School is in full swing across the country; caregivers are now back into school routines, students are actively engaging in the classrooms, and teachers have completed the initial excitement of returning to another year of instruction. Given many of us have just completed our back-to-school professional learning, engaged in ongoing implementation, and are providing high-quality instruction, we took a few minutes to have a conversation with Joslyn Richardson, the Professional Learning Partner Guide Manager at Rivet Education.
Rivet Education supports educators in selecting and evaluating professional learning providers and providing a roadmap for high-quality curriculum implementation. Specifically, we talked with Joslyn about her role and how Rivet Education supports schools in using high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning that leads to strong teaching and learning.
NIRN: What is your role at Rivet Education, and why is that important to you?
Joslyn Richardson: I'm the Manager of Rivet’s Professional Learning Partner Guide. I oversee the day-to-day operations of the Guide and its related projects, including managing reviewers and supporting professional learning providers throughout our application process. My job is important because it is how we identify professional learning organizations to include in our Professional Learning Partner Guide. I was a professional learning provider myself before joining Rivet Education. I am really interested in exploring and supporting specifically how curriculum aligned professional learning is integral to supporting strong teaching and learning.
NIRN: Tell us a little about Rivet Education’s Professional Learning Partner Guide (PLPG) and Rubric. What is it, and how is it used?
Joslyn Richardson: The PLPG is a searchable database that state and district school systems can use to find a vendor for curriculum-based professional learning. To be included in our guide, vendors or professional learning organizations must undergo a rigorous application process. This process is designed to help us evaluate their professional learning materials for quality, including their content and curriculum expertise. We also evaluate their internal processes for ongoing improvement of their services. As we know, continuous improvement is important, and as the field evolves we want to make sure our providers and us at Rivet are staying up to date on evidence-based practices. The PL (Professional Learning) providers are evaluated against evidence-based professional learning practices in our PLPG Rubric. Our application process is composed of three gateways, and each application cycle takes about six months to complete. Trained reviewers score the applications independently and then come to a consensus on the score. Our reviewers are practicing educators and hold a variety of roles within state leadership, district leadership, and education research. Our reviewer pool is diverse, with significant experience in curriculum-aligned professional learning.
NIRN: Given your role, what is the #1 factor a district should consider when choosing a provider for curriculum-based professional learning?
Joslyn Richardson: When choosing a provider for curriculum-based professional learning, districts should consider many important factors. One, do you need professional learning to determine your needs, goals for your district, and your vision for instruction to inform the adoption of a curriculum? Be clear about your goals and the outcomes you would like to achieve. Rivet has a free Playbook on our website that can help districts with steps needed including the questions to ask potential providers. We also have guidance on managing multiple partners and finding the partner for where you are in the curriculum implementation process, from adoption to sustaining and scaling.
NIRN: Why should a PL provider want to be on the PLPG and undergo a review using the Rubric?
Joslyn Richardson: Providers who apply to be listed within the PLPG receive feedback from us, and this feedback can help them improve their scope of services, their specific services, and the impact of their professional learning. We also solicit feedback from them about the process and what could be improved so that we can continually refine our process. Another great feature of being in our guide is enhanced visibility and awareness for your organization. Your organization also gets highlighted within our social media and digital advertising to state and district leaders. Each approved provider has a profile in the PLPG. We just had our first vendor fair this past year, which was an additional way for districts and states to come and learn more about providers. PL providers had about twenty minutes to talk about the services that they offered for curriculum-based professional learning. Another benefit for our PL providers is increased influence within the field of curriculum-based professional learning through various development opportunities, such as our PL Power Hour.
NIRN: We recently engaged in some research together to assess whether the PLPG Rubric is measuring what it is meant to measure or what researchers call content validity. What findings stuck with you, and what are some of your favorite changes/updates to the PLPG Rubric as a result of the process?
Joslyn Richardson: The research further confirmed that we needed to make the PLPG application process easier for PL providers. Another research finding was greater clarity on equity within our Rubric indicators. We worked to better define and prioritize equity, such as educators examining assumptions and practices that impact instruction. We need to reinforce that each and every student should have access to rigorous grade-level instruction. It's really being intentional because we want to move from awareness to change, and we want to focus on those specific actions that teachers can take to impact their students' learning. We also adjusted the scoring and weighting of items for consistency within the Rubric.
NIRN: Now that you have made some of those changes, what comes next for your PLPG and Rubric work?
Joslyn Richardson: Well first we are going to be training our reviewers on the new Rubric and our website. We need to ensure they understand the revised scoring. We standardized the scoring which was another change that I really like that was recommended from the research. We are also restructuring our renewal process for providers who are already in our guide. We want to make it more streamlined and less time consuming for them based on feedback.
NIRN: How do we learn more about the changes you made or more details about the content validity study?
Joslyn Richardson: For more details about the Professional Learning Partner Guide and Rubric, please visit our website: https://riveteducation.org/about-plpg/. For more details on the research completed to date for our PLPG Rubric, please see our brief summarizing the methods and findings that will be released soon.
NIRN thanks Joslyn and Rivet Education for taking a few minutes to share their tools and resources for implementing high-quality instructional materials and professional learning. To learn more about Rivet Education, please visit https://riveteducation.org. For more information about the research on the Rivet PLPG Rubric and about implementation science, please visit https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu.
This material is based on research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.