Professional Development Schools

What is a professional development school (PDS)?

A PDS is P-12 school, which supports a multidimensional program collaboratively designed and managed by a school-university partnership. The major purposes of the PDS are: (a) to identify, develop, test, and refine practices that promote student achievement; (b) to support initial preparation and continuing professional development for teachers and other school-based educators; and (c) to support applied inquiry designed to improve pupil and educator development.

How many PDSs exist?

While there does not appear to be a definitive census of all PDSs available at this time, findings from a 1994-1995 national survey of professional development schools in the United States, conducted by the Clinical Schools Clearinghouse (CSC), indicated that more than 78 colleges and universities participated in PDS partnerships and that these partnerships had established more than 300 individual preK-12 sites nationwide. More recent survey and informal data suggest that the number of colleges and universities involved in PDS partnerships exceeds 125, and the number of P-12 sites exceeds 600.

It should be noted that, in estimating the number of professional development schools, CSC relies on self-reporting and includes in the estimates professional practice schools, partner schools, clinical schools, and similar institutions.

Do PDSs work?

There is some evidence from descriptive and qualitative studies, as well as anecdotal evidence, that teacher education in PDS settings is more systematic, empowering, and effective than in traditional programs. There is less evidence that student learning is significantly or consistently enhanced. The relative newness of PDSs as institutions, failure to embed systematic documentation and assessment into program design, and inherent difficulties associated with devising reliable measures of outcomes from innovative, nontraditional practices contibute to the paucity of P-12 student outcome data.

For more extensive discussion of these questions, see:

Abdal-Haqq, I. (1998). Professional Development Schools: Weighing the Evidence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Abdal-Haqq, I. (Comp.). (2001). Resources on Professional Development Schools: An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Hoffman, N. E., Reed, W. M., & Rosenbluth, G. S. (Eds.). (1997). Lessons from Restructuring Experiences: Stories of Change in Professional Development Schools. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Levine, M., & Trachtman, R. (Eds.), Making Professional Development Schools work: Politics, Practices, and Policy. New York: Teachers College Press.

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