Determine if Our Professional Learning Is Working

School systems invest significant time and money in professional learning every year. Yet the question of whether that investment is actually changing practice, strengthening educator effectiveness, and ultimately improving outcomes for students often goes unanswered. Satisfaction surveys collected at the end of a workshop tell us very little. What educators and leaders need is a more rigorous, more useful approach to evaluation.

At Learning Forward, we define evaluation not as a final judgment about whether a program succeeded or failed, but as an ongoing source of information that improves professional learning while it is happening and informs decisions about what to continue, strengthen, or change. Evaluation done well is built into the design of professional learning from the beginning, not added on afterward. It asks what educators need to know and be able to do, tracks whether they are developing that knowledge and skill, monitors changes in instructional practice, and connects those changes to what students are experiencing in the classroom.

This kind of evaluation requires both clarity and data. District and school leaders need to articulate specific outcomes for their professional learning before they can assess progress toward them. They need to identify the right sources of evidence, which may include classroom observations, student work, assessment data, and educator reflection, rather than relying on a single metric that tells an incomplete story. And they need to distinguish between data that shows educators participated in professional learning and data that shows professional learning made a difference.

Educator evaluation, when designed and used well, is a related and powerful lever. When evaluation systems are connected to professional learning rather than treated as a separate compliance process, they can help educators identify areas for growth, access targeted support, and track their own development over time. Learning Forward supports educators and leaders who want to use evaluation as a genuine tool for improvement rather than a performance management exercise.

Below, you will find resources organized across four topic areas: Evaluation and Impact, which addresses frameworks, models, and practical approaches for assessing whether professional learning is producing the changes in practice and outcomes it was designed to achieve; Data, which explores how schools and systems can identify, collect, and use multiple sources of evidence to make informed decisions about professional learning; Outcomes, which focuses on how to define, measure, and communicate meaningful results for both educators and students; and Educator Evaluation, which examines how teacher and leader evaluation systems can be designed and used as tools that support continuous professional growth rather than simply satisfy accountability requirements.