School Wide Development Programs

This school wide professional development program that is described in this paper addresses four inter-related areas: instruction, curriculum, organizational effectiveness and standardized testing. Using the following components planning, implementation and dissemination as an organizing framework, this paper will clearly define how schools can improve their capacity to cater to student learning needs.

In the planning stages of the professional development program, the school leadership team that consists of members from the administration and the teaching staff should conduct periodic needs assessments of the students, teachers and administrators. The needs assessments should lead to the determination of the school goals, the professional development activities required, the timing of the implementation and the recipients of training. For example, if one of the school's goals is to improve students' literacy, the school leadership team must decide which professional activities need to be implemented in order to achieve the goal. In this respect, they may conduct research on different types of effective literacy instruction models and identify the most appropriate one for their schools. The selection of the literacy instruction will thus exert an impact on the design and delivery of the curriculum.

Just as importantly, the school leadership team will have to select the professional development activities that