Rewarding Professionals to Learn Together: A Tool for Turnaround in Portland, Maine

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: The Possibility of School Turnaround: Research Studies of Turnaround Efforts at Different Levels

Abstract

Professional development, when embedded in and relevant to teachers’ work, tied to district priorities, supported by district leadership, and contractual supported, can play a significant role in school turnaround. Maine’s Portland Public Schools provides a case where a School Improvement Grant (SIG) supported school-wide learning initiative that promoted collaborative action, stimulating measurable and observable turnaround. Negotiated in the union contract, Professional Learning Based Salary System (PLBSS) rewards professional learning connected to instruction and student outcomes. Guided by the program’s theory of action, we analyzed student achievement scores and conducted a compressed ethnography in one elementary school with anomalous improvements in student gains. District and school leadership leveraged PLBSS with the SIG intervention to change the trajectory of a failing school.

Authors

• Rachael Lawrence, University of Massachusetts

• Sharon F. Rallis, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Lisa A. Keller, University of Massachusetts - Amherst