National Staff Development Council
What Works in the Middle: Results-Based Staff Development, 1999
What Works in the Middle: Results-Based Staff Development is a National Staff Development Council report on a comprehensive two-year study of staff development programs that demonstrate an impact on student achievement in the middle grades.  The report answers the question, "Which staff development programs improve student learning?" Almost 500 staff development programs were identified for the study, 80 were chosen for intensive study, and Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound was one of 26 programs selected as having demonstrated a link between teacher learning and student learning.
Student achievement increased in Expeditionary Learning middle schools studied.
The report summarized the components of Expeditionary Learning staff development and reported achievement results in Expeditionary Learning middle schools. In the summary of results section of the report on Expeditionary Learning the authors write:
Students’ academic achievement in math and reading on standardized, norm-referenced tests increased significantly as a result of their participation in Expeditionary Learning compared to other schools in the states and/or districts.  In addition, students’ attendance, parent involvement, attitude about school, enjoyment of school, and active engagement in learning increased as a result of the expeditionary structure of learning (p. 159).
Expeditionary Learning is the only model that meets all NSDC standards for effective professional development
Of the twenty-six programs included in the study, Expeditionary Learning is the only program that was found to meet all 27 NSDC standards for quality staff development. The chart below shows the number of professional development standards met by Expeditionary Learning and by each of the twenty-five other professional development organizations.
Number of Staff Development Standards Met
The standards include context, process and content standards. According to six of these NSDC standards, Expeditionary Learning:
- requires and fosters a norm of continuous improvement,
- is an innovation in itself that requires study of the change process,
- provides a framework for integrating innovations and relating those innovations to the mission of the organization,
- requires staff members to learn and apply collaborative skills to conduct meetings, make shared decisions, solve problems, and work collegially,
- increases administrators’ and teachers’ understanding of how to provide school environments and instruction that is responsive to the developmental needs of adolescents, and
- prepares teachers to use various types of performance assessment in their classrooms.
Complete Report (Chapter-by-Chapter PDF Format)
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