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 5

The Role of Teachers in Planning Professional Development

Section Findings

• Most teachers are in districts that report professional development being planned at both the school and district levels.

• Most teachers are in districts where teachers are involved in planning professional development in a variety of ways, such as through teacher committees, needs assessments, or informal consultation.

• While most districts rely on schools to plan some professional development activities, districts vary widely in their interpretations of the "80-20" rule. Some districts interpret the rule to require that 80 percent of funds be allocated directly to schools. Others interpret the rule to mean that most Eisenhower activities occur at the school site. Still other districts interpret the rule to allow 80 percent of activities to be determined by district-wide assessments of teacher needs. Currently, all of these interpretations are correct, according to the Department of Education.

Aligning professional development activities with standards and assessments, and coordinating with activities funded by other programs, can be part of building a vision for how professional development can support school reform. Once such a vision is established, continuous improvement activities, such as establishing indicators and collecting data about teacher needs and the effectiveness of professional development activities, can be important to implementing this vision. Another aspect of building and implementing a vision for professional development is involving teachers in planning professional development activities.

The Eisenhower legislation pays special attention to involving teachers and school staff in planning professional development activities. Such planning can occur at any level of the formal school district hierarchy, and can involve teachers and other school staff in a variety of roles. For example, administrators can plan professional development activities at the district level, with the advice of teachers, or using information from teachers about their needs. Alternatively, professional development can be planned at the school level, by full faculties or by teacher representatives, or by principals without the involvement of teachers. Additionally, in school districts, decisions about professional development may be made at some level in between the district and the school, by "clusters" of schools. These clusters may be "feeder patterns" (a high school and the elementary and middle schools that "feed" it), or they may be some other group of schools (e.g., all high schools or all elementary schools in the district). As with district and school-level decisions, cluster-level decisions can involve teachers in a variety of roles. At whatever level, the goal of planning for professional development is to design activities and experiences that improve the quality of teaching and learning by supporting the needs of teachers.

Whether the planning for professional development occurs at the district, cluster, or school levels, the odds of meeting teacher needs are increased if teachers are involved in the planning. Experts agree that teacher involvement in planning contributes to high-quality professional development (Clark, 1992). Teacher involvement in planning can help ensure that professional development addresses the skills that they need, and employ the learning strategies that they find most useful (Clark, 1992; Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998).

Echoing this idea, the Eisenhower legislation calls for involving teachers and other school-level staff in planning professional development activities at the district level and Eisenhower-assisted activities at the school levels. The law requires that each LEA's professional development plan be

...developed with the extensive participation of administrators, staff, and pupil services personnel, which teachers shall also be representative of the grade spans within schools to be served and of schools which receive assistance under part A of Title I (Section 2208(c)(2)).

However, the needs of teachers as individuals may not be the only needs that professional development activities should address. Recent literature suggests that professional development should support both the needs of individual teachers and those of schools as a whole (Loucks-Horsley, 1998). Much of the current research base on school reform emphasizes the importance of approaches that involve improving whole schools (e.g., Bodilly et al., 1996, 1998; Herman et al., 1999; Slavin et al., 1996). Having all teachers in a school share a knowledge base, as well as share expectations for teaching and learning, facilitates teaching and learning toward high standards (O?Day & Smith, 1993). In order to improve, schools may have to address needs that go beyond the needs of their individual teachers. Furthermore, researchers and policy makers are currently emphasizing the importance of professional development that is embedded in the daily life of teachers (Guskey, 1997; Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). As a result, they have focused on the school as the logical unit for both planning and implementing ongoing professional development activities (Guskey, 1997; Senge, 1990; Shanker, 1990).

Reflecting this view, the Eisenhower legislation appears to stress the importance of school-level planning and implementation of Eisenhower-assisted activities, in addition to requiring that teachers participate in planning Eisenhower-assisted activities. The legislation specifically states that LEAs

shall use not less than 80 percent of such [Eisenhower Professional Development Program] funds for professional development of teachers, and, where appropriate, administrators, and, where appropriate, pupil services personnel, parents, and other staff of individual schools in a manner that (A) is determined by such teachers and staff; [and] (B) to the extent practicable, takes place at the individual school site (Section 2210(a)(1)). [emphasis added]

This provision, which we refer to as the "80-20 rule," seems to reflect the Congress' conclusion that decisions about professional development are best made by school-level staff.

This section of the chapter examines how districts plan professional development activities, with a focus on the roles of school staff, particularly teachers. We present findings on the levels at which planning for professional development occurs and how districts involve teachers in such activities. We then discuss how districts interpret the legislation's provisions that deal with participation of school staff in planning professional development.

Levels of Planning for Professional Development

We asked coordinators to tell us how many ( i.e., "none," "some," "most," or "all") of their district?s Eisenhower-assisted activities are planned at the district, school, and cluster level. Exhibit 5.9a indicates the proportion of teachers who are in districts where activities are planned at each of these three levels.

As Exhibit 5.9a shows, 43 percent of teachers are in districts where Eisenhower coordinators estimate that "some" of their Eisenhower-assisted activities are planned at the district level, and 34 percent are in districts where "most" are. Only seven percent of teachers are in districts where no Eisenhower-assisted activities are planned at the district level, and 16 percent are in districts where all activities are planned at the district level.

Over half of all teachers (57 percent) are in districts that are not organized in clusters for planning and administering professional development, and thus report no planning at the cluster level. Thirty-six percent of teachers are in districts that plan "some" professional development at the cluster level, but only five percent are in districts that plan "most" activities at the cluster level, and two percent are in districts in which "all" of the professional development is planned at the cluster-level.

Exhibit 5.9a also shows that 48 percent of teachers are in districts where "some" Eisenhower-assisted activities are planned at the school level, while 23 percent of teachers are in districts where "most" of these activities are planned at this level. Nineteen percent of teachers are in districts where no professional development activities are planned at the school level, while 10 percent of teachers are in districts where "all" such activities are planned at the school level.

EXHIBIT 5.9a
Percent of Teachers in Districts Reporting That None, Some, Most, or All Professional Development Activities Are Planned at the District, School, and Cluster Levels (n=363)

In short, a small proportion of teachers are in districts that plan all of their professional development activities at the school or district level. Many districts, however, plan professional development activities at both the district and school level.

To examine whether there are differences in school-level and district-level planning according to poverty level and size of the district, we created a measure of school-level vs. district-level planning. It is a scale from 0 to 4, where four indicates districts where all planning is done at the school level and no planning is done at the district level, and 0 indicates districts where no planning is done at the school level and all planning is done at the district level. Medium and small districts are more likely than consortia to plan activities at the school level; but there are no differences by poverty, as illustrated in Exhibit 5.9b. It makes sense that consortia would be more likely than single districts to plan at the district level, since consortia by definition are a group of districts working together. Further, since consortia may be more focused on across-district planning, school-level planning may not be emphasized as much as in single districts.

EXHIBIT 5.9b
Extent to Which Professional Development Activities Are Planned at the School vs. District Level, Overall and by District Poverty and District Size (n=363)

Teacher Involvement in Planning

Involving teachers in different aspects of planning is important for fostering high-quality professional development, and is emphasized by the Eisenhower legislation. To find out how and to what extent teachers are included in planning, we asked district Eisenhower coordinators if teachers are included in planning Eisenhower-assisted professional development, and in what ways they are included at each level (i.e., district, cluster, and school). We asked which of the following describes the roles teachers play in making decisions about Eisenhower-assisted activities planned at the district level: 1) teachers participate in a formal planning committee, 2) teachers are consulted informally, 3) teachers are consulted in a needs assessment, and/or 4) teachers do not play a regular role.

Virtually all teachers (99 percent) are in districts that report that teachers are involved in the planning process (data not shown). Of teachers in districts that report any teacher involvement in planning, 88 percent of teachers are in districts that involve teachers in district-level planning through needs assessments and informal consultation (data not shown). A much smaller proportion of teachers, 65 percent, are in districts that report having teachers directly involved in district-level planning by participating on formal committees (data not shown). Planning through membership on a formal committee can be considered to be a much more active form of involvement in planning than through needs assessment or informal communication; thus, the most direct and formal type of teacher involvement is the least common.

We asked coordinators which of the following people participate in making decisions about Eisenhower-assisted activities planned at the school level: 1) lead teachers, resource teachers, or department chairs, 2) classroom teachers, through a formally organized committee, and 3) teachers as individuals. We asked the same questions about cluster-level planning.

The findings, reported in Exhibit 5.10, suggest that most districts involve teachers in the school- or cluster-level planning process in more than one way, and that teachers are more involved in school-level planning than cluster-level planning. For example, 77 percent of teachers are in districts in which lead teachers, resource teachers, or department chairs participate in school-level planning, while only 40 percent of teachers are in districts that report participation of this type of teacher in cluster-level planning. For both cluster- and school-level planning, the most likely to participate are lead teachers, resource teachers, or department chairs, followed by teachers as individuals. Once again, as with district-level planning, participation on a teacher committee is the least common form of teacher participation; 62 percent of teachers are in districts that report teacher participation in planning through formal committees for school-level planning. Thirty percent of teachers are in districts that report planning participation through formal committees for cluster-level planning.

Because we asked about teachers? formal involvement on committees in planning Eisenhower-assisted professional development at the district, cluster, and school levels, we are able to examine differences in this type of involvement across levels. This formal involvement on committees often represents more responsibility and potential influence for the teacher than needs assessments or informal involvement. For all districts, we find that 65 percent of teachers are in districts in which teachers participate in formal committees at the district level (data not shown), and 62 percent of teachers are in districts in which teachers participate in formal committees at the school level; this difference is not statistically significant (data not shown). Thus, teachers are just as likely to participate in formal committees at the district level as the school level.

Further, for the districts in our sample with clusters, 69 percent of teachers are in districts in which teachers participate in formal committees at the district level, 56 percent are in districts in which teachers participate at the cluster level, and 69 percent are in districts in which teachers participate at the school level (data not shown). Here the differences between clusters and districts, and clusters and schools, are statistically significant, indicating that teachers are significantly less likely to participate in committees at the cluster level than at either the school or district level. These findings reveal no evidence of greater teacher involvement as planning gets closer to the school level, since teachers? formal involvement in planning is similar when professional development is planned either at the school or district level; but cluster-level planning does not, on average, involve as much teacher participation. This may reflect the organizational or management structure of cluster-level decision-making, which may be more likely to have district staff and administrator involvement because of the need to address issues across schools or groups of schools. However, district-level planning also must address across-school issues, so it is unclear why cluster-level planning involves significantly less formal teacher participation.

EXHIBIT 5.10
Percent of Teachers in Districts with Different Types of Teacher Involvement in School- and Cluster-level Professional Development Planning (n=363)

In order to test whether formal teacher involvement in planning through committees differs according to the district poverty level or district size, we developed a scale to measure the overall extent of this form of teacher involvement in planning. The measure is an additive composite of district reports of teachers? participation through formal committees at the district, school, and cluster levels. The composite is a function of whether teachers are involved in planning at each of the three levels, weighted by the extent to which activities are planned at the three levels (i.e., coordinators indicated whether some, most, or all of their activities were planned at a particular level). Analysis of the composite indicates that on average, teachers are in districts that involve teachers in the planning process through committees in two-thirds of the levels at which activities are planned (data not shown). There are no statistically significant differences according to district poverty level and district size.

Our case data illustrate how different districts involve teachers in planning professional development activities. A few of our case districts rely only on teacher needs assessment surveys for planning professional development activities, sometimes augmented by informal conversations with teachers. In other districts, teachers take a more active role as members of teacher committees. Data from the following case districts illustrate how teachers? committees can be involved in planning for professional development at the school or district levels.

In West City, California, a district committee, or "implementation team," of up to 100 individuals meets to plan a different reform effort every year, including professional development activities. After the district has identified one area of greatest need a year, based on student and school data, current state or district reform efforts, or plans for textbook adoption, the implementation team meets to plan the reform effort, including professional development. The implementation team includes district staff, teachers, IHE staff, representatives of community organizations, and experts in the field. Once the implementation team develops a draft plan, the team seeks input from various constituent groups, and holds focus groups to fine-tune the plan. With these inputs, the draft plan is completed and disseminated district-wide. The plan, including its professional development component, continues to be a working document, and is modified if necessary as the reform proceeds.

Northtown, Connecticut, takes a different approach that relies on teachers in planning professional development at both the district and school levels. At the district level, there is a professional development committee that consists of two co-chairs, one teacher representative from every building or department, a paraprofessional representative, parents, an assistant superintendent, principals, assistant principals, a special educator, a science coordinator, mathematics coordinator, and Eisenhower coordinator. The committee designs a professional development plan for the district, and revises it based on input from a principal focus group. But in this district, there is a building instructional team that assesses the needs of teachers at each school. The team, which consists of teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members, carries out needs assessments in the school, which includes reviewing test results by grade level, and develops school-specific plans. The principal sets professional development goals for individual teachers, based in part on the analyses of the committee.

Weller, Kentucky, also maintains a balance between district and school levels in planning professional development activities. The district convenes a task force that meets periodically throughout the year to monitor professional development needs and oversee progress. The task force has one representative per school (either a teacher or administrator). In addition, each school develops a consolidated plan that identifies the school?s professional development needs, and outlines ways to address them and track progress. The principal and a committee of teachers develop the school plan.

These case findings illustrate how some districts rely on teachers, in different ways, as active participants on committees that shape professional development activities.

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[Implementing the Vision: District Procedures for the Continuous Improvement of Professional Development Activities]

[Meeting the Needs of Teachers vs. Schools: The 80/20 Rule]