Improving Instructional Quality in Jewish Day Schools and Yeshivot ...

that are not strategic, but episodic, piecemeal, and not sustained aredoomed to insignificance. Further, programs and practices that are forthe most part top-down driven, without sufficient teacher input, aresimilarly problematic. Many schools, public and especially privateJewish schools (Dorph & Holtz, 2000; Gamoran, Goldring, Robinson,Goodman, & Tammivaara, 1997), either minimize time forprofessional development to a few days a year, and/or mandateworkshops with little teacher input. Research and best practiceindicate that if changes in teacher classroom behavior are to occur,then professional development must be purposeful and articulated,participatory and collaboratively-developed, knowledge-based,ongoing, developmental, and analytic and reflective (Fogarty & Pete,2009; Griffin, 1997; Kent, 2004; Tschannen-Moran & McMaster, 2009;Whitaker, 1995; Zepeda, 2008). Therefore, models that offer one ortwo professional development workshops or seminars without followupin the classroom have not been proven effective. Moreover, a planto improve instructional excellence in schools must take into accountthe notion that building and sustaining a culture of instructionalexcellence that permeates every aspect of the school takes three tofive years, according to extant research (Fullan, 2008a; Hargreaves &Fink, 2006; Sergiovanni, 2008).Jewish school leaders need to scrutinize the amount and quality oftime allotted to the components of the tripod (Figure 1 above) and tothe instructional core (Figure 2 above). Jewish leaders are mostcertainly passionate and committed to the notion of school andinstructional improvement but may be unfamiliar with theapplication of cutting-edge supervisory and instructional practicesand/or belabored by a plethora of administrative exigencies that drawattention away from the instructional core. Daily walk-throughs, forinstance, are insufficient by themselves to address instructionallyrelatedchallenges in a school (David, 2007; Sullivan, 2006). 11 Onlyplanned and sustained instructional and supervisory initiatives thatare multi-focused have any chance of improving teaching andlearning in a school. School leaders should regularly assess theeffectiveness of their instructional program through the use ofanonymous questionnaires, for instance, that may gauge levels ofteacher satisfaction (Blumberg, 1980). Articulation of specific26