Staff Development Tied to Literacy Gains for Students

An audit of professional-development literacy programs in a Florida district has found that students of teachers trained in those programs showed significant gains in reading-test scores.

For each six-hour day teachers in the 130,000-student Duval County district, which includes Jacksonville, took part in the program offered by the Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership , student scores on state tests rose by half a point.

Given that, if teachers completed a Literacy 101 program offered by the center that includes 84 hours, or 14 days, of instruction, one could expect to see, on average, students in that teacher’s class scoring 7 points higher than the students of a teacher who did not...