"The Best Professional Development Ever Had," Teachers Say about Pittsburgh Teachers Institute in Independent Evaluation

A recently released report evaluating the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute's first four years of operations found, "Participants described their experience as the best professional development they'd ever received." Those and other comments came in the course of a series of interviews and focus group sessions undertaken and reported by an independent research firm specializing in educational research and program evaluation.

The evaluation leading to the 74-page report, "Pittsburgh Teachers Institute—Lessons Learned," took place took place during the year immediately following the final year of the three-year National Demonstration Project during which the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute was established following the model of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. For the report, representatives of Cornerstone Evaluation Associates interviewed groups of students, teachers, school principals, advisory group members, seminar leaders and administrators from Carnegie-Mellon University and Chatham College, and staff from the Institute and the School District. The report also assessed the classroom effects of curriculum units produced in Institute seminars. In addition, a specialist examined the Institute Web site for its usability.

Key findings of the evaluation include that, "Focus group participants spoke very highly of the Institute experience, commenting especially on its unmatched professional development, encouragement of collaboration of college/university seminars leaders and teachers across all grade levels and broadening of their horizons within their own subject areas and beyond."

For the student assessments, done in seven preschool, elementary, middle and high school classrooms, teachers worked with Janet Stocks, Ph.D., a sociologist from Carnegie-Mellon University who has served as a seminar leader for five of the six years that the Institute has existed. Together they designed pre-unit and post-unit tests to measure changes in student performance potentially related to the curriculum units developed in the Institute. "It is clear," Stocks wrote in the report, "that student content knowledge is increasing as a result of exposure to these units." Although the number of participants was too small "to make large claims," she explained, "...when Institute classrooms were compared with non-Institute classrooms, the Institute classrooms did show greater gains in knowledge."

The complete report, which was commissioned by the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, and received support from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, may be viewed online at: http://teacher.yale.edu.

Allyson Walker, President of Cornerstone, directed the study. She is a former member and for a brief period the director of the Pittsburgh School District's Research and Evaluation Team. She is regularly employed by the district as a consultant to conduct evaluations of programs and projects such as the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute. She said, "As a research firm specializing in program evaluation, the utilization of evaluative results is continuously in the forefront of our concerns. We see the Web as one of the most advanced means for disseminating research findings."

The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute is a member of the League of Teachers Institutes within the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools. It was established during the National Demonstration Project of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Building on the success of the Demonstration Project, the Initiative seeks to establish Teachers Institutes in states around the country.