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Small, Rural, Highly Diverse NM District Meets NCLB Requirements

ARTESIA, NEW MEXICO

Case StudySchool Improvement Network

www.schoolimprovement.com | www.PD360.com | 800.572.1153

“Our goal was to provide our teachers with access to relevant resources whenever they need it.”

Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

Rick Stewart and other leaders at Artesia recognized the need to provide high-quality PD to the district’s 200 teachers consistently and with increased accountability.

One day Mr. Stewart was flipping through a magazine when he saw an ad for PD 360. Curious about the promise of on-demand, individualized learning for every teacher, he called School Improvement Network (SINET) and received a thirty-day trial license.

“Every district leader and principal wants to provide great professional development to teachers. The obstacles are always time and budget. We decided to purchase PD 360 because it offered everything we needed and helped us overcome these barriers.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

PD 360 is an on-demand library of professional teacher devel-opment resources that leverages technology to make profes-sional learning more effective, convenient, and sustainable.

“PD 360 has made Artesia’s professional development program much more convenient and effective. The variety of resources within PD 360 enhances all our professional development activities and gives us a way to meet the individual needs of every teacher.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

Located in rural New Mexico, Artesia Public Schools serves a diverse student population of 3,500 at nine schools. It faces poverty rates of fifty percent. Over fifty percent of the student population is non-white. In 2009, Artesia Park Junior High School had 38% of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch programs.

Like many districts, Artesia struggled with providing consis-tent, effective professional development (PD), and at the same time staying within shrinking budgets. After a PD activ-ity, it was difficult to provide ongoing follow-up and document if any change had occurred in the classroom.

“One of the top four things that changes student achieve-ment is the type of professional development teachers receive. After a training session with an expert, I would see a major impact for a couple of days. However, before long, teachers would go back to doing things the way they have always done.

“We needed to find a unified, ongoing plan that would meet the needs of everyone from a kindergarten teacher to an AP senior English teacher.

DISTRICT PROFILE

FOCUS

SOLUTION

ABOUT PD 360

www.schoolimprovement.com | www.PD360.com | 800.572.1153

With over 200 hours of research-based video content plus tools for follow-up, tracking, reflection, and group training, PD 360 is the most comprehensive solution to professional teacher development needs.

More than 600,000 educators across North America already use PD 360 to access individualized support on the most relevant topics, like differentiation, minority student achieve-ment, English language learners, classroom instruction that works, leadership, assessment, and many more. PD 360’s content is divided into hundreds of indexed and searchable segments that make it easy for teachers, administrators, aspiring leaders, coaches, mentors, paraprofessionals, and professional learning communities to find the answers they need. New content is continually added to keep educators up to date. See a demonstration at www.pd360.com.

As a former principal, Mr. Stewart knew that he had to get buy-in from the district’s principals to make the implemen-tation of PD 360 successful. SINET provided a training seminar for principals soon after Artesia purchased, which helped give the principals a sense of ownership over the implementation in their school.

To get the principals even more involved in PD 360, Mr. Stewart made them responsible for training sessions at the district’s PD kickoff before the 2007-08 school year. Typically, the district would hire an outside consultant for the kickoff, but with PD 360, principals were easily able to prepare a variety of training sessions around specific topics, like English Language Learners and Differentiated Instruction.

“Every principal saw something different in PD 360. Having the principals prepare training sessions for the beginning-of-the-year in-service showed our teachers that their principals did understand the challenges they faced and were qualified instructors.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

Following the principal breakout sessions, Mr. Stewart held a three-hour seminar to show teachers how to use PD 360. During the 2007-08 school year, both Mr. Stewart and school principals worked hard to integrate PD 360 into every teacher’s PD activities. Newer teachers were assigned specific segments to watch around topics like classroom management and lesson planning. More expe-rienced teachers were given the flexibility to pick several video segments that addressed their specific needs.

PD 360 usage has become increasingly more site-based. Principals are able to determine which segments most effectively address their school’s needs and plan group PD around those segments.

After its first year of use, Artesia has experienced many im-portant benefits as a result of their careful implementation of PD 360.

Artesia has one school, Artesia Junior High School, cur-rently in corrective action under the demands of No Child Left Behind. During the 2007-08 school year, Artesia Junior High used PD 360 to ensure every teacher received PD on at least a weekly basis. When the New Mexico Department of Education visited to perform its evaluation, they were amazed that the school actually had something in place to help every teacher improve because this ele-ment of corrective action usually presents a major chal-lenge. The state department cited PD 360 in their evalu-ation as a way schools can improve and offer ongoing training to teachers.

Teachers are able to find video segments that meet their individual questions and needs. Instead of searching the internet for help and coming up with unsubstantiated sources, teachers can search PD 360 to find research-based resources that meet their needs. They can access PD 360 anytime and from any location, which means they no longer have to wait for a training session to get answers to questions.

PD 360 has been very cost-effective for Artesia. By not hiring an outside consultant for their 2007-08 in-service, Artesia actually paid for its first year PD 360 subscription. Since the district used Title I funds to purchase PD 360, the budgets of individual principals were actually freed up because they did not have to spend such a large portion of their resources on PD.

“We do not send staff members to conferences and seminars unless they have exhausted the resources in PD 360. Not only has the reduction in travel costs saved us money, but we have actually gained instruc-tional time. The less teachers have to leave the class-room, the better for the students.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

DRIVING USAGE AND IMPLEMENTATION

Principal Training

Principal Usage

Teacher Training

Individualized Group Meetings

BENEFITS

Meeting No Child Left Behind Requirements

Personal Professional Development

Cost Effective

www.schoolimprovement.com | www.PD360.com | 800.572.1153

A major challenge of PD is ensuring it happens consistent-ly, especially with limited time. Several schools in Artesia have set aside one hour each week for PD. PD 360 makes these weekly sessions much easier by providing a vast library of segments that act as a catalyst for discussion.

“The content of PD 360 includes segments for all our teachers. When teachers can actually see a new strat-egy modeled on film, they understand it and feel much more comfortable implementing it in their own class-room. Our teachers have logged over 18,000 minutes on PD 360 during our first year.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

Principals have especially benefited from PD 360. Like many districts, Artesia principals are responsible for most of their teachers’ PD and PD 360 helps make site-based training much more effective. Using PD 360’s digitized facilitator guides, principals are able to prepare group sessions around specific video segments. Because all video segments and facilitator guides are research-based, principals can provide their staff with high-quality training even if they themselves are not experts on the given topic. After walk-throughs, Principals email relevant PD 360 seg-ments to teachers.

PD 360 has also given principals a way to work with strug-gling teachers. Being able to provide immediate remedia-tion on many issues has been helpful to both principals and teachers.

Before PD 360, it was nearly impossible for Artesia leaders to determine how much PD happened and more impor-tantly, if it had any effect. Now they can track all PD activi-ties to ensure all teachers are participating on a regular basis. Using PD 360’s integrated follow-up and reflection tools, leaders ensure that PD implementation is in the classroom.

“PD 360 tracking tools are the perfect way to know that teachers and administrators are trying to improve.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

“Over the past year, 100 percent of Artesia’s staff has engaged in PD 360 and we are much farther along in our professional development program than we ever would have been without it. PD 360 allows the district to set a unified focus for schools while still provid-ing each teacher with the differentiated support they need.” Rick Stewart Director of Federal Programs Artesia Public Schools, NM

School Improvement Network is the leading provider of teach-er education and teacher training, specializing in on-demand, research-based professional development anytime, anywhere. As the home of The Video Journal of Education, PD 360, and the Leadership and Learning Framework, School Improve-ment Network’s education training resources focus on the most relevant topics, such as classroom management. The resources also feature top experts such as Michael Fullan and Douglas Reeves, and show how to put theory into practice. With its focus on long-term improvement, sustainability, and greater internal capacity, School Improvement Network helps its clients close achievement gaps, meet high standards and increase student learning for both elementary education and secondary education. To learn more about School Improve-ment Network’s dynamic resources, visit www.schoolimprovement.com.

Increased Consistency

Improved Instructional Leadership

Teachers Who Struggle

Increased Accountability

CONCLUSION

ABOUT SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT NETWORK

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