University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2016 The relationship of reform style professional development and student achievement. Amy Colucci University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.edu/etd Part of the Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons Recommended Citation Colucci, Amy, "The relationship of reform style professional development and student achievement. Electronic Theses and Dissertations.18297/etd/2519 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository.
This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact thinkir@louisville. THE RELATIONSHIP OF REFORM STYLE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND STUDENT ACHIEVMENT By Amy Colucci B., Ball State University, 2000 M., Indiana Wesleyan University, 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Education and Human Development of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Education in Education Leadership and Organizational Development Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation, and Organizational Development University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2016 THE RELATIONSHIP OF REFORM STYLE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND STUDENT ACHIEVMENT By Amy Colucci B., Ball State University, 2000 M., Indiana Wesleyan University, 2005 A Dissertation Approved on July 12, 2016 by the following Dissertation Committee: __________________________________ Dissertation Director Jason C. Immekus __________________________________ William Ingle __________________________________ Marco Muñoz ___________________________________ John Ansman ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my wonderful husband Dan, our two amazing children, Alex and Emily, and my parents, Bill and Judy.
Thank you for believing in me and providing support throughout this entire process. I am very blessed and your support has made this possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation chair, Dr. Immekus for your mentorship and guidance through this process.
You challenged me through my course work to be a better writer and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a better version of myself. Your attention to detail and strategic thinking has been instrumental in my learning process and I am grateful for your guidance. I would also like to thank Dr. Ingle who helped shape my entire paper through coursework and providing clarity in those moments I wasn’t sure any of this made sense.
Thank you Dr. Ingle, I will always value your calm and logical nature. Munoz, thank you for serving on my committee in light of your heavy workload and changing jobs. It means so much to me as I have always respected the work you do with JCPS.
I don’t know if I have ever been as happy during this process as I was when you confirmed the statistical significance of my study and I will always appreciate how you mirrored my excitement. Ansman, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to serve on my committee. You have been the voice of reason and support letting me know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and some things are just part of the process. I appreciate your dedication to my paper and your support through this process.
iv Thank you Alex and Emily, you keep me going and I am so thankful for you. Not everyone gets to be the mommy to a turkey and a raccoon. I love you more than you can ever imagine and I am so incredibly proud of both of you. I know these past three years were not easy for you, but you hung in there and supported me every time I needed to do “homework.” My hope for you is to know you can do anything you set your mind to with hard work and determination.
To Dan, thank you for being my support system through this process. When the orientation meeting advised us to say goodbye to our spouses for the next three years, they weren’t kidding. You have helped manage the kid’s schedules when I attended class and offered support when I had to lock myself in a room to write all weekend. This degree is for our whole family, we earned it together, and I love you.
J To Judy and Bill, thank you for always supporting my education. I didn’t think I would still be in school at this point in my life, but the path is always changing. Thank you for your endless love and support, I love you. This process wouldn’t be possible with out the support of my entire family, even when I am impressed my brother Bill can answer a statistics questions without even seeing the problem.
I appreciate the welcome distraction of spending time with you all and am thankful for your words of encouragement or understanding when I had to do homework when we were together. Thank you for everything, I am lucky to have you all. To my classmates and colleagues, thank you for your words of encouragement, random texts, emails, and pep talks through this process. This is a very isolating endeavor and I appreciate your forgiveness when I didn’t return a text right away, or couldn’t make an event because of school.
Kara and Natalie, our weekly meetings are what kept me v going through classes, thank you for taking the time out of your already busy schedules to make this experience fun. I will be eternally grateful to you both. vi ABSTRACT THE RELATIONSHIP OF REFORM STYLE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND STUDENT ACHIEVMENT Amy Colucci July 12, 2016 The adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics represents a challenge for public educators due to the broad scope of required instructional change. This quantitative study investigated the implementation of a reform style professional development program in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), a large urban school district in Kentucky.
The research questions included in the study are: (a) Is reform style professional development positively associated with students’ mathematics achievement? and (b) What are teacher’s perceptions of reform style professional development’s effectiveness on their instructional practices and student achievement? Student achievement was measured using norm-referenced mathematics scores from the Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP), the state assessment for Kentucky. A hierarchical linear multiple regression model was used, controlling for student variables in block 1, prior year test scores in block 2, and teacher participating in reform style professional development in block 3. vii Findings suggest there is a positive and significant difference in student mathematics achievement in classrooms where teachers partially participate or fully participate in reform style professional development. This study may benefit educational leaders by providing data surrounding an effective professional development model, which has a positive relationship with student achievement.
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. viii LIST OF TABLES. 1 Background of Study. 1 Purpose of the Study.
8 Significance of the Study. 14 Assumptions of the Study. 16 Delimitations of the Study. 17 Limitations of the Study.
20 Organization of Subsequent Chapters. 23 The Common Core State Standards: World-Class Standards Movement. 24 Origins of Common Core State Standards. 32 Common Core State Standards Adoption.
38 The Role of Professional Development in Advancing Educational Reform. 40 Summary of Literature Review Findings. 68 Participants and Descriptive Statistics. 69 Null and Alternate Hypotheses.
85 DISCUSSION AND RECCOMONDATIONS. 111 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Measurement of Variables…………………………………………….66 Table 2 Student Demographic Variables.70 Table 3 Descriptive Statistics………………………………………………….73 Table 4 Descriptive Statistics for Teacher Groups…………………………….74 Table 5 Hierarchical Multiple Linear Regression Results…………………………….78 Table 6 Hierarchical Multiple Linear Regression Model Summary…………………….79 Table 7 Teacher Survey Frequencies…….82 xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Background of Study Throughout the past 200 years, educational reform in the United States (U.) has brought about a host of changes in attempts to increase academic achievement (Wallender, 2014). Most recently, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative was introduced to raise academic achievement throughout the United States. The CCSS movement has the potential to be one of the most significant policy shifts in American education in more than a century (McDonnell & Weatherford, 2013).
The CCSS represent the best effort thus far to transform today’s patchwork quilt of state standards into a more aligned set of standards containing strong consistent expectations for what all students should know and learn (Weingarten, 2010). The CCSS were developed with the goal of meeting the academic requirements necessary for 21st century students to be successful, while also expecting teachers to provide instruction at a higher academic level in the classroom (Rotman, 2012). This shift to a set of more rigorous nationwide standards has prompted virtually every school district in the United States to undergo some type of reform effort and implement a professional development program for their teachers (Youngs, 2013). Heightened benchmark assessments to measure student achievement and raised curricula expectations are only two of the demands placed on 1 teachers who are already tasked with changing their instructional practices to accommodate these new standards (Gewertz, 2013).
The continual modification of what schools expect of their teachers regarding mathematics instruction, illustrate the need for ongoing and effective teacher professional development (Conley, 2014). The goal of the CCSS is to increase math literacy for all students through instructional activities grounded in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010). Students demonstrating math literacy are better able to analyze and reason while formulating, solving, and interpreting solutions to problems across a variety of situations (Program for International Student Assessment, 2012). Mathematical capability, essential in the 21st century workplace, is a key indicator of productivity (Vigdor, 2013).
As students face “unprecedented challenges and heightened competition” in the global, knowledge-based job market, accelerating college realization is more than educational policy, it is an urgent national pursuit (U. Department of Education, 2013a, p. With the adoption of the CCSS in 43 states, educators are committed to providing a free education that produces students who are equipped to meet the complex challenges of the 21st century (Standards in Your State, n. The United States struggles with mathematics performance among elementary students, currently placing 27th on international rankings (Program for International Student Assessment, 2012).
Despite numerous education reforms, including George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, mathematics performance continues to fall short in the United States, especially among minority subgroups and students of poverty (Confer & Ramirez, 2012). An analysis of countries that routinely outperform the United 2 States, reveal mathematics education built upon a foundation of common standards, as opposed to multiple, disjointed standards encompassed by the United States prior to the CCSS, is essential to increasing achievement (McCarthy, 2012). According to the 2015 data from National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 35% of the U.
class of 2015 reached or exceed the proficiency level in math. This percentage places the United States at the 27th rank among the 34 Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The percentage of students who are math proficient is nearly twice as large in Korea (65%), Japan (59%), and Switzerland (57%). Other countries with performances that clearly outrank the United States include Finland (52%), Canada (51%), Germany (50%), Australia (45%), France (42%), and the United Kingdom (41%).
Changes must be made to increase mathematics achievement in the United States, over the last thirty years mathematics achievement has not increased significantly, despite multiple standards based reform movements. Results from the 2012 NAEP long-term trend assessment indicates there was not significant improvement in elementary student’s math knowledge and skills at the elementary level from 1973 to 2012. Additionally there was not significant change for the same age groups, in a smaller time frame, from 2008 to 2012 (NAEP, 2012).