Using student outcome data to help guide professional development and teacher support: Issues for Reading First and K-12 Reading Plans

One of the key elements in modern approaches to providing professional development and support for teachers involves using objective data about student performance to help guide and focus these efforts. In fact, one of the core principles contained in the National Staff Development Council’s Standards for Staff Development (National Staff Development Council, 2001) requires the use of student data to establish priorities for adult learning, to monitor progress or growth in teacher skills, and to sustain continuous improvement. In the influential book Teaching as the Learning Profession (Darling Hammond & Sykes, 1999), the first of eight principals of professional development is that professional development should be driven by analyses of the differences between goals and standards for student learning and student performance.