Craft Category: Artifacts

Teacher residency programs have the potential to address two systems-level challenges exacerbated by the pandemic: educator shortages and training for novice educators. Given current teacher shortages and the need to prepare educators for the particular contexts of their communities, districts have increasingly turned to “grow-your-own” models, which, according to recent research from the National Center for Teacher Residencies, afford unique benefits. This report provides an overview of the findings of a mixed-method study conducted to understand the impacts of the first year of Lindsay Unified School District’s “grow-your-own” residency program.

TLA has found there are common implementation components – “conditions for scale” – that support planning, adoption, and scaling of innovative initiatives. Leaders seeking to implement work in classrooms must align critical supports, systems, and structures, as well as ongoing processes to establish, improve, and scale work over time. TLA’s Innovative Learning Implementation Framework, described in this document, outlines these common conditions components.

The need for professional learning does not stop in a crisis – in fact, it intensifies. Educators who are new to the field need additional support; experienced professionals need quality learning opportunities to continue their growth; and new or amplified issues arise that educators need to be equipped to address. This report describes the implementation of LUSD’s personalized professional learning pathways, the features and structures designed to support personalized professional learning, and recommendations to guide future implementations.

This fourth module concludes TLA’s in-depth analysis of the three-year Empower Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Grant at Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD). Each module has aligned to specific research questions and contributed to a broader examination of the personalized professional learning program and the performance-based compensation strategies (PBCS).

In taking a modular approach to our analysis of the three-year Empower Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Grant, TLA addressed specific research questions and built towards a broader examination of the personalized professional learning program as well as Lindsay Unified School District’s (LUSD’s) performance-based compensation strategies (PBCS).

Findings from previous examinations of the Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD)’s personalized professional learning program informed the design of our modular, in-depth analysis of the three-year Empower Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Grant. Each module aligns to specific research questions and builds towards a broader examination of the personalized professional learning program and the performance-based compensation strategies (PBCS) implemented within the district.

Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD) has made a commitment to ensuring that all learners have the very best learning experiences every day. Through its Strategic Design, the district has articulated a clear vision for personalized, performance-based learning for both children and adults. Consequently, LUSD began a personalized professional learning program for its learning facilitators and leaders that has been supported by a federal Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant. Over the course of three academic years (2017-2020), learning facilitators and leaders in LUSD have participated in a range of professional learning opportunities designed to develop their capacity to implement the district’s vision of the Ideal Learning Experience.

To demonstrate and document how school systems can create high-quality, personalized, performance-based professional learning approaches for learning facilitators and leaders, The Learning Accelerator (TLA) has collaborated with the LUSD leadership team. As a result of this partnership, TLA has designed and implemented a comprehensive and ongoing research plan to analyze the effects of personalized professional learning and performance-based compensation on both learner achievement and adult competencies.

This executive summary synthesizes the findings from five different reports related to an in-depth analysis of the Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD) personalized professional learning program. In addition to reviewing the details of the program, this summary describes patterns of learning facilitator participation and key findings about the relationship between professional learning and learner growth. It also presents a synopsis of the effects of LUSD’s Performance Based Compensation Strategies (PBCS) and discusses the district’s return on investment.

Beginning in the 2017-18 School Year, Lindsay Unified School District (LUSD) launched a strategy to provide personalized professional learning opportunities to its learning facilitators (i.e., teachers) to support the development of the district’s Adult Learning Curriculum (ALC) as part of a Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant initiative. To measure the effectiveness of LUSD’s professional learning approach on learner (i.e., student) growth, this initial analysis addresses three primary research questions using data from the first two years of the grant: (1) how did engaging in professional learning affect learner achievement? (2) which combinations of professional learning emerged in terms of type and dose? and (3) which combinations had the greatest effect on learner outcomes? The conclusions from this report will inform the direction of subsequent analyses and serve as a first indication of the effectiveness of the professional learning opportunities implemented under the TSL grant initiative. View the executive summary and an accessible version of this report.