The Effectiveness of Professional Development Planning with the Implementation of Targeted Instructional Strategies and the Impact on Teachers Evaluations and Student Growth

Using teacher evaluation score averages, Instructional Rounds data, and student assessment score averages from the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) assessment at two elementary school campuses in a large West Texas city, this research study investigated the affects that effective professional development planning and teacher effectiveness had on student achievement. This study is a quantitative action research project utilizing archival data from the 2018 – 2019 school year as a baseline, as well as 2019 – 2020 data collected throughout the entirety of the research study. The data was collected after each professional development training in order to identify the utilization of the targeted instructional strategies implemented to analyze the relationship between teacher evaluation scores and the implementation of targeted professional development. NWEA MAP assessment averages from students were collected and analyzed in order to identify the relationship between the implementation of effective professional development and targeted instructional strategies, and teacher evaluation scores. The results of this research study indicated an increase in teacher evaluation score averages with increased usage of the targeted instructional strategies and fidelity to the professional development trainings. In addition, the findings indicated that groups of students and teachers had higher increases in overall teacher evaluation averages and student NWEA MAP Rasch Unit (RIT) score averages when implementing the targeted instructional strategies with more fidelity to the professional development trainings. Also, the results indicated consistency at both campuses in the use of the teacher evaluation rubric, since both of the focus campuses in his research study used the same teacher evaluation rubric and received the same calibration training at the beginning of the 2019 – 2020 school year. The recommendations discussed within this research study include; encouraging fidelity to the professional development training and the implementation of the targeted instructional strategies, including additional campuses to add more teachers and students to the focus groups, additional time parameters, and a structured testing protocol in order to have a testing environment conducive for student concentration. In addition, it was recommended to include individualized teacher evaluation scores and student NWEA MAP RIT scores to identify more individualized increase or decreases on teacher evaluations and student assessment scores.