Evaluating Professional Development.

In the introduction to this work, Dennis Sparks, executive director of the National Staff Development Council, contends "most current staff development efforts do not improve student learning." He adds that research indicates "notable improvements in education almost never take place in the absence of professional development."

Taken together these claims highlight a continuing challenge for every superintendent and instructional leader: how to determine whether in-service activities are improving student learning.

The search for answers to this fundamental question could not start with a better guidebook than Thomas Guskey's Evaluating Professional Development. Guskey, a professor of educational policy studies and evaluation at the University of Kentucky, is no newcomer to this issue. The result is a thorough, accessible and eminently usable work.

Several key distinctions guide the discussion:

* Quality professional development does not consist merely of "events"--workshops and presentations. The author discusses seven major models of professional development, each requiring a different approach to evaluation.

* A difference exists between staff development programs that are "meritorious" (judged by their excellence compared to professional standards) and those that are "worthwhile" (essential to achieving the organization's mission or to meeting individual needs). Training programs can be excellent and worthless at the same time.

* Too often needs assessments used to plan professional development measure symptoms of needs rather than the underlying conditions.

Guskey provides 12 guidelines for evaluating professional development that address participant satisfaction, use of new knowledge and student learning outcomes.

(Evaluating Professional Development, by Thomas R. Guskey, Corwin Press, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91320, 2000, 308 pp. with index, $74.95 hardcover, $34.95 softcover)