About the PDS Program

The College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville has been active in the implementation and study of Professional Development Schools since the mid 1980s.

The Nystrand Center of Excellence in Education, a Commonwealth Center of Excellence established in 1987 by the Kentucky Council on Higher Education with support from the governor and general assembly, supports the PDS initiative.

The professional development schools were originally formulated through a joint effort of the JCPS/Gheens Professional Development Academy and UofL faculty. This collaboration led to a statement of purpose for schools: "To become a place where every leader is a teacher, every teacher is a leader and every student a success." Over time, the PDS network was expanded to include sites in districts outside Jefferson County that belonged to the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative.

The PDS program has received grants from the BellSouth Foundation, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education.

What is a PDS?

The University of Louisville is a member of the Holmes Partnership, which is a consortium of nearly 100 American research universities committed to making programs of teacher preparation more rigorous and connected - to liberal arts education, to research on learning and teaching, and to wise practice in the schools.

The Holmes Partnership defines a Professional Development School as a regular elementary, middle, or high school that works in partnership with a university to develop and demonstrate the following:

• high-quality learning programs for diverse students;
• practical, thought-provoking preparation for novice teachers;
• new understandings and professional responsibilities for experienced educators;
• research projects that add to all educators' knowledge about how to make schools more productive.

As starting points, the Holmes Partnership offers six principles for mutual efforts to design a Professional Development School.

1. Teach for understanding so that students learn for a lifetime.
2. Organize the school and its classrooms as a community of learning.
3. Hold ambitious learning goals for everybody's children.
4. Teach adults as well as children.
5. Make reflection and inquiry a central feature of the school.
6. Invent a new organizational structure for the school.