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Pressure Builds for Effective Staff Training

Teachers’ on-the-job learning seen as path to greater student gains.

Back in the early 1990s, when Amy C. Orr started her teaching career in the Rockwood, Mo., school district, her colleagues dreaded the professional-development workshops they had to attend, she remembers.

“It was a lot of what we would call ‘sit and git’ workshops,” said Ms. Orr, now a reading specialist in the district’s Wild Horse Elementary School. “It was very fragmented, and there was no understanding that staff development could lead to student achievement.”

More than a decade later, the take on professional development has changed—and not just among Ms. Orr’s co-workers. Now many national policymakers and experts believe that professional development, which teachers often have regarded as wasted time, is potentially an important tool for improving student learning. But as often happens in education, the research on such programs and their effectiveness hasn’t kept...