Does Teacher Professional Development Improve Student Learning? Evidence from Leading Educators’ Fellowship Model

Teachers are the most important school-specific factor in student learning. Yet, little evidence exists linking teacher professional development programs and the strategies or activities that comprise them to student achievement.

In this peer-reviewed paper, we examine the effects of the Leading Educators teacher leadership fellowship model, a cohort-based professional development approach designed to bridge research and practice.

What the Researchers Found

1. Based on quasi-experimental methods, a school’s participation in the fellowship program significantly increased student proficiency rates in English language arts and math on state achievement exams.
2. Student achievement benefited from a more sustained duration of participation in the fellowship program.
3. The duration varied depending on the share of a school’s educators who participated in the fellowship (for example, an instructional team of 3-5 people vs. an individual teacher leader acting alone) and differed based on whether fellows were independently selected into the program or appointed to participate by their school leaders.

⚡ Bottom Line: Taken together, this paper’s findings should inform professional learning organizations, schools, and policymakers about the design, implementation, and impact of educator professional development. These findings signal the potential value of more systemic approaches to ongoing professional learning focused on standards and content.

About the Model

During the 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 school years, Leading Educators provided two cohorts of instructional leaders, such as department chairs, mentor teachers, instructional coaches, and assistant principals, with ongoing, collaborative, job-embedded professional development focused on strengthening their instructional leadership.

• These leaders would then lead content-specific professional learning and coaching at their school sites for peers in alignment with college and career readiness standards.
• By expanding distributed leadership and the overall dosage of support for instructional practice development, we aimed to increase the consistency of teaching quality across classrooms and strengthen student mastery of learning objectives.