Even though Zimbabwe has the highest literacy rates in Africa, the high school pass rate remains at

Unfortunately, thorough research on the impact of professional development on student achievement is limited because it is challenging, complex and expensive to study. Nonetheless, Hoaglund, Birkenfeld, and Box, (2015), conducted a study that illustrated that learning communities are viable tools for providing professional development to both pre-service teachers and current teachers. Their study showed how a group of pre-service teachers and their supervisors participated in a professional experience learning community for two terms prior to the pre-service teacher’s junior year at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Questionnaires and interviews were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The results of the study indicated that all participants valued the experience and consequently were able to gain and identify some benefits of a professional learning community (PLC). Participants specifically reported a greater appreciation of collaboration with more experienced educators as a practical way of solving issues and implementing processes and procedures for increasing student achievement. The activities incorporated within the

Dr. Fremstad has been instrumental in the implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at West Fargo High School. She understands the power of teacher collaboration and has led the charge to train and monitor the program with fidelity. Jennifer has inspired educators to share student evidence of learning and extend intervention or enrichment learning opportunities based on the data. In addition, she advocates on the importance of frequent classroom visitations with her leadership team and establishes annual visitation goals to support teachers and

Collaboration between teachers is a key component to professional development that will lead to higher student achievement. There is a need for schools to set up time for teachers to be able to collaborate together. This allows for teachers to help each other, matchup content, teach each other new and best practices, troubleshoot student issues just to name a few of the areas that collaboration time can help foster within a school. The key is to build time for teachers to be able to collaborate during the school day or week. This collaboration time needs to be between grade levels, departments, and cross curricular when needed. For many schools this is an afterthought to the school schedule or a fleeting thought after the master schedule is completed. A principal needs to keep an open mind to any strategy that will enable the teachers to be able to collaborate for the good of the students and the school.

1). Consequently, teachers need training and support through professional learning communities (PLC) as they “…have proven to be a cornerstone of effective teaching and, in underperforming schools, a catalyst for improvement” (Farbman, Goldberg, & Miller, 2014, p. 10). As a result, my plan proposes following Claudet’s model of a change agent (2011) by inspiring stakeholders to become collaborative partners in remedying academic gaps. It begins with the faculty analyzing student data scores to prioritize topics, designing a timeframe to meet goals, and identifying the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Once this is determined, several teachers would attend summer or fall training sessions to develop strategies to address the learning needs of low-achieving students because “…collective leadership has positive effects on student achievement” (Barth, 2001, p. 12). The trained teachers would provide monthly PLC activities to cultivate developmental and cultural instructional strategies, analyze student progress, share successes, and problem-solve concerns. Measurement of the effectiveness of the training occurs through staff participation, observations, and classroom formative and summative assessments, as recorded through the software programs provided to the teachers at the beginning of the

Traditionally, teacher development typically occurs through trial and error in the isolated confinements of each teacher’s classroom with some periodic whole-group professional development (Goddard & Goddard, 2007). Within the past few decades, many schools and districts, including ours, have considered and experimented with Professional Learning Communities (PLC) as an alternative framework in guiding a more efficient development program for their teachers. PLCs are focused on enhancing student learning through developing teacher practices. The concept of PLC relies on using structured collaborative sessions amongst teachers within the school to build internal capacity. Through PLCs, teachers critically reflect on current

Abubakar stresses why education is valuable beyond the focus of intellectual development and how education influences the well-being of a society. The author provides a general overview on the dilemma of illiteracy in developing countries and statistics conveying: adult literacy rates, children out-of-school information, and figures on literacy level improvements and literate populations.

During my second preclinical experience at Westview Hills Middle School, I learned the importance of cooperation and collaboration among teachers at a school. I was able to observe team and department meetings during this experience. It became clear that it is important for teachers to work together in order to provide a positive atmosphere at a school and in a specific department. Although it became obvious that personalities and teaching styles were different throughout the school, the teachers still acted professionally and used each other as resources in

The lowest literacy rate can be observed in sub-Saharan Africa, Where by more than 50% adults can’t read and write and 22% approximately 30 million

The author acknowledges limitations to the study resulting from the sample population being from a single grade level and school district and suggested future studies may want to examine data from a “broader range of social context, urbanicity, and grade levels” (Goddard et al., 2007, p.891). The study was able to suggest that teacher collaboration in schools promotes student achievement. An experimental study implementing teacher collaboration time and professional development in a school district and evaluating the effects on student achievement may be a promising next step for research on this

Professional development principles Ben embraces are Rigor, Relationships, Relevance and Realness. Mr. Rhodes continually emphasizes that work needs to have relevance and rigor in assignments and that the relationships teachers build with students is essential for success. Specific content used for staff development goals are Glenn Singleton’s work (Equity), National Achievement Gap, High Performing Schools, 90/90/90 Studies, 21st Century Skills, Marzano’s Instructional Strategies, and Heidi Hayes Jacobs’ literacy work. A variety of activities for teaching new skills to teachers occurs throughout the year. These include study groups, guest speakers, ERO (staff development classes), open classroom visits, master teachers sharing best practices in literacy, differentiated instruction, , math, and culturally responsive teaching, conference opportunities, mentors, district content area inservices, building inservice days, monthly district content area meetings, partnerships with universities, Collaborative Action Research for Equity (C.A.R.E.) cadre, and monthly building equity meetings. Mr. Rhodes uses the district Teaching Learning Cycle (Plan-Teach-Monitor- Adjust) to evaluate and assess the learning goals and make improvements. Ben also meets with Ben and the leadership team about the goals and creates the timeline to provide training and analyze progress. Evaluation of the learning goals using the SIP (as a living document) and individual goals are important

Illiteracy rates in West Africa are the highest in the world (Dakar). In the United States the ability to read with competence, or even receiving education to do so, is something that’s often taken for granted. We often forget that this privilege is not universally shared. This is especially true in West Africa. Communities there lack the resources and structured society to provide citizens with opportunities to increase their literacy. What the current education is like in west africa, causes potential solutions, is it working.

9). Qualitative research performed at Central High School located in the southern United States supports Reeves assertion that collaborative planning, or a professional learning community, is a best practice that increases student achievement (Maxwell, Huggins, and Scheurich, 2010). Central High School was a mostly low-income and low-performing high school that had not met Adequate Yearly Progress from 2003-2007. The school was 87% minority, and 82% of students were economically disadvantaged (Maxwell et al., 2010). As a part of state restructuring, professional learning communities were implemented at Central High School. An instructional coach was available during the day to support teachers, and weekly professional learning community meetings were held to provide professional development on issues such as working with students in poverty, implementing cooperative strategies, and highlighting best instructional practices (Maxwell et al., 2010).

In past years, literacy was an issues in some countries. In past years, Illiteracy was a big issue to some countries like Pakistan, Ghana Ethiopia, South Africa and other places in Africa. Over the past years, the government of these countries focused on education. The levels of literacy in these countries was too high and there were causes of negative impact toward education. For instance, literacy rate of girls in Pakistan and family were the negative impact. Literacy rates for both gender was too high in Ghana, Ethiopia and South Africa and the negative impact was poverty.

Our education should be of good quality. Primary education in particular should be excellent; for this is the only formal education that most Tanzanians are likely to receive. At present the quality of our primary school education is appalling. We must do something about it, as a matter of national agency.” – Julius Nyerere (1998)

It is crystal clear that there are disparities in the quality of education that township and former model C schools receive. Many well-off pupils attend former Model C schools, which are still well-resourced. Conversely, the majority of poor pupils attend poorly-resourced township and rural schools, which are not capable of providing education to a satisfactory standard. The Sunday Times released a survey in late 2009 revealing the Top 100 schools in the country. More than 90 of these were former Model C schools. It is likely that South Africa’s former Model C schools are responsible for the majority of the country’s university entrants. The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, was correct in her statement.