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 4

Differences in District Portfolios of Eisenhower-Assisted Activities by District Poverty and Size

Throughout this chapter, for key variables we have indicated where patterns of Eisenhower support for professional development differ significantly according to the district poverty level or the size of the district. As we noted previously, all of the analyses simultaneously control for size and poverty, so any significant effects are independent of one another. Taken together, these findings help us understand how district demographic factors affect districts? use of Eisenhower resources. This section discusses these findings.

The level of poverty in a district sometimes is significantly associated with particular patterns of support for Eisenhower activities. Our data from Eisenhower coordinators indicate that, compared to lower-poverty districts, higher-poverty districts? portfolios of Eisenhower-assisted activities:

The Eisenhower program?s funding formula provides more funds to districts that serve poorer populations, and our findings suggest that having more funds available enables a district to support more types of activities. Further, districts with more funds may be more willing to use resources to try reform methods of professional development, which may explain why high-poverty districts have more teacher participations in reform types of activities. In addition, districts with more students from low-income families probably place greater emphasis on recruiting teachers of special populations because these districts are more likely than others to serve students from these populations. In addition, high-poverty districts have more funding from Title I and other federal programs, which also provide support and encouragement for professional development for teachers of special groups of students. So it seems that one of the intentions of the legislation, to provide support for professional development to teachers of children in high-poverty communities, is at least in part being met. But there is a great deal of room for improving districts? targeting of their professional development activities to meet the needs of teachers of special populations of students, and the participation of these teachers in Eisenhower-assisted professional development activities.

The analysis for district size shows that, compared to districts with fewer teachers, the portfolios of Eisenhower-assisted activities in districts with larger numbers of teachers:

Larger districts may have fewer participations in traditional types of professional development activities than smaller districts because, although large districts virtually always offer traditional activities, they also are more likely to offer reform types of activities. Small districts, perhaps because they have fewer resources and therefore have to limit the number of activities that they offer, support fewer types of professional development than large districts. The result is that smaller districts have more participations (in percentage terms) in traditional activities than large districts. For the most part, the ratio of participations in reform to traditional activities increases as size increases. The exception to this pattern is low-poverty districts, which do not have much variation in participations between small and large districts. These findings suggest that large districts are able to offer more reform activities and less traditional activities because of economies of scale that enable them to offer the sometimes more expensive reform activities and because of infrastructure and organizational advantages. Large low-poverty districts may be less inclined to seek change and innovation because on average, their students perform better than students in other districts.

Districts with more teachers also have higher quality in-district workshops and institutes than districts with fewer teachers. The in-district Eisenhower-assisted workshops and institutes offered by larger districts provide more opportunities for active learning and are more likely to be designed to foster collective participation. In addition, larger districts place more emphasis on recruiting teachers of special populations of students than do smaller districts.

The observed positive effects of size may be due in large part to the fact that large districts often have more Eisenhower money to spend on professional development than do small districts. Although Eisenhower funds available on a per-teacher basis are comparable, a critical mass of funds available in larger districts may allow them to offer a wider range of types of professional development, and to offer activities that span over longer periods of time. Larger districts may also tend to have more resources of other sorts, such as nearby universities, that will allow them to tap into a wider range of professional development types. In addition, large districts also have a more comprehensive, efficient infrastructure for planning and delivering professional development. This may allow them more opportunities and resources to shape and organize their professional development activities to be more sustained and intensive, and to be responsive to the needs of whole schools or groups of teachers from a school, rather than just individual teachers. Consortia seem to operate primarily like large districts. They provide significantly more opportunities for active learning and more types of activities than do small districts. In addition, in many cases consortia provide the same higher levels of collective participation and participation in reform approaches to professional development that large districts do. Thus, it appears that consortia, with similar capacity and resource advantages, enjoy the same positive effects of size as do large districts.


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[Targeting and Recruitment of Teachers]		 [Table of Contents]
[Chapter 4 Summary and Conclusions]