Evaluating the Adaptive Growth Platform for Knowledge Transfer

This project began as a blurry vision to transform professional development (PD) and shift away from the current passive, one-size-fits-all compliance requirement to an adaptive growth platform that directly meets the individual needs of our K-12 teachers. This project links skills such as literacy strategies and data interpretation to a new salary incentive, ideally creating a continuous loop between professional effort and tangible reward.

Project Objectives

To ensure this platform delivers on its promise, we have set rigorous, measurable objectives for our 6-month pilot from October 2025 through April 2026:

Launch the fully functional adaptive platform by January 15, 2026.
Achieve 100% participation from our diverse focus group of 30 elementary and secondary teachers.
Achieve a 90% or higher positive satisfaction rating from teachers on the platform’s usability and the real-world relevance of its modules.
Demonstrate a 20% measurable increase in the usage of at least one targeted instructional strategy in the pilot teachers’ classrooms by April 15, 2026.

Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model

The kind of change this project aims to enact cannot be measured by a simple survey question asking “Did you like the training?” The evaluation strategy was designed using Will Thalheimer’s Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM). LTEM is a framework that goes beyond simple knowledge checks to measure actual competence and transfer of skills to the job (Thalheimer, 2018). Further, the project’s evaluation framework is also guided by the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Guiding Principles, ensuring that the process is rigorous, transparent, and above all, ethical and equitable for all of our educators.

Evaluation Process

A comprehensive evaluation plan allows for us to see the full impact of the project; data will be gathered before, during, and after the project.

Pre-Project

Instructional Baseline: We will collect artifacts (such as lesson plans) from our pilot teachers and have administrators conduct brief, non-evaluative classroom walkthroughs to capture the current usage frequency of our targeted strategies.
Cultural & Technical Readiness: We will survey our LXD team, SMEs, and pilot teachers to gauge current attitudes toward PD and perceived workload burden to ensure we are not adding stress.
Policy & Stakeholder Alignment: Our LXD lead will meet with the superintendent, admin, and bargaining committees for a final policy review and evaluation briefing, securing the necessary authorization and buy-in for the salary incentive link.

Ongoing

Teacher Engagement & Competence: After each module, we will analyze platform data to check engagement. Teacher mastery will be evaluated through adaptive quizzes and realistic simulations within the platform itself, which will measure their decision-making and task competence.
Design Team Debriefs: Our LXD team and SME teachers will have bi-weekly sprint reviews to assess the flow of new content and discuss the pilot cohort’s perceived learning gains.
Early Transfer Checks: Administrators will conduct mid-project walk-throughs to observe if the new strategies are beginning to appear in classroom practice.

Post-Project

Summative Performance: Pilot teachers and admins will participate in a final round of classroom observations to objectively measure the frequency of the targeted instructional strategy and compare this data directly with our pre-project baseline.
Teacher Satisfaction: Teachers will complete a final survey focused on the platform’s usability, relevance to their work, and its perceived impact on their workload.
Systemic Effects: Our LXD lead will work with the superintendent to analyze data, comparing teacher retention rates for the pilot cohort versus non-pilot teachers and identifying correlations with student performance on testing such as i-Ready and/or MSTEP.
Strategic Retrospective: All key stakeholders (LXD team, Superintendent, SMEs, Admin) will have a final, structured meeting to review all data, discuss what worked and what did not, and evaluate the final impact of the financial incentive on teacher engagement.

Evaluation Instrument: Teacher Focus Group

In the post-project phase, we will use a teacher focus group protocol as our qualitative instrument to capture LTEM’s Level 7 (Transfer) and Level 8 (Effects of Transfer); this is to capture the “why” behind the data we collect.

View our Teacher Focus Group Protocol here.

The focus group protocol will help us understand the barriers and enablers of transfer. We will directly address any perceived issues of fairness in how the program or incentive structure was rolled out.

What’s Next

Once data has been collected from this project, we will use it to iterate, validate, and refine the implementation. We will gather immediate feedback during the ongoing phase to fix bugs and improve content for the upcoming modules. Our final data will validate whether the incentive model is effective and provide evidence to present to the school board for a full, district-wide rollout of the salary-linked PD model. And finally, we will use qualitative insights, such as those from our focus group, to inform how we better support teachers — through coaching, time, or resources — in future iterations of this project, ensuring that the skills our teachers are learning actually make it into their classrooms.

References

American Evaluation Association. (2018). Guiding principles for evaluators.

Thalheimer, W. (2018). The learning-transfer evaluation model:
Sending messages to enable learning effectiveness.