A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Designing Effective Development: Lessons from the Eisenhower Program - December 1999

Chapter 3

Participation of Teachers from High-Poverty Schools

Section Findings

• Teacher participants in district Eisenhower-assisted activities are only slightly more likely to be from high-poverty schools than are teachers in the national teaching force as a whole. Teacher participants in SAHE-grantee activities are less likely to be from high-poverty schools than are teachers in the national teaching force.

The Eisenhower legislation emphasizes that programs and activities should be provided to teachers of diverse populations of students. Several provisions of the law state that funds should be used to provide professional development that benefits students from diverse backgrounds. One of the law?s purposes is to incorporate

?effective strategies, techniques, methods, and practices for meeting the educational needs of diverse student populations, including females, minorities, individuals with disabilities, limited English proficient individuals, and economically disadvantaged individuals, in order to ensure that all students have the opportunity to achieve challenging State student performance standards (Section 2002(1)(D)).

In addition, the local plan for professional development is required to describe how local professional development activities will meet the needs of teachers of diverse student populations. For example, applications from LEAs are required to include a description of how their Title II activities "will address the needs of teachers in schools receiving assistance under part A of Title I" (Section 2208(d)(1)(B)).

These provisions are indicative of the fact that teachers in high-poverty, low-achieving schools are often most in need of professional development (Darling-Hammond, 1997b). Teachers in high-poverty schools are often less experienced than teachers in other schools, they frequently have students who are more challenging to teach, and they often face larger class sizes and fewer resources than are common in low-poverty schools (Darling-Hammond, 1997b; U.S. Department of Education, 1999a). In addition, teachers in high-poverty schools often have fewer opportunities to participate in certain kinds of professional development than their counterparts at more middle-class schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1998a).

To estimate the percent of Eisenhower participants from high-poverty schools, we drew on data on the percent of students eligible for the free lunch in each of the schools in which teachers in our national sample taught at the time of the survey.²⁷ We classified schools as high-poverty if the percent of students eligible for free lunch were 50 percent or greater.²⁸ For comparison, we conducted a parallel analysis of the percent of teachers in high-poverty schools for the full national population of teachers.

The results of our analysis for participants in district Eisenhower activities are displayed in Exhibit 3.19. The initial pair of bars on the left of the exhibit indicate that, overall, 23 percent of teachers participating in district Eisenhower activities are from high-poverty schools, as compared to about 21 percent for the full national population of teachers. This difference is statistically significant, indicating that participating teachers are slightly more likely to be from high-poverty schools than are teachers in the nation as a whole (p<.10).

In part, this result may reflect the fact that, according to the funding formula for Title II, funds are distributed to districts based in part on the districts? Title I allocations, which are based on the number of school children in poverty. To explore the extent to which the participation of teachers from high-poverty schools is due to the funding formula, we classified the districts in our sample into three strata, by district poverty.²⁹

Results on the percent of Eisenhower participants from high-poverty schools are displayed separately for the three district poverty strata in Exhibit 3.19, along with parallel data on the national percent of teachers from high-poverty schools in each of these strata. The data indicate that, in high-poverty districts, 45 percent of the nation?s teachers as a whole are from high-poverty schools, and 51 percent of Eisenhower participants are from high-poverty schools. This difference, which is statistically significant, suggests that high-poverty districts tend to concentrate their resources on their highest poverty schools. In medium-poverty districts, 17 percent of Eisenhower participants are from high-poverty schools, compared with 14 percent of teachers in these districts, which suggests somewhat less targeting of resources within medium-poverty districts. In low-poverty districts, two percent of Eisenhower participants are from high-poverty schools, compared with four percent of teachers in these districts.

EXHIBIT 3.19
Percent of Teacher Participation in District Eisenhower-assisted Activities Compared to All Teachers in the Nation, Overall and by District Poverty (n=1197)

We carried out a parallel analysis of the percent of teachers from high-poverty schools, for teachers participating in SAHE-grantee activities.³⁰ The results, shown in Exhibit 3.20, indicate that about 13 percent of SAHE-grantee participants are from high-poverty schools, which is significantly lower than the overall percent of teachers in high-poverty schools for the nation. Thus, SAHE grantees appear less successful in targeting their activities on teachers than do districts.

EXHIBIT 3.20
Percent of Teacher Participations in District and SAHE Grantee Eisenhower-assisted Activities from High-poverty Schools (District n=1197, SAHE Grantee n=254)

Summary: Participation of Teachers from High-poverty Schools

Indicator 4.1 High-poverty Schools The proportion of teachers participating in Eisenhower-assisted activities who teach in high-poverty schools will exceed the proportion of the national teacher pool who teach in high-poverty schools.

Our results indicate that teachers in district Eisenhower-assisted activities are slightly more likely to be from high-poverty schools than are teachers in the nation as a whole, while teachers in SAHE-grantee activities are somewhat less likely to be from high-poverty schools. Our data for districts indicate that the standard set in the Department of Education?s Performance Indicator pertaining to participation from high-poverty schools has been met for district activities. (See box.) But it has not been met for SAHE-grantee activities.

To some extent, the results for districts are encouraging: they indicate that the program has been somewhat successful at targeting resources on teachers of disadvantaged children. But the percentage of teachers from high-poverty schools served by the program is only modestly higher than the rate for the nation, indicating that the more progress might be made in this area. We give more attention to this issue in Chapter 4, and to targeting of participants in SAHE-grantee projects in Chapter 6.

³⁰ Since IHE/NPO activities are not necessarily tied to particular districts, we could not examine the results by district poverty.

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