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Welcome to Leading Forward: Transforming Education! 

Resource Training & Solutions is honored to partner with you, your leadership team, and other experts in the field to provide unequaled excellence in professional learning.  We are committed to providing resources and training to advance the field of teacher and leadership growth, development, and evaluation. To ensure successful implementation, Resource partners with leading researchers, effective practitioners, and innovative organizations so that you can be sure your planning, delivery, and implementation processes provide measurable outcomes for staff and students.  

We have developed a number of partnerships to help us help you reach your goals.  We have partnered with Learning Sciences International (LSI) and the work of Dr. Robert Marzano whose

“mission is to research, develop, and provide next generation tools, professional development and training programs, and advanced data systems to support every teacher and leader to improve their professional practice in a measurable way that produces a causal effect on raising student achievement.” 

Through their cutting-edge research and ongoing support, Leading Forward and LSI will help you transform your implementation plan into real and measurable growth for staff and students.

Training begins with a critical core of committed leaders (2-3 days), follow-up leadership cohort sessions to ensure implementation and accountability to each other, onsite full-staff training customized to meet your learning needs, and technical support to ensure job-embedded practice demonstrates continuous improvement/growth. 

Leading Forward commits our energies and services to help educators systematically improve their practices to positively impact growth for all.  We have customized service agreements that will meet your needs and serve as an entry point in the pursuit of excellence. 
Check out this list of resources to get started:

  • Marzano Causal Teacher Evaluation Model is backed by decades of research and hundreds of real-classroom experimental/control studies (www.MarzanoCenter.com).
  • Leadership Support.  Leading Forward has a highly innovative professional development team to help you provide the needed leadership in your school/district (320-255-3236: ask for Rebecca).
  • Marzano School Leadership Evaluation Model. Designed to align with the Marzano Causal Teacher Evaluation Model, the new Marzano Leadership Model promotes a school-wide concentration on student achievement using a common language of instruction.
  • Mentorship Academy.
  • Informational Webinars.
  • Teacher and Leader Effectiveness.

Supporting partner for this include generous scholarship opportunities through Lifetouch.  Call 320-255-3236 to see how you can receive a scholarship application.


Non-Classroom Instructional Support Personnel Evaluation Model Webinar


This webinar provides an overview of our next-generation Marzano Center Non-Classroom Instructional Support Personnel Evaluation Model. Let the experts at Learning Sciences show you how this updated model will change the way you evaluate your non-classroom instructional support members.

Download a PDF of the slides used during this webinar.

Download a PDF document of the learning map.




If you have any questions, call the Marzano Center's toll-free line at 1-877-411-7114 or fill out their contact form.

New Study Compares Marzano and Danielson Models for Teacher Evaluation, Finds Greater Specificity in Marzano Model Helps Teachers Improve 

A study on teacher development, published in August, 2012 by Cardinal Stritch University has compared the Marzano Observation Protocol, the foundation of the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model used in hundreds of school districts across the U.S., with the Danielson Framework for Teaching. The comparative case study, a dissertation by Paul George Mielke, took a qualitative approach, dividing teachers into two cohorts, one using the Marzano Protocol and the other the Danielson Framework, to determine the benefits of research-based teaching frameworks for teachers. The results indicate that:
  • Using a comprehensive teaching framework had multiple benefits for teachers
  • Teachers improved their ability to become self-directed
  • Greater specificity of the Marzano comprehensive teaching framework more positively impacted the ability of teachers to monitor and modify their teaching
  • A limited focus on improving specific behaviors positively impacted teachers
  • A structured process for obtaining feedback, reflecting, and peer sharing positively impacted teacher growth
 The study, Investigating a Systematic Process to Develop Teacher Expertise: A Comparative Case Study, has wide application for the future of teacher evaluation. The research demonstrates that schools do well to utilize comprehensive teaching frameworks to drive teacher development and student achievement. The study also recommended that schools consider a supervision process that empowers teachers to develop expertise through self-video analysis, peer observation, and structured reflection. Further, schools should provide teachers with the structure, framework, and tools to become self-directed. And finally, the research indicates that the concept of deliberate practice should be a central component to improve teaching.
 
Notes Michael Toth, CEO of Learning Sciences Marzano Center for Teacher and Leadership Evaluation: “We were very pleased to see the results of this study. It confirms that the goal of supervision and evaluation should be to develop expert teachers who are self-correcting, and that the more specific the model is in terms of instructional strategies, the better the model will be in driving teacher development. The study states very clearly that the Marzano Observational Protocol gives teachers very specific skills or outcomes to assess, versus the Danielson Framework’s more general areas. It indicates that teachers are more likely to modify their classroom practices as a result of using the Marzano Model. And finally, the study indicates that because the Marzano framework is based on the most current research, and is academically rigorous, teachers find the model more useful over all.”
 
The Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model, developed from decades of research into classroom strategies correlated with student achievement incorporates teacher professional development as a critical component of evaluation. Through a focus on deliberate practice—or measurable, continuous improvement of instruction—the model is designed to build teacher expertise steadily throughout the course of a career. Teachers identify their instructional strengths and weaknesses, and focus on and master a handful of classroom strategies, or thin slices of instruction, each academic year through a continuous loop of practice, coaching, and feedback.