Professional Development for Teachers: What Works, Coaching, PLCs, Title II and License Renewal

Professional development for teachers is the ongoing training, coaching and collaborative work through which practicing teachers deepen their knowledge of what they teach, improve how they teach it and keep up with new requirements, from new curricula to artificial intelligence. Federal law sets a demanding standard for it: the Every Student Succeeds Act defines professional development as activities that are “sustained (not stand-alone, 1-day, or short term workshops), intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused.” The investment is large. A 2014 study for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put national spending at $18 billion a year and found that a typical teacher spent 68 hours a year in professional learning directed by districts, while only 29 percent of teachers were highly satisfied with what was offered. The results are uneven. A 2017 Learning Policy Institute review identified 35 rigorous studies in which professional development improved teaching and student learning, while TNTP’s 2015 study of three large districts and a charter network found “no evidence that any particular kind or amount of professional development consistently helps teachers improve.” Both findings are true, and the difference between them is what this guide is about.

This guide to teacher professional development explains what federal law and the research say effective professional development is, why some well-designed programs still fail, how the main forms work in practice, including in-service days, professional learning communities, instructional coaching, induction and mentoring, microlearning and micro-credentials, conferences and online courses, and professional development for AI, how Title II of the Every Student Succeeds Act funds it, what states require for license renewal, and how districts can plan, budget and measure it. It is written for district and school leaders, professional development directors, instructional coaches and teachers. It covers K–12 education in the United States. Each section links to edCircuit’s more detailed coverage.

Updated October 2026.

In this guide

The basics: What professional development is · What the research says works · Why many programs fail
Forms of professional development: In-service days · Professional learning communities · Instructional coaching · Induction and mentoring · Microlearning and micro-credentials · Conferences and online courses · Professional development for AI
Law, funding and licensure: The federal role and Title II · State license renewal requirements
Running it: Planning, time and cost · Measuring impact · Teacher voice and equity · Questions to ask

What is professional development for teachers?

Professional development for teachers is any structured learning that practicing educators undertake to improve their work, whether it is organized by a district, a school, a university, a professional association or the teacher. It ranges from a single workshop to a year of classroom coaching, and many districts now use the term “professional learning” to signal the broader, continuing version. The two terms describe the same territory; this guide uses both.

The definition with the most practical weight is the federal one, because it governs how federal funds may be spent. Under 20 U.S.C. 7801(42), professional development consists of activities that are an integral part of school and district strategies for giving educators, including teachers, principals, other school leaders, specialized instructional support personnel, paraprofessionals and, where applicable, early childhood educators, “the knowledge and skills necessary to enable students to succeed in a well-rounded education and to meet the challenging State academic standards” (20 U.S.C. 7801). The same paragraph says the activities must be sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven and classroom-focused, and it lists activities they may include. Among them:

improving teachers’ knowledge of the subjects they teach, their understanding of how students learn, and their ability to analyze student work and adjust instruction;
personalized plans that address needs identified in observation or other feedback;
alignment with the academic goals of the school or district and with schoolwide and districtwide improvement plans;
development “with extensive participation of teachers, principals, other school leaders, parents” and administrators;
training in the use of technology and in the use of data and assessments to inform classroom practice; and
regular evaluation of the activities’ impact on teacher effectiveness and student achievement, with the findings used to improve professional development.

The definition excludes the one-day workshop with no follow-up by name, and it describes design features rather than programs, leaving districts free to choose formats but responsible for showing that what they choose is sustained and evaluated. edCircuit has written about how that idea of continuous, classroom-connected learning has developed:

What does the research say makes professional development effective?

The research describes effective professional development as focused on the content teachers teach, built around active practice rather than lectures, collaborative, supported by coaching and feedback, and sustained over time, and several reviews agree on that core while differing on details. The most widely cited frameworks:

Desimone’s core features (2009). In an article in Educational Researcher, Laura M. Desimone argued that there was a research consensus supporting a common set of core features for studying professional development (Educational Researcher, 2009). She and Daniel Stuckey later listed them as “content focus, active learning, coherence, sufficient duration, and collective participation” (Desimone and Stuckey, 2014).
Learning Policy Institute (2017). In Effective Teacher Professional Development, published June 5, 2017, Linda Darling-Hammond, Maria E. Hyler and Madelyn Gardner reviewed 35 methodologically rigorous studies that had found a positive link between professional development, teaching practice and student outcomes. They concluded that effective professional development incorporates most or all of seven elements: it is content focused, incorporates active learning, supports collaboration, uses models of effective practice, provides coaching and expert support, offers feedback and reflection, and is of sustained duration (Learning Policy Institute).
Sims, Fletcher-Wood and colleagues (2022). Sam Sims, Harry Fletcher-Wood and six colleagues, from University College London, the Ambition Institute and Step Lab, analyzed 104 randomized controlled trials. They proposed that professional development works through 14 “mechanisms” serving four purposes: building teachers’ insight, motivating goals, teaching techniques and embedding practice. Programs that included at least one mechanism for each of the four purposes, which they call a balanced design, had an average effect on pupils’ test scores of 0.15 standard deviations, compared with 0.05 for all others. Only nine of the 104 studies had a balanced design, the confidence intervals overlapped, and the authors describe their support for the framework as “qualified” (EdWorkingPaper 22-507, January 2022).

	Desimone (2009)	Learning Policy Institute (2017)	ESSA definition (2015)	Sims et al. (2022)
What it is	A research framework of five core features	Seven features drawn from 35 positive studies	The statutory definition that governs federal funds	A theory of 14 mechanisms in four purposes, tested on 104 trials
Subject content	Content focus	Content focused	Knowledge of the academic subjects taught	Building insight, including knowledge
Active practice	Active learning	Active learning; models of effective practice	Job-embedded, classroom-focused	Teaching techniques; embedding practice
Working with colleagues	Collective participation	Supports collaboration	Collaborative	Not a separate purpose
Feedback	Not a separate feature	Coaching and expert support; feedback and reflection	Personalized plans based on observation or other feedback	Mechanisms within technique and practice
Time	Sufficient duration	Sustained duration	Sustained, not one-day or short-term	Not treated as a mechanism
Fit with the school	Coherence	Not a separate feature	Aligned with school and district goals and plans	Motivating goals

The rows are a reading aid, not an official crosswalk; none of these sources publishes this mapping. The lists describe the same kind of professional development from different angles, and the federal definition already writes most of the research consensus into law. Sims and colleagues add a different question for designers: what each activity is meant to change in teachers, whether understanding, goals, skills or habits.

Duration deserves particular attention because it is the feature most often cited and least settled. In a 2007 review for the federal Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest, Yoon and colleagues screened more than 1,300 studies and found nine that met What Works Clearinghouse evidence standards. Teachers in those studies who received substantial professional development, an average of 49 hours, raised their students’ achievement by about 21 percentile points, while the three studies with the least professional development, 5 to 14 hours in total, showed no statistically significant effects (REL 2007–No. 033). But all nine studies involved elementary teachers, all used workshops or summer institutes, and in all nine the training was delivered by the study’s authors or their affiliated researchers rather than by a district. Later work, discussed below, found that hours alone did not predict results.

Why do many professional development programs fail to improve teaching?

Many professional development programs fail because changing what teachers know is easier than changing what they do every day, because programs that work in small studies lose much of their effect at scale, and because few districts measure whether their professional development changes anything. The evidence that professional development often disappoints is as strong as the evidence that it can work.

The Mirage. TNTP published The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development on August 4, 2015. The study covered three large public school districts and one midsize charter school network, surveyed more than 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, and interviewed more than 100 staff involved in teacher development (TNTP executive summary). Its main findings:

Spending. The districts spent an average of nearly $18,000 per teacher per year on development, and teachers reported spending about 19 full school days a year, nearly 10 percent of the school year, in development activities.
Improvement. The evaluation ratings of nearly seven in 10 teachers stayed the same or declined over two to three years.
No pattern. TNTP looked at dozens of variables and found that no type, amount or combination of development activities, including the “job-embedded” and “differentiated” kinds, distinguished teachers who improved from those who did not.
Teachers’ views. Two-thirds of teachers were satisfied with their development, but only about 40 percent agreed that most of it was a good use of their time.

TNTP did not recommend cutting the investment. It called for defining development as measurable progress toward a clear standard, evaluating existing programs and reallocating money according to impact.

The critics. The report drew serious objections. Andy Smarick, writing in Education Next, called it “smartly researched” but questioned its conclusion, arguing that the problem might lie in the evaluation ratings used to measure improvement and that elements of good teaching might be built by professional development without being captured by those systems (Education Next, October 2015). Writing for New America the day the report appeared, Melissa Tooley and Kaylan Connally noted that the study “tended to focus on quantity (e.g., number of hours, frequency of observations)” rather than the quality of teachers’ experiences, and pointed to the small number of districts examined (New America, August 2015).

Rigorous trials with null results. Rigorous federal studies have found carefully designed programs that changed teachers’ knowledge without changing student achievement, and very few programs with proven effects:

In a randomized trial of more than 200 fourth-grade teachers in six districts in five states, an 80-hour summer mathematics workshop followed by 13 hours of collaborative meetings and one-on-one coaching improved teachers’ math knowledge and the quality of their mathematical explanations, but it “did not have a positive impact on student achievement” (IES, September 2016).
A 2014 review for the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast identified 643 studies of K–12 math professional development conducted in the United States. Thirty-two used a design capable of assessing effectiveness, five met What Works Clearinghouse standards, and only two found positive effects on students’ math proficiency: intensive math content courses with follow-up workshops, and a lesson study program focused on fractions. The authors concluded that there was “very limited causal evidence” to guide districts choosing a math professional development approach.

Average effects are modest. Sims and colleagues found an average effect of professional development on pupils’ test scores of 0.05 standard deviations across 104 randomized trials, with little sign of publication bias. A 2019 meta-analysis of 95 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of preK–12 STEM professional development and curriculum programs by Kathleen Lynch, Heather Hill, Kathryn Gonzalez and Cynthia Pollard found a larger average, +0.21 standard deviations, with stronger results for programs that helped teachers learn to use curriculum materials, focused on content knowledge or how students learn, included summer workshops, and held meetings to troubleshoot classroom implementation (EdWorkingPaper 19-9, March 2019).

Read together, the studies show that professional development can improve teaching and learning, and that the programs that do tend to be specific to subject matter and curriculum, practice-based and followed up in classrooms. But features do not guarantee results, and a district that does not measure its own professional development cannot tell what it is paying for. edCircuit has examined the gap between training and classroom change:

How are teacher in-service days changing?

In-service days, the scheduled days when students stay home and staff train, remain the most visible form of professional development, but they are increasingly one part of a year-long plan rather than the plan itself. Workshops are still the most common format. In the Gates Foundation’s 2014 research, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group with more than 1,300 stakeholders and a further survey of 1,600 teachers, more than 80 percent of teachers surveyed had taken part in workshops in the previous year, and a typical teacher’s 68 hours of district-directed learning rose to 89 hours a year once self-guided learning and courses were counted (Gates Foundation, 2014).

The research reviewed above explains why districts are reconsidering the format. The federal definition excludes stand-alone and one-day workshops from professional development as federal law understands it. Yoon’s review found no significant effects from programs of 14 hours or less. And Kraft and colleagues’ coaching research, described below, found larger effects when coaching was paired with group training. An in-service day is therefore most useful as the start or checkpoint of something sustained, such as introducing a curriculum that coaches will then support or giving teams time to analyze student work.

In-service days also carry required training, from safety procedures to student privacy and, in some states, topics named in law. Moving compliance training into short modules where possible protects time for the learning meant to change teaching. edCircuit’s series on how in-service has changed covers each of these shifts:

What are professional learning communities?

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are teams of teachers, usually sharing a grade level or subject, who meet regularly to examine what students should learn, check whether they are learning it and decide what to do for students who are not. A widely used model comes from Richard DuFour, who described three “big ideas” in a 2004 article for ASCD’s Educational Leadership: a school’s purpose is to ensure that students learn, not merely that they are taught; teachers work in a culture of collaboration to analyze and improve their classroom practice; and teams judge their effectiveness on the basis of results (ASCD, May 2004). The work is organized around three questions:

What do we want each student to learn?
How will we know when each student has learned it?
How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?

DuFour warned in the same article that the term “has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.” A group of teachers who share a meeting time is not, by that standard, a professional learning community; a team that writes common assessments, compares results and changes instruction because of them is. The distinction matters because the research features described above, collaboration, collective participation, content focus and attention to student work, describe what a functioning PLC does, while a meeting spent on announcements or logistics has none of them.

This guide found no causal meta-analysis of PLCs comparable to the coaching research described below, but related evidence points the same way. The Learning Policy Institute lists collaboration among its seven features, and the 2019 STEM meta-analysis described above found larger effects for programs in which teachers met to troubleshoot and discuss classroom implementation. The Regional Educational Laboratory review of math professional development also counted a lesson study program, a structured form of collaborative planning, observation and revision of lessons, among its two approaches with positive effects. The model itself implies the practical conditions: protected time in the contract day, shared assessments that produce comparable evidence, and a facilitator who keeps the team on the three questions. For how districts have built collaborative structures, see:

From Learning Loss to Lasting Impact: How Our District Built Teacher Capacity Through Math Professional Learning
How Districts Can Strategically Use Title II Funding for PD, which discusses PLCs, peer observation and lesson study

Does instructional coaching work?

Instructional coaching has the strongest causal evidence of any common form of teacher professional development, with an important caution about scale. Coaching, in which a coach or peer observes a teacher’s instruction and gives feedback to help the teacher improve, is designed to be what workshops often are not: in the words of Matthew Kraft, David Blazar and Dylan Hogan, “individualized, time-intensive, sustained over the course of a semester or year, context specific, and focused on discrete skills.”

Their meta-analysis, published in the Review of Educational Research in 2018, combined 60 studies with causal research designs (Kraft, Blazar and Hogan, 2018). The main findings:

Overall effects. Coaching improved teachers’ instructional practice by 0.49 standard deviations and students’ achievement by 0.18 standard deviations. The authors note that the achievement effect is larger than pooled estimates for almost all other school-based interventions reviewed by Fryer in 2017, including general professional development.
Where the evidence comes from. Much of it is from literacy coaching for prekindergarten and elementary teachers; 34 of 40 content-specific studies focused on reading.
Scale. In efficacy trials of smaller programs, with fewer than 100 teachers, effects averaged 0.63 standard deviations on instruction and 0.28 on achievement. In effectiveness trials of larger programs, they averaged 0.34 and 0.10.
Content. Content-specific coaching had a larger effect on achievement (0.20) than coaching on general pedagogy (0.07, not statistically significant), although general programs more often aimed at outcomes such as classroom behavior.
Pairing. Most programs (48 of 60) combined coaching with group training, and pairing coaching with group training was associated with effects 0.31 standard deviations larger on instruction and 0.12 larger on achievement.
Delivery and dosage. The authors found no significant difference between in-person and virtual coaching and no evidence that coaching must be high-dosage to be effective, suggesting that “the quality and focus of coaching may be more important than the actual number of contact hours.”

The scale finding matters most for district leaders: a program that works for a few dozen teachers in a research study does not automatically work for hundreds. Kraft and colleagues discuss the difficulty of maintaining quality as programs grow. For a district, the finding points to questions worth settling before expanding a program: how coaches are selected and trained, how many teachers each one serves, whether coaching focuses on specific practices tied to the curriculum teachers use, and whether coaches are kept separate from formal evaluation so that teachers can be candid with them. Title II funds may be used for training coaches and mentors, as described below. edCircuit’s coverage of coaching:

How do induction and mentoring support new teachers?

Induction programs give beginning teachers structured support, usually a trained mentor, regular professional development and chances to observe experienced colleagues, during their first years, when TNTP’s data suggest teachers improve fastest. In The Mirage, the difference in performance between an average first-year and an average fifth-year teacher was more than nine times the difference between an average fifth-year and an average twentieth-year teacher.

A federal experiment on induction shows both the promise and the patience it requires. In a randomized study published by IES in June 2010, Mathematica Policy Research followed 1,009 beginning teachers in 418 schools in 17 districts, about half of whose schools offered comprehensive induction with a full-time mentor, monthly professional development and opportunities to observe veteran teachers (IES, June 2010). The study found:

no impacts on teacher retention after any of the three years of follow-up, and no impacts on classroom practices measured in teachers’ first year;
no impacts on student achievement for teachers who received one year of induction; and
for teachers who received two years, no impacts in the first two years but positive impacts in the third, equivalent to moving the average student from the 50th to the 54th percentile in reading and the 58th in math.

Induction is therefore a multi-year investment whose effects may not appear in first-year data. Title II, Part A lists new teacher, principal and school leader induction and mentoring programs designed to improve instruction and retention among its allowable activities. edCircuit’s conversations about early-career support:

Microlearning and micro-credentials: what do they offer?

Microlearning breaks professional learning into short modules focused on a single objective, and micro-credentials certify, through an assessment, that a teacher has demonstrated a specific, narrow skill; both offer flexibility, and neither yet has strong evidence of effects on students. They answer a real problem. Teachers’ time is limited, required training keeps growing, and a short module on a privacy rule or a new tool is easier to complete and revisit than a day-long session.

Micro-credentials have moved quickly into policy. A New America report, drawing on interviews and data from 2020, found that 26 states had formal educator micro-credential policies or programs as of August 2020, and that Tennessee, Utah and Massachusetts allowed educators to count earned micro-credentials toward license renewal (New America). The same report found “little rigorous research to date about if or how MCs impact the quality of ongoing teacher practice.” It described a few studies showing some correlation with teacher practice or student outcomes, including one whose results selection bias may explain, and a Friday Institute study that found no evidence teachers kept using a skill after completing the assessment.

The broader research suggests how short formats can be used well. A micro-credential that requires a teacher to try a technique with students and submit evidence includes practice, which the frameworks above treat as essential; a module that only presents information does not. Short modules also fit naturally as follow-up to coaching or group training rather than as a replacement for them. Districts should be cautious about counting completed modules as evidence of improvement, which is the same confusion between participation and impact that The Mirage described. For edCircuit’s coverage of short-format learning:

Conferences and online courses

Conferences and online courses give teachers access to ideas, specialists and colleagues their own districts cannot supply, and both are most useful when a district connects what teachers bring back to work that continues at school. They can be especially useful for teachers in small schools or specialized subjects who have few peers locally. Measured against the research features, a conference is short and seldom followed by coaching, so its value depends on what happens afterward, such as a team that attends together and plans how to try one idea at school.

For online courses, the evidence on coaching suggests that delivery mode matters less than design: Kraft and colleagues found no significant difference between virtual and in-person coaching, and 13 of their 60 studies evaluated virtual models in which teachers recorded their lessons and discussed them with a coach online. A course that asks teachers to apply techniques and receive feedback has the features of effective professional development; a set of videos and a quiz does not. For more:

How are schools training teachers on AI?

Teacher training on generative AI is spreading, but it is mostly optional, unevenly available and, by teachers’ own account, often not very helpful. A RAND report drawing on its national survey panels found that in fall 2024, 55 percent of teachers said their school or district had provided professional development or resources to help them adapt their teaching to generative AI, more often for high school teachers (65 percent) than elementary teachers (47 percent). Only 35 percent of teachers who received it found it somewhat or very helpful. Citing an earlier RAND district survey, the report notes that about half of districts offered AI training options for teachers as of fall 2024, “virtually all of which were optional for teachers” (RAND, AI Use in Schools Is Quickly Increasing but Guidance Lags Behind).

Training and policy appear to work together. Among teachers with access to AI training, 37 percent said their school’s AI policies were helpful; among those without it, only 13 percent did, and 53 percent found their policies unhelpful. RAND also found elementary teachers half as likely as high school teachers to receive AI-related professional development.

Federal grant policy now points the same way. On April 13, 2026, the Department of Education published a final supplemental priority on advancing artificial intelligence in education, effective May 13, 2026, for use in any of the department’s discretionary grant programs (91 FR 18774). Its listed activities include professional development for educators on integrating the fundamentals of AI into their subject areas, professional development in foundational computer science and AI “including instruction about how to use AI responsibly,” and training educators on age-appropriate AI education methodologies that emphasize AI literacy and critical thinking. It applies to competitive grants, not to formula funds.

The research on professional development generally suggests that AI training will do more when it is tied to what teachers teach, involves practice with real tasks, continues over time and is backed by a clear policy. edCircuit covers AI professional development in depth:

What is the federal role? ESSA Title II, Part A

The federal government shapes teacher professional development mainly through Title II, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program, which sends formula grants to states and subgrants to school districts. Its stated purposes are to increase student achievement consistent with state standards, to improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals and other school leaders, to increase the number who are effective in improving student achievement, and to give low-income and minority students greater access to effective teachers and leaders (20 U.S.C. 6601).

The local uses of funds are broad. Under 20 U.S.C. 6613, a district’s programs must address the learning needs of all students, including children with disabilities, English learners and gifted and talented students, and may include, among other activities:

high-quality, personalized professional development that is evidence-based, to the extent the state determines such evidence is reasonably available, focused on improving teaching and student learning, including training in integrating technology, using data while protecting student privacy, and engaging parents, families and community partners;
induction and mentoring programs for new teachers, principals and other school leaders, and training for school leaders, coaches, mentors and evaluators in giving useful feedback and using evaluation results to inform decisions about professional development;
programs that increase teachers’ ability to teach children with disabilities and English learners, including through multi-tier systems of support and positive behavioral interventions and supports;
training in selecting and using formative and classroom-based assessments, including additional time for teachers to review student data;
evaluation and support systems for educators, recruitment and retention initiatives, and class-size reduction to an evidence-based level; and
in-service training for school personnel on topics such as helping students affected by trauma.

Districts may carry out these activities through grants or contracts with for-profit or nonprofit organizations or in partnership with a college or university. Because ESSA’s definition of professional development applies to these funds, a district using Title II money for professional development should be able to show that the activities are sustained, job-embedded and regularly evaluated, not one-day workshops.

Annual funding is set by Congress in each year’s appropriations law, and the amounts states and districts receive change from year to year. This guide does not report a national total; district leaders should check their state education agency’s current allocation for Title II, Part A and the Department of Education’s program page. For practical approaches to planning with these funds, see edCircuit’s How Districts Can Strategically Use Title II Funding for PD; for how federal technology funding and edtech training connect, see the Educational Technology Guide.

What do states require for teacher license renewal?

State license renewal rules differ widely: of the four states examined here, three require a set number of professional development hours over a five-year cycle, with different amounts and required topics, and one requires no hours for its clear credential. The examples, read in each state’s statute, regulation or agency guidance:

State	Requirement	Notable rules	Source
Texas	150 hours of continuing professional education (CPE) every five years for a classroom teacher’s standard certificate; 200 hours for principals, superintendents, counselors, librarians, educational diagnosticians and reading specialists	All educators must complete CPE on educating students with disabilities, including dyslexia; CPE must relate directly to the certificate being renewed	Texas Education Agency
New York	100 clock hours of Continuing Teacher and Leader Education (CTLE) in each five-year registration period for holders of Professional and Teaching Assistant Level III certificates who practice in an applicable school	At least 15 percent of the hours must address language acquisition for English language learners for classroom teachers, and at least 50 percent for ESOL and bilingual extension holders; educators inactive for part of the period owe 20 hours per year of practice	NYSED; 8 NYCRR 80-6.3
Illinois	120 hours of professional development per five-year renewal cycle for the Professional Educator License	Holders of a current National Board for Professional Teaching Standards master teacher designation need 60 hours; approved providers must align activities to the “State-approved national standards for professional learning”	Public Act 102-0730, amending 105 ILCS 5/21B-45
California	No hours required: clear teaching credentials “may be renewed without the completion of additional course work or service requirements”	Applies to clear credentials, as described in the commission’s renewal leaflet	Commission on Teacher Credentialing, CL-494

Two patterns stand out. Hour requirements measure attendance, not improvement, the distinction The Mirage drew, so a teacher can meet them with any approved activity. And states also use renewal hours to require particular topics, such as students with disabilities and dyslexia in Texas and English language learners in New York. District leaders can help teachers by building required topics into the professional learning they already do. Requirements change, and these summaries are limited to the sources this guide examined; teachers should check their own state licensing agency.

How should districts plan, schedule and budget professional development?

Districts get more from professional development when they start from the student learning they want to improve, choose a small number of priorities, build the time into the school calendar, and count the full cost, including teachers’ time. The research and the federal definition suggest a sequence:

Start with students. Thomas Guskey, whose evaluation model is described in the next section, advises planning backward: begin with the student learning outcomes the district wants, then identify the teaching practices that produce them, the organizational support those practices need, what teachers must learn, and only then the learning activities.
Tie learning to the curriculum. The 2019 STEM meta-analysis found stronger effects when professional development helped teachers learn to use their curriculum materials, and Kraft and colleagues found larger achievement effects for content-specific coaching. A district adopting a new reading or math program has a natural focus for a year or more of professional learning.
Choose a few priorities. Desimone’s coherence feature and ESSA’s alignment requirement both argue against a menu of unrelated sessions.
Combine formats. Group sessions to introduce content, coaching and collaborative time to apply it, and short modules for reference and required topics is a combination that matches the evidence on pairing training with coaching.
Protect time. PLC meetings, coaching cycles and observation of colleagues need time in the contract day. Early-release days, common planning periods and paid summer sessions can provide it.

Cost. Consultants, fees, materials and substitutes are only part of the cost. TNTP estimated that the districts it studied spent nearly $18,000 per teacher per year on development, and that one of them spent more on teacher development than on transportation, food and security combined. The Gates Foundation study estimated that of the $18 billion spent nationally each year, only $3 billion was delivered by external providers; most of the cost is internal. Counting teachers’ and coaches’ time explicitly lets leaders compare options such as coaching and workshops on their full cost.

For edCircuit’s coverage of planning and leading professional learning:

How can schools measure the impact of professional development?

Schools can measure the impact of professional development at five levels, from whether teachers found it worthwhile to whether students learned more, and the first and easiest level is the most commonly measured. A widely used framework comes from Thomas R. Guskey, writing in ASCD’s Educational Leadership in March 2002 (ASCD):

Level	What it asks	How information is gathered
1. Participants’ reactions	Did participants like the experience, was their time well spent, was the content useful?	Questionnaires at the end of the session
2. Participants’ learning	Did participants gain the intended knowledge and skills?	Written assessments, simulations, demonstrations, reflections, portfolios
3. Organization support and change	Did the school or district advocate, facilitate and support implementation, provide resources and recognize success?	District and school records, minutes of follow-up meetings, questionnaires, structured interviews
4. Participants’ use of new knowledge and skills	Did participants apply what they learned effectively?	Questionnaires, interviews with participants and supervisors, reflections, portfolios, direct observation or recordings
5. Student learning outcomes	What was the impact on students?	Student and school records, questionnaires, interviews with students, parents, teachers and administrators, portfolios

Guskey describes Level 1 as the most common form of evaluation and notes that success at each level is usually necessary for success at the next. For planning, he says, the order “must be reversed”: begin with Level 5. Level 4 information cannot be collected at the end of a session; it requires returning to classrooms later.

The research reviewed above shows why the higher levels matter. The 2016 IES math study would have looked like a success at Level 2, since teachers’ knowledge rose, and at Level 4, since their explanations improved, but it did not change Level 5. The Mirage found that two-thirds of teachers were satisfied with their development, a Level 1 measure, while most did not improve on their evaluations. A district plan can set a measure at each level, from a short survey after sessions to classroom observation of the practice taught and the student results the initiative was meant to move. ESSA’s definition asks for exactly this kind of regular evaluation, “with the findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development.” For more on using data, see edCircuit’s Teacher In-Service Is Becoming Data-Driven and How to Tell if Your Edtech Integration is Successful.

Teacher voice and equity in professional development

Teachers have limited say in most of their professional development, and access to its most effective forms is uneven, which makes both teacher voice and equity practical questions rather than slogans. In the Gates Foundation’s 2014 research, fewer than one in three teachers (30 percent) chose most or all of their professional learning, 18 percent never had a say, and only 34 percent thought professional development had improved. The same research found that teachers value collaboration but said their current experience of it fell far short of the ideal, and that the teachers most satisfied with collaboration were those who saw clear benefits to their day-to-day work, such as planning specific lessons.

Voice does not mean that each teacher chooses freely from a catalog, since the evidence favors coherence around school priorities and the curriculum. It means involving teachers in identifying needs, designing and leading sessions, and giving feedback that is acted on. Federal law asks for this for Title II-funded professional development, which ESSA says should be developed with extensive participation of teachers and should allow personalized plans that address needs identified through observation and feedback. TNTP found that fewer than half of teachers agreed they had weaknesses in their instruction, a reminder that voice also depends on teachers receiving clear, credible information about their own practice.

Equity runs through the federal program. One of Title II’s four purposes is to give low-income and minority students greater access to effective teachers, and its local uses must address the learning needs of all students, including children with disabilities and English learners. In practice, equity questions include which schools get experienced coaches, whether new teachers in high-turnover schools receive the multi-year induction the evidence supports, whether paraprofessionals and specialized staff are included, which ESSA’s definition covers, and whether elementary teachers receive AI training at the rates RAND found for high school teachers. edCircuit’s related coverage:

One Big Idea: Nicole Biscotti on Special Education Training
Teacher Mental Health: Causative Stress Factors
A Teacher’s Guide to Managing Stress and Overcoming Burnout
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): A Guide for Schools, which covers adult SEL in professional learning

Some professional development serves safety rather than instruction. For lab and shop safety training, see edCircuit’s Safety Training in STEM and CTE Programs a Necessity and the Lab Safety Guide. Training on emergency procedures is covered in the School Safety Guide.

Questions to ask about professional development in your schools

For school and district leaders and professional development directors

Which student outcomes is each professional development initiative meant to improve, and how will we know in a year whether it did?
Does our professional development meet ESSA’s definition: sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven and classroom-focused, rather than stand-alone workshops?
Is our professional learning tied to the curriculum teachers actually use, and does it include practice and follow-up in classrooms?
If we run a coaching program, how many teachers does each coach serve, how were coaches selected and trained, and are coaches kept separate from formal evaluation?
Do our PLCs have protected time and work on common assessments and student evidence?
Do new teachers receive at least two years of induction with a trained mentor?
What is the full cost of our professional development once teachers’ and coaches’ time is counted, and which activities would we cut if we measured their effects?
Are we evaluating beyond Level 1, including whether teachers use what they learned and whether students benefit?
Do our Title II plans reach the schools and students with the greatest needs?
Is our AI training tied to a clear district policy, and is it reaching elementary teachers as well as secondary?

For teachers and instructional coaches

What practice am I trying to improve this year, and how will I know whether my students benefit?
Does this session ask me to practice something I can use in my classroom within a week?
Will anyone, a coach, a colleague or my PLC, observe me trying it and give feedback?
Does my team use our meeting time to look at student work and decide what to do next?
How many renewal hours does my state require, which topics are mandatory, and am I keeping my own records?
For coaches: am I focusing on a few high-leverage practices tied to the curriculum, and am I following up in classrooms rather than only meeting?

Professional learning that changes practice

The evidence on teacher professional development is both encouraging and sobering. Coaching, content-focused programs tied to curriculum, sustained collaboration and multi-year induction have produced real gains in rigorous studies, and federal law has written many of their features into its definition. Yet carefully designed programs have also failed to change student learning, and effects shrink as programs grow. The districts most likely to get value from professional learning are those that choose a few priorities, connect training to the classroom and the curriculum, protect time for coaching and collaboration, involve teachers in the design, and look honestly at whether students are learning more as a result.