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As part of a continuing effort to honor excellence in education, the U.S. Department of Education announces the fourth competition under the National Awards Program for Model Professional Development. This program recognizes schools and school districts with exemplary professional development and disseminates information about high-quality professional development efforts that provide evidence of student learning and increased teacher effectiveness. Recognition under this awards program is based on how well applicants demonstrate, using the selection criteria described in this document, that their professional development efforts result in increased student outcomes.
Since the focus of this competition is on professional development for teachers and other educators in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 (preK-12) settings, only individual schools (public or private) or school districts may apply. In doing so, applicants are encouraged to submit applications that describe their partnerships with other entities, in particular, institutions of higher education. If a school district applies, individual schools in that district may not submit their own applications.
These criteria are derived from the Mission and Principles of Professional Development (which are reproduced in this application package) prepared by the U.S. Department of Education in 1995, in consultation with numerous educational organizations.
The Department's goal is to identify a wide variety of comprehensive models of preK-12 professional development that exemplify the Mission and Principles of Professional Development. Consistent with the Mission and Principles, these models are broadly focused: they have professional growth as an integral part of school culture, address the needs of ALL students, and promote professional development practices that ensure equity by being free of bias and accessible to all educators.
Applications will be reviewed in five stages. During the first stage, applications will be reviewed by U.S. Department of Education staff to determine whether they contain all necessary information and meet required formatting. Applications that seek funds to initiate professional development activities or that are not submitted on behalf of a school or a district will not be considered. The second stage of review, to determine semi-finalists, will be conducted by non-Departmental panelists representing a broad range of expert practitioners and policymakers. Each application will have multiple readers and will be evaluated according to how well the application addresses the Selection Criteria.
In the third stage, site visits will be conducted to verify the information presented in the semi-finalists' applications and to collect any additional available data related to the criteria. An awards panel of expert practitioners and policymakers will review applications and site visit reports, and recommend finalists to the Department. The Department will use the data from each review stage, along with the information contained on the applications, to select up to ten schools and/or school districts for national recognition.
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[Guidelines for Completing the Application]