Taking the Guess Work Out of Professional Development Planning by Monitoring Customer Satisfaction

Every week, teams of teachers are required to get together for “professional development meetings.”

And every week, instead of seeing teachers engaged and eager for more, you will most likely see them:

• arriving late, dragging their feet as they shuffle to their seats
• grading papers, tests or assignments
• chatting with friends
• reading the newspaper
• sitting in silent agony while the rogue teacher hijacks the conversation, arguing with the presenter about something that has nothing to do with the purpose of the meeting
• sitting in polite silence with a blank stare on their faces, waiting for it to all be over.
  

Even worse, you will see some of them:

• whispering to their colleagues about what a waste of time the meeting is, and how irrelevant and useless the training is to what they are experiencing in the classroom;
• Asking themselves and each other how today’s topic is related to the one discussed last week. Where is the connection?
  

I’ve worked with over one hundred schools in more than a dozen districts in California and the story is the same everywhere I go. As someone who plans and leads professional development sessions for a living, I made a vow to NOT BE PART OF THE PROBLEM, BUT TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.

So here’s what I did:

• I talked to my clients—the teachers—about the challenges they face in the classroom;
• I carried out extensive research;
• I planned, planned, planned and planned
• I strengthened my facilitation skills;
• I identified and hired experts from within each school to be my co-facilitators (instead of trying to become an expert on everything myself).
  

I believed things were going well once I began implementing my revitalized professional development regimen. It also seemed like things were working out well for the school leadership teams I coached that had been willing to invest the necessary time to put the program in place. The negative behaviors I outlined at the beginning of this article either disappeared or were greatly reduced.

But on further reflection, I found that a new set of questions began to keep me up at night:

• The audience appeared to have found value in what I and my team were doing, but HOW DID I REALLY KNOW?
• Were the teachers actually going to implement what we had modeled in our PD sessions?
• Teachers are usually polite to me because they appreciate the amount of time I spend developing high-quality programs for them, but did they REALLY find our work relevant?
  

Most importantly, I asked myself:

• WILL THIS TRAINING PLAN MAKE AN IMPACT ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT?
  

To get answers to these questions, I sought the advice of successful teachers, principals and professional development consultants. After synthesizing their feedback, I arrived at the following conclusion:

• In evaluating the link between professional development and student achievement, THE MISSING VARIABLE IS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. How much value, relevance and applicability do teachers find in the training they receive?
  

The formula for finding this out is simple. If teachers attend professional development sessions they believe are providing them with tools they can use to make their students more successful, they WILL implement what they are exposed to. If teachers are constantly challenging themselves to implement new strategies, they will learn valuable lessons from their practice and reflection. The result will be improvement in their instruction, even if things don’t always work out as perfectly as when the strategies are modeled during training.

It is this improvement in instruction that leads to improved results for students. The outcomes and improvements aren’t immediate, but they come over time—in many cases, in much shorter time than we may have expected. The important thing is to provide the type of training that will provoke teachers to take risks and change their practices.

After I had finished thinking this through, the goals became much clearer and simpler for me and my teams. I saw that what we needed to do was develop and implement a method for measuring the level of customer satisfaction teachers experience from their professional development sessions. We could reflect on the data generated through this method and use it to make adjustments so that future professional development sessions would be better aligned with what teachers actually need. By monitoring the data generated over time, we would be able to determine if we are really in tune with what our teachers need to do their job. In other words, we could take the guess work out of professional development planning.

Here is an example of what I came up with:

The table below provides a summary of the level of customer satisfaction experienced by teachers at a local elementary school. The indicators were selected by the faculty itself. At the beginning of the year, the teachers established standards that every professional development session should meet. The consensus was that if each session met these standards, it was providing the teachers with what they believed they needed, and therefore, a measure of customer satisfaction.

Indicator	Percentage (of 20 evaluations) 11/27/07	Percentage (of 21 evaluations) 12/4/07	Percentage (of 22 evaluations) 12/11/07	Percentage (of 22 evaluations) 1/8/08	Average by Indicator
	Topic 1: Student Engagement	Topic 2: API/AYP	Topic 3: ELA Assessment	Topic 4: Leveling the Playing Field for African-Americans
Informed by data and student needs	30%	95%	73%	77%	69%
Helped build relationships/support	30%	57%	50%	73%	53%
Focused on improving student achievement	90%	67%	55%	82%	74%
Included information on specific instructional strategies	85%	57%	36%	64%	61%
Involved active participation	75%	62%	45%	68%	63%
Was outcome-oriented	55%	76%	32%	73%	59%
Promoted reflection on teaching practices	75%	76%	36%	73%	65%
Included time for teacher/team planning	50%	43%	64%	64%	55%
Level of Customer Satisfaction by Topic	61%	67%	49%	72%

At the end of each professional development session, participants were asked to complete an evaluation form in which they checked off whether or not the session had met these standards. The percentages on the table reflect the percentage of the faculty that believed the standard was met. The analysis which follows was shared with the team that led the professional development sessions at the school.

Analysis and Recommendations

• Trends in Average by Topic show a steady growth in customer (teacher) satisfaction with PD sessions. The team should celebrate and continue to reflect on how to make the next session more relevant and helpful for staff.
• Team members should ask themselves, “What was it about Topic 3 that broke the trend (see dip to 49%)?” Was it preparation? Relevance? Presentation? Timing of topic? Materials? Pacing?
• A look at the Average by Indicator column shows that overall strength has been in the area marked Focused on Improving Student Achievement. Clearly, the team has made a deliberate effort to provide staff with sessions where student achievement is at the heart of the conversation – no fluff or tangential issues. This should be celebrated. I keep this data on other schools, so I know this is not typical. Scores are usually much lower in this area, and are accompanied by comments such as, “How the hell is this going to help me with my students?”
• Second in overall strength is Informed by Data and Student Needs. This is a result of the data team’s commitment to letting data drive their choices for professional development topics and content. CONGRATULATIONS!
• The weakest area of performance is in the area marked Helped Build Relationships/Support. You’ll notice that Included Time for Teacher/Team Planning came in at a close second. These two issues go hand in hand. It is hard to create conditions for collaboration and team building to develop when you don’t have enough time. The team should use this data to engage staff in negotiating a PD schedule that facilitates collaboration, if that is a value the school holds dear.
  

Conclusion

The formula for making ALL our students successful high achievers has many variables. It includes school culture, instructional practices, leadership practices, data analysis and resource management. Each of these variables consists of smaller sub-variables that add up to what we call Student Achievement. Many educators—especially instructional leaders—are overwhelmed by this formula.

Much of the confusion and complexity we experience in trying to address this formula is self-imposed. It is the result of over-complicating and over-compartmentalizing the way we think about what we need to do for our students. We need to develop simpler, more efficient ways to arrive at the same results. The people who experience success as teachers, administrators and consultants have developed these simpler means for reaching these goals. But they are few and far between, and they don’t get (or look for) the attention they deserve, because they are too busy being successful!

I’ve spoken with some of these successful educators and instructional leaders, and they all say the same thing: “Focus on the teachers. Give them what they need, and they will get you the results you desire.” All I am proposing here is a method for determining if you are giving your teachers what they need. Take risks. Be diligent. Be methodical. Be reflective. Try it !!!!

An Answer to the Public School Crisis: Beginning with Ourselves

I have been at this consulting for public schools business for 8 years now. The “more helpful or insightful” I’ve become at what I do, the more I am invited to facilitate or participate at meetings and retreats with some pretty high profile decision makers in public education. The more I access the higher levels of this hierarchy, the more impressed I am by the quality of characters and intellects that I encounter. Yet, I fear that despite our best intentions and great insights, most of us are not asking, never mind answering, the right questions – at least not publicly, where it would matter. Actually, there are two questions that I don’t see us asking ourselves when we talk – not anywhere. They are as follows:

· How am I a part of the problem?

· Now that I know how I am a part of the problem, how do I become a part of the solution?

In my hunger to find the right questions[1] to our problems in public education I have taken the initiative to work with whomever is willing to (or forced to) be a part of this dialogue. In the process, I’ve worked with thousands of parents and dozens of parent advocacy groups. I’ve worked with thousands of teachers and hundreds of principals. I’ve trained hundreds of school leadership teams and coached dozens of principals and district administrators. While the problems and solutions proposed vary slightly from stakeholder group to stakeholder group, they are, overall, similar and share a high degree of overlap.

This phenomenon makes sense, since in general we all received a similar education and definitely had similar training. Contrary to popular belief this is so, regardless of the prestige of the institutions where we received our training. Some training may be more theoretical. Some may be more practical. But, in the grand systemic scheme of things it is very, very similar. Hence, our solutions have been very similar. They are as follows:

· Invest more money in the system and its people (students, teachers, staff, etc…)

· Restructure and reconfigure our structures and student course loads

· Increase parental involvement

· Do more team building among school and district personnel

· Become more organized and inclusive in the decision-making process

· Raise expectations for teachers and administrators through standardization and accountability policy

· Train, train and train everyone in the system (including parents) ad nauseum, and hope that some of it is understood, valued, internalized and implemented back at the local site.

As a student of the history of American public education, believe me when I tell you that nothing that is being said today is different from what was being said back in the days of John Dewey and even further back. It’s just that now we have a nicely-packaged name and consumable product or service that goes along with all of the solutions I listed above.

This is good news, because what it means is that once we can answer the fundamental questions set out at the beginning of this essay in a public dialogue as a community of learners living in these hoped-for learning organizations, everything else will fall into place.

Ah, but this is so much easier said than done!!! It would seem that in the vast array of educational options provided by our school system, public or private, very, very, very little training is offered on how to have an honest dialogue with ourselves—the kind of dialogue that allows us to question our beliefs and expectations (for ourselves and for others). I know this is true, because otherwise we wouldn’t have so many prosperous self-help gurus filling our bookstores and airwaves with their “You can do it, if you believe it!!” message.

This is the second bit of good news. If we can have this public discourse systemically, we may be on our way to implementing the right solutions. In fact, the right solutions have already been developed. I listed them earlier in this essay. What is missing is the right attitude towards them when they are presented to us. Also missing is the right attitude when they don’t work out on the first try.

The good thing about having been in this business for so many years, and having taught for 8 years myself, is that I have also worked with dozens of folks that are successful every day – with students, with parents, with teachers, with district personnel, etc… Despite having different personalities, I observed one thing that they all did in common. They took responsibility for the successes and failures of their organization. More importantly, they all are in a constant struggle to find a better way to do things. And, they work on themselves through reflection, study, asking for honest feedback and seeking the help of others – constantly. They are what we in the field of education call “lifelong learners,” and they’re not afraid to show it.

Whether their organization is a classroom, a parent committee, an entire school, or a school district, these successful individuals always seem to include the above two fundamental questions in their problem-solving process. Even when it is the failure of someone below them, the following question is always, “Where did I fail to provide the correct support for this person?” Even if they have tried everything they believed was under the sun to help an individual out, when it doesn’t work out, the next question is, “What is wrong with the solution I proposed?” More importantly, the following question is, “What was wrong with the way I perceived the problem, or the way I perceived the person, that caused me to offer an incorrect solution, or at least caused me to approach the problem incorrectly?”

Infuse our public school system with more people that can have the comfort within their own skin to have this kind of self-talk with themselves, and we will have a system that doesn’t need to spend so many resources on putting out fires, restructuring, training, re-training and developing policy.

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[1] Notice: I have not been looking for the right answers until recently.