Professional Development Is Aligned With
Washington State’s Essential Academic
Learning Requirements/Graduate Learning
Expectations

In 1993 Washington State established standards that provide common learning goals for all Washington students (the Essential Academic Learning Requirements or EALRs) and a statewide assessment system that measures progress toward these goals (the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or WASL).  In 2003, to further define the EALRs, the state established Grade Level Content Expectations for reading, writing, mathematics, science, health/fitness, arts, social studies and communication for grades 3-8 and 10.

Professional development should be designed to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills in curriculum, instruction, pedagogy and assessment as well as tools to assure that education is personalized for each and every student:  

•    How content is organized- curriculum
•    What teachers teach- instruction
•    How student learning is monitored, evaluated, and reported – assessment

In a ten year review of education reform in Washington (A Decade of Reform: A Summary of Research Findings on Classroom, School and District Effectiveness in Washington State, 2003), The Washington Research Center at Seattle Pacific University found that in the most successful classrooms, instruction was focused on the EALRs by teachers who had a strong belief in their students’ innate abilities to learn at high levels regardless of the students’ backgrounds.  In order to transfer this success from individual classrooms to the school as a whole, a coordinated professional developmenti effort involving all the teachers is necessary.

The research identified several characteristics of successful schools:

•    Curriculum and instruction focused on the Essential
    Academic Learning Requirements/Graduate Learning Expectations
•    Curriculum coordination within and between grade levels
•    Teachers charged with teaching that curriculum
•    The use of assessment data to inform instruction
•    High expectations for student success

http://www.k12.wa.us/ProfDev/default.aspx