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Most professional development markets begin with a simple transaction: educators attend a course, earn hours, and apply those hours toward certificate renewal.
Washington gives content providers another way to create value.
Most educators need 100 continuing education clock hours every five years, but they may also meet that requirement through four annual Professional Growth Plans—or through a combination of PGPs and clock hours totaling 100. Each completed annual PGP is equivalent to 25 clock hours.
A PGP is not merely a course. It is a structured process in which an educator identifies a professional goal, applies new learning, collects evidence, and reflects on growth.
For providers, this creates a distinctive opportunity:
Do not sell only professional development sessions. Build learning experiences educators can turn into documented professional growth.
Most Washington educators must complete 100 clock hours every five years. One hour of qualifying continuing education generally earns one clock hour. College coursework can also contribute, with semester and quarter credits converted into clock-hour equivalents.
Educators may satisfy the general requirement through:
Only one PGP may be completed in a year, and each plan must cover a professional growth cycle completed between July 1 and June 30.
That annual structure matters.
An isolated webinar may help an educator earn hours today. A well-designed PGP pathway can keep the educator engaged throughout an entire school year—and create a reason to return for multiple years.
A PGP requires more than attendance.
Educators need to establish a professional goal, connect it to appropriate standards, complete learning activities, demonstrate how they applied the learning, and reflect on the results.
Providers can make their programs PGP-ready by including:
A literacy provider, for example, could offer an annual pathway in which educators study an instructional framework, implement it with students, submit lesson evidence, review outcome data, and reflect on changes in practice.
A leadership provider could guide administrators through a school-improvement goal, implementation checkpoints, team feedback, and a final evidence portfolio.
Proserva gives providers one environment for organizing these activities, collecting evidence, monitoring milestones, and maintaining a permanent record of the experience.
Providers do not need to choose between clock-hour programming and PGP support.
The strongest Washington offers can serve both.
A program might include:
This allows participants to select the path that best fits their certificate needs and professional goals.
It also makes the program more valuable to districts. Leaders can purchase one initiative that supports immediate professional learning while encouraging sustained classroom or school-level implementation.
With Proserva, providers can track attendance-based hours separately from project milestones, assignments, evidence, and reflections. Educators see their own progress, while institutional partners receive visibility into the broader cohort.
Washington embeds several role-specific subjects within the overall renewal framework.
Teachers must complete 15 hours—or the equivalent through credit or an eligible PGP—focused on equity-based school practices. Teachers with designated STEM-related endorsements must also complete 15 hours, equivalent credit, or an eligible PGP goal focused on STEM integration.
Administrators must complete:
These required hours are part of the broader 100-hour renewal requirement.
Certain Educational Staff Associate roles—including school counselors, school psychologists, school nurses, and school social workers—must also complete an approved suicide-prevention course when applicable to their certification process.
For content providers, these are not generic topic suggestions. They are defined areas of recurring demand.
Washington only accepts clock hours from approved providers. PESB approves providers annually, and the state publishes a current list covering each approval period.
Organizations eligible to seek provider approval include:
Washington public school districts and compact schools are also approved providers.
A private, for-profit content company may therefore need to deliver clock-hour programming through an approved partner rather than apply independently.
Potential partners include:
This makes partnership strategy central to market entry.
Proserva gives the content provider and approved sponsor a shared delivery environment. The provider manages content and facilitation, while the sponsoring organization retains visibility into enrollment, attendance, completion, and documentation.
Not every approved clock-hour provider can automatically award every specialized category.
Equity-based school practices, educational leadership, and government-to-government Tribal relations hours are subject to additional provider restrictions. PESB identifies the organizations authorized to provide these designated hours.
Providers should therefore avoid broadly claiming that a course “meets Washington renewal requirements” without confirming:
Clear claims build trust with educators and reduce risk for institutional partners.
Washington’s equity requirement is aligned with the state’s cultural competency, diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Teachers generally need 15 hours, while administrators need 10.
Providers can differentiate by moving beyond a one-time awareness course.
A stronger equity pathway may include:
This is an ideal area for combining approved clock-hour learning with a longer PGP-style application cycle.
Proserva helps providers connect the formal training to the educator’s implementation work, so districts can see more than who attended. They can see whether learning moved into practice.
Washington administrators must complete five hours focused on government-to-government relationships with Tribal nations. The topic reflects the state’s distinct legal, historical, and educational context and should not be treated as generic cultural-awareness training.
Credible programs should be developed or delivered with appropriate expertise and Tribal collaboration.
Content providers can support this market by partnering with:
Proserva can support shared delivery, cohort organization, participant communication, evidence collection, and sponsor reporting while preserving the partner roles and course requirements.
Washington’s nine Educational Service Districts provide regional services and help school systems pool resources, deliver initiatives, and access professional learning.
For providers, an ESD partnership can create:
A provider might launch a program with one ESD, refine it with the first cohort, and then reproduce the experience through additional regional partners.
Proserva makes that model easier to scale. Providers can maintain consistent course design while organizing participants by ESD, district, school, role, or cohort.
Washington educators record professional development activity through OSPI’s eCertification system and should retain appropriate evidence supporting the hours, credits, or PGPs they report. Clock-hour forms and PGP verification documents may also be relevant for employer salary-placement decisions.
A Washington-ready completion record should make clear:
Providers should clearly separate an approved clock-hour record from evidence that supports an educator’s PGP. The two may work together, but they are not automatically interchangeable.
Proserva helps maintain both: formal completion documentation and the richer evidence of applied professional growth.
Completed PGPs and qualifying clock hours may also be eligible for salary advancement under an educator’s district or employer procedures. PESB notes that educators can submit a PGP verification form to their employer for a determination.
The final decision remains local, so providers should not promise salary movement.
They can, however, help educators understand the potential dual value of the program:
This gives providers a stronger value story than renewal compliance alone.
Proserva gives content providers one platform for supporting both sides of Washington’s renewal market.
With Proserva, providers can:
Instead of managing an LMS, attendance sheets, PGP templates, email reminders, certificates, and sponsor reports separately, providers can coordinate the full learning experience through Proserva.
Washington educators can earn renewal credit by attending approved professional learning.
But the PGP model points to a more valuable product: a guided experience that helps educators set a goal, apply new knowledge, produce evidence, and demonstrate growth.
Providers that support both clock-hour and PGP pathways can serve a wider audience, build longer participant relationships, and give districts stronger evidence that professional learning changed practice.
Proserva helps Washington content providers turn courses into measurable growth pathways—with clock-hour tracking, PGP-ready experiences, permanent records, and sponsor and district visibility in one platform.
