Districts should stop the practice of full-day school closures for professional development. Instead, they should utilize high-quality professional development strategies that can be embedded throughout the school day, including teacher collaboration and planning time, individualized coaching, classroom observations, evaluations from outside experts, and trainings on data analysis. Districts could also run citywide leadership development events during nonschool hours. They could also explore the use of online platforms, such as Knowledge Delivery Systems, for professional development and professional learning among educators, which would reduce the need for full-day closures for these purposes.Motivate Youth provides individualized coaching designed to run concurrently with the school day, not necessarily because it creates less inservice days, but rather because it is the most effective way to deliver professional development. Many schools, however, do not provide professional development during inservice days (they often supply it is small chunks afters school, or allow teachers to find their own development on weekend or summer days.) If schools are using inservice days to provide professional development, they should look toward embedded development programs because they are the most effective. Inservice days, then could be eliminated, or used to do large reorganization and planning projects that require full day, full team participation.
Aaron Romens is an education consultant based in Madison, Wisconsin.
