Professional Development

Professional Development Guidelines

Purpose

The purpose of Colorado State Board of Education’s Professional Development Guidelines is to provide support for the skills and content knowledge advancement of licensed educators working toward renewing their licenses.

Primary Goal

The primary goal of CDE’s Professional Development Guidelines is to help Colorado educators grow professionally, advance their professional careers and become more effective teachers and/or administrators. The Colorado Department of Education has long recognized that continuing and sustained professional development activities promote high quality teaching and learning, and are critical elements of educational achievement and professional satisfaction.

Principles

In Colorado, ongoing professional development is required for all public school educators – teachers and administrators. Professional development is prescribed for two major groups of public school educators:

1. Those teachers and administrators who are seeking to renew their professional licenses. Documented professional development activities must be presented to the Colorado Department of Education by a applicant for license renewal.
2. Those teachers and administrators who seek and hold Master Certificates. Documented professional development activities must be presented to the Colorado Department of Education by applicants for master certification.

The Colorado State Board of Education (SBE) recently adopted new Rules applying to required professional development activities for educator licensure renewal. In summary, these changes:

• Require that professional development activities must be related to
  • Increasing the license holder’s competence in his or her existing or potential endorsement content area; or,
  • Increasing the licensee’s skills and competence in delivering instruction in his or her existing or potential endorsement area; or,
  • Increasing the licensee’s skills and competence in teaching literacy or numeracy.
• Require that an educator involved in license renewal must complete professional development activities totaling six semester hours or ninety clock hours within the five-year period preceding the date of expiration of the license to be renewed.
• Stipulate that professional development may include in-service education, or college or university credit from an accepted institution of higher education, or credit from an accepted community, technical, or junior college.
• Allow educational travel, documented and verified by a supervisor as applicable to the endorsement area of the professional licensee’s license.
• Permit documented evidence verified by the licensee’s supervisor, of involvement in: school reform, internships and other ongoing professional development training and experiences that apply to the educator's licensure renewal.