Strategic Professional Development Review of the School District of Philadelphia

This report reviews the School District of Philadelphia’s (SDP) use of professional development resources. Despite Philadelphia’s low and unstable funding of professional development, ERS identifies ten opportunities SDP has to improve its teaching quality and leadership capacity. Most importantly, SDP needs to create an adequately funded PD plan that is based on a broader collection of evidence-based metrics of teacher quality, and link it to a broader human capital management strategy. There are several structures in place that SDP can build upon in doing this, including its current efforts to support new teachers and principals and a redesign of its implementation of school-based expert support.

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