” Rambo (Clark County, NV); Taylor Ross (Birmingham, AL); and Gamal Sherif (Philadelphia).

Education Week has a new special report on Professional Development, put together by teacher beat reporter Stephen Sawchuk and several of his colleagues. In introducing the report at the Teacher Beat blog, Sawchuk shares a story he heard more than once in his travels:

A man dies and goes to heaven. Passing the pearly gates, he notices that there are plenty of folks from all professions and walks of life standing around, but no teachers. 
"Where are all the teachers?" he inquires of God.
"Oh, they're in professional development," God replies. "In hell."

Here’s a link to the report’s INDEX… We’ve just begun to browse but it looks like Sawchuk talked in depth with this selection of teachers. And there's also an  interactive PDF version of the whole package.

Writing at On the Shoulders of Giants, TLN blogger Ariel Sacks wonders about the promise of wireless classrooms, and some of the barriers as well:

My mind's been trying to imagine what a paperless classroom would look like and how it would run.  I found a great post on the blog, teachone2one.com, called The Changes, that explains some of the major ways the laptops have changed practice and learning in the classroom.

One of Ariel's wonderings has to do with the affordability of 1-to-1 laptop schools and classrooms. While this may not be a solution in Ariel's situation -- an urban charter school -- I recently interviewed the superintendent of a small city district in Alabama that has gone completely wireless and completely one-to-one.

What's most intriguing about the Piedmont City Schools story is how the move is being conceptualized by school and community leaders as both a way to prepare their rural students for the 21st Century and a potential investment in economic development for a community that's suffering from the job losses so epidemic in the South.

  A new report by Stanford professor and teaching quality scholar Linda Darling-Hammond takes a fresh look at the question of how (and why) to measure teacher effectiveness.

Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness: How Teacher Performance Assessments Can Measure and Improve Teaching, published by the Center for American Progress, is in part a response to frequent calls from advocates of student-test-centered evaluation for their critics to present viable alternatives. The report

...describes the ways in which assessments of teacher performance for licensing and certification can both reflect and predict teachers’ success with children so that they can not only inform personnel decisions, but also leverage improvements in preparation, mentoring, and professional development. It outlines progress in the field of teacher assessment development and discusses policies that could create much greater leverage on the quality of teacher preparation and teaching than has previously existed in the United States.

Darling-Hammond makes the case that large-scale school improvement will only come about when the United States catches up with nations that have "developed a national system of supports and incentives to ensure that all teachers are well prepared and ready to teach all students effectively when they enter the profession."

These nations, she says, have also created "a set of widely available methods to support the evaluation and ongoing development of teacher effectiveness throughout the career, along with decisions about entry and continuation in the profession."

Meeting the expectation that all students will learn to high standards will require a transformation in the ways in which our education system attracts, prepares, supports, and develops expert teachers who can teach in more powerful ways—a transformation that depends in part on the ways in which these abilities are understood and assessed.

The report is downloadable both in PDF format and from Scribd for mobiles and e-readers.