The quality of any school division is judged on the achievement of its students; which, in turn, is based entirely on the quality of its instructional staff. Thus, providing expectations, a framework and opportunities for continuous improvement of instruction is absolutely necessary to guarantee high student achievement.
The Goochland County Public Schools has had opportunities and expectations for professional development, including a system of instructional staff evaluation, for many years. We’ve revised and tweaked it over the years, but we were still missing some important pieces or processes that would create an integrated and systematic way of ensuring the continuous professional development of our staff. We have examined our goals for professional development and what state code and our policies require. We looked at the various components of staff development we had in place and the relationships among those components. We measured our program with goals and best practice as indicators. From this analysis, we reorganized, reformatted, and revised, ultimately producing the Goochland County Public Schools Continuous Professional Development Program.
