Why?
With its strategic plan goal to ensure that all Mississippi schools have effective leaders and teachers, the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) recognized that the Professional Growth System (PGS) designed to enable educational leaders to assess and support improvements in educator practice needed updating. In addition, MDE recognized the need to build capacity to provide the training in order to meet the demand. The Region 7 Comprehensive Center (R7CC) was asked by senior leadership to help them improve the PGS training and to work on a capacity-building strategy that would address training demand. Also noted by senior leaders was the lack of high-quality course offerings that would meet the needs and professional development requirements of new school leaders in Mississippi.
What?
Using processes and structures in implementation science, R7CC provided intensive technical assistance to the MDE’s Office of Teaching and Leading to improve its PGS training. Activities undertaken as part of the project include conducting an evidence-based assessment of capacity and readiness to strengthen the PGS implementation with a focus on professional growth. R7CC worked with MDE to establish a teaming structure of MDE executive leaders, program leaders, and, as needed, stakeholder working groups. Using data gathered from PGS users, R7CC worked with MDE and a representative group of district leaders, principals, and teachers to make improvements to the PGS training. R7CC then helped MDE build its capacity to meet the demand for training by developing processes for selecting and onboarding training teams throughout the state’s Regional Education Service Agencies (RESAs). This work then sparked a different need for R7CC support in a separate project focused on working with MDE to design three Orientation to School Leadership (OSL) training modules. R7CC supports three teams of MDE staff in developing the content, activities, and materials for these modules. Upon completion of the modules, MDE will use the process R7CC helped to develop for selecting and onboarding RESA trainers for the OSL modules.
Results?
Based on R7CC’s intensive assistance over three years’ time, MDE now has an improved PGS and a sustainable statewide system of trainers through the RESAs that is equipped to meet the demands for training across the state. MDE also has a process and set of resources and tools that are used to select and onboard RESA trainers that will be used to create a sustainable system of high-quality, up-to-date, and consistent training for new leaders across the state.