News article about collaborative planning time for teachers.

Maryland's Teacher Professional Development Standards are intended to guide efforts to improve professional development for all teachers. These standards call on teachers, principals and other school leaders, district leaders and staff, the Maryland State Department of Education, institutions of higher education, and cultural institutions and organizations1 across the state to work together to ensure that professional development is of the highest quality and readily accessible to all teachers.

The ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT®) is a FREE online tool that provides a set of questions to guide classroom observations of a number of key components of technology integration.

Sample apa paper with side notes.

A pdf file of a sample APA style paper from OWL at Purdue.

Interactive Courses for Family and Community Involvement in Student Learning

Six Types of Involvement: Keys to Successful Partnerships

Using Accountability to "Reform" Public Schools to Death

The term reform means different things to different people. It would be important that all stakeholders have the same idea about needed "reforms".

The six design principles for the 21st century according to ACOT2.

The mission of the Baldrige program is to promote excellence and to improve the economic strength and competitiveness of U.S. businesses and organizations. Any small or medium sized organization (public or private) can apply to participate. Rather than "reinvent the wheel" corrections agencies could utilize national and/or local Baldrige program criteria as a way to define, articulate, and measure themselves and create customized action plans to highlight their current strengths and reach even higher levels of functioning.

ACOT2 has identified six design principles for the 21st century high school:

Another framework that has implications for the practices of professional development acknowledges that learning brings change, and supporting people in change is critical for learning to "take hold." One model for change in individuals, the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, applies to anyone experiencing change, that is, policy makers, teachers, parents, students

The Concerns-Based Adoption Model, or CBAM, is a conceptual framework that describes, explains, and predicts probable teacher concerns and behaviors throughout the school change process. The three principal diagnostic dimensions of CBAM are: * Stages of Concern - Seven different stages of feelings and perceptions that educators experience when they are implementing a new program or practice * Levels of Use - Eight behavioral profiles that describe a different set of actions and behaviors that educators engage in as they become more familiar with and more skilled in using an innovation or adopting a change * Innovation Configurations - Different ways an innovation may be implemented, shown along a continuum from ideal implementation or practice to least desirable practice