ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on standards for supervision of school-focused professional development. Such professional development should be facilitated by supervisors from the central office, certainly must include the school principal, and usually involves assistant principals and teacher–leaders. A prerequisite for planning professional development at the school level is a collective vision for the type of graduates the school wishes to prepare and the type of learning environment needed to develop such graduates. Supervisors can best coordinate a needs assessment not by designing surveys, leading discussion groups, or reviewing student achievement data by themselves, but rather by facilitating teams of teachers as they carry out such tasks and compare data they have gathered. The thread that connects the various levels of professional responsibility is student learning, and teachers affecting student learning do so directly through curriculum development, teaching, and student assessment. Successful supervision offers opportunities for dialogue on curriculum, teaching, and learning as part of the professional development process.
