Joyce S. Kaser, EdD
Senior Program Associate, WestEd

Joyce Kaser is a Senior Program Associate with WestEd. Her areas of expertise include evaluation, professional development, leadership, and change management. Here are some examples of her recent work related to the charge of the Governor’s Committee on Teacher Quality and Support.

For the last 12 years the main thrust of Dr. Kaser’s work has been the evaluation of large-scale systems change in the education community. She has been an evaluator of a National Science Foundation-sponsored State Systemic Initiative, an Urban Systemic Initiative, and a Local Systemic Initiative. She is currently finishing a five-year evaluation of the Pennsylvania Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) and has assisted the New Mexico CETP project and the University of Minnesota in the follow-up evaluation of the CETP program across the country. Both of these evaluations focus on various teacher preparation models and their relationship to teaching practice. Kaser was also a design team member for the National Evaluation Study of the Eisenhower Professional Development Program (U.S. Department of Education).

Currently Kaser is developing a process and instrumentation for an external validation system for professional development programs in mathematics, science, and technology. This process will (1) enable a professional development provider to assess its programs for quality prior to their implementation and (2) to determine if they are being implemented according to plan. This work is based on a book, Enhancing Program Quality in Science and Mathematics that Kaser co-authored with Patricia Bourexis. This book presents a process for assessing the quality of a professional development program at key junctures during its life cycle. The two women’s work has spurred the development of quality assurance systems, frameworks, products, and services related to the provision of high quality professional development. One of the products is an evaluation framework that assesses professional development on seven different levels.

Over the years Kaser has evaluated hundreds of professional development programs at the local, state, regional, and national level. For over a decade she has been the principal evaluator of summer programs sponsored by the University of New Mexico. She is author of a "Guide to Identifying and Selecting Quality Professional Development in Mathematics and Science," which will soon be on the websites of four major educational organizations across the country. She is first author of Leading Every Day: 124 Actions to Effective Leadership, which won the National Staff Development Council’s Book of the Year Award in 2003 and is going into its second edition. Kaser has worked at all levels kindergarten through adult.