Technical Assistance & Professional Development Services

CEEE makes a distinction between technical assistance and professional development. Technical assistance is defined as support to organizations (e.g., state education departments, district central offices) to help them create coherent and aligned policies to improve teaching and learning. Professional development is assistance provided to individuals to build their knowledge and skills in content areas and instructional methodologies.

CEEE's Technical assistance services are evidence-based and advance classroom instruction by helping educators acquire the individual and institutional capacity necessary to improve instructional practice and support school improvement strategies. In January 2005, the 15 Comprehensive Centers, reflecting on 9 years of providing technical assistance to states, districts, tribes, and schools across the country and within and across the various offices of the U.S. Department of Education, prepared a paper intended to inform the next generation of Comprehensive Centers.

To be successful, technical assistance must acknowledge and respond adaptively to regional and state contexts, priorities, and policy needs. At state and district levels, technical assistance is designed to help educators, including regional service providers, act on local educational needs and support professional development aligned to NCLB. At the district and school levels, services focus on helping coaches, curriculum directors, and school leaders use teaching strategies to improve students' performance in content areas. (Comprehensive Centers, 2005, p. 1)

CEEE has a team of technical assistance providers, researchers, and other specialists that have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to help educators in states, districts, and schools use research to inform practice. Center staff work in partnership with state, districts and school administrators and practitioners committed to the improvement of high-poverty, low performing schools.

CEEE field activities focus on the provision of customized technical assistance and professional development to educators in the mid-Atlantic region and Ohio. Much of this work is done as part of the Region III Comprehensive Center, funded by the United States Department of Education to provide technical assistance to the education community in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

At state and district levels, The CEEE team works to advance student achievement by building the capacity of educators, administrators, and regional service providers, to act on local educational needs and support professional development aligned to NCLB. Types of service offered include: (1) consultation in the area of action research, data analysis, planning, problem-solving, group facilitation, evaluation, etc.), (2) research-based professional development, (3) convening and facilitating events, and (4) information dissemination.

At the district and school levels, types of services include: (1) Offering small group seminars, intensive skill training workshops, institutes (continuous or short-term), large group awareness presentations and workshops, and training of trainers and (2) Building strong working partnerships with other service providers and educators to bring coordinated assistance to educational systems. While ongoing, job-embedded professional development often is targeted to individual schools, it is also used to serve the needs of local education agencies.