![[Graph not available]](/inits/teachers/eisenhower/images/6.0.gif)
Designing Effective Development: Lessons from the Eisenhower Program - December 1999
The Eisenhower legislation includes a component of the program for professional development projects sponsored by state agencies for higher education (SAHEs). This component of the Eisenhower program operates separately from the component that supports district-sponsored activities. The legislation allocates 16 percent of Eisenhower funding for the SAHE component of the Eisenhower program. Unlike the remaining 84 percent of Eisenhower funding, which is distributed by a formula through State Educational Agencies (SEAs) to local educational agencies (LEAs), SAHEs sponsor competitions within their states and make awards to organizations that apply. Grants are awarded primarily to institutions of higher education (IHEs), such as colleges and research universities, and nonprofit organizations (NPOs), such as museums and libraries. In sponsoring these competitions, each SAHE develops priorities and establishes criteria for awarding the grants. The priorities, guidelines, and criteria are based to some extent on the state plan to improve teaching and learning, which the legislation requires the SEA to develop in conjunction with the SAHE, as part of the application process. In the plan, SEAs and SAHEs describe the process and results of their assessment of the needs of their teaching force, and how the activities that the state intends to provide will address teachers? needs, including recruitment, pre-service and induction and continuing through the provision of in-service activities, as well as how the professional development plan incorporates standards and indicators and provides for the needs of teachers of special populations of students.
The SAHE component of the Eisenhower program takes advantage of the prominent role of IHEs in preparing the nation?s teachers. This component is designed to encourage IHEs and NPOs to provide high-quality in-service and pre-service professional development that is consistent with state standards and reforms, and to foster closer ties between higher education institutions and elementary and secondary education agencies.
SAHE-sponsored IHE/NPO Eisenhower projects (referred to as "SAHE grantees") are subject to the same stipulations regarding quality that apply to district activities¾ requirements for activities to be in core subject areas, mainly in mathematics and science, but also including other core academic subject areas, and to be sustained, intensive, and innovative. Specifically, the legislation says that the grants, contracts, and/or cooperative agreements established with the SAHE grantee shall be for
Professional development activities in the core academic subjects that contribute to the State plan for professional development (Section 2211(a)(1)(A)); developing and providing assistance to local educational agencies, and the teachers and staff of each such agency, for sustained high-quality professional development activities (Section 2211(a)(1)(B)); and improving teacher education programs in order to promote further innovation in teacher education programs within an institution of higher education and to better meet the needs of the local educational agencies for well-prepared teachers (Section 2211(a)(1)(C)).
The law also describes several types of activities that SAHE grantees are to provide, including
Sustained and intensive high-quality professional development for teams of teachers, or teachers, and, where appropriate, pupil services personnel and administrators from individual schools or school districts (Section 2211(b)(1)); other sustained and intensive professional development activities related to achievement of the State plan for professional development (Section 2211(b)(2)); and pre-service training activities (Section 2211(b)(3)).
The SAHE portion of the law also includes specific coordination requirements for grantees, namely, that they "work in conjunction with a local educational agency" (Section 2211)(a)(1)) by "entering into an agreement with an LEA to provide sustained, high-quality professional development" (Section 2211(3)).
In addition to these specific requirements that define the quality of SAHE-sponsored professional development, SAHE grantees must be responsive to the general purposes of the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, as identified in the legislation. SAHE grantees should provide professional development that, for example, "includes strong academic content and pedagogical components" (Section 2002(2)(C)); "is of sufficient intensity and duration" (Section 2002(2)(E)); and "creates an orientation toward continuous improvement throughout the school" (Section 2002(2)(F)).
Similarly, the law?s general goals for providing professional development to teachers of students of diverse needs apply to SAHE grantees. These provisions stipulate that professional development provided under the Eisenhower program should "incorporate effective strategies" to meet the needs of teachers of "diverse student populations" (Section 2002(2)(D)). SAHE grantees also are subject to the general provisions of the law that state that professional development offered under the Eisenhower program should be "tied to challenging State content standards and challenging State student performance standards" (Section 2002(2)(A)).
SAHEs are responsible for designing competitions and awarding grants to IHE/NPO professional development projects that meet the criteria outlined in the legislation. In this chapter, we describe the extent to which SAHE grantees meet the requirements of the legislation. We provide information about the SAHE-grantee characteristics and practices that shape their activities: the structural and core features of professional development activities; recruitment and targeting of teachers of special populations of students; alignment with state and district standards and assessments and coordination with districts; and the use of continuous improvement mechanisms, such as indicators, needs assessments, and evaluation. Exhibit 6.0 illustrates how this chapter fits into the conceptual framework of the entire study.
In this chapter, we use our survey data from SAHE-grantee project directors. During the spring of 1998, we conducted telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 92 SAHE grantee project directors. This represents a response rate of 87 percent. To develop the sampling frame, we contacted all 50 SAHE Eisenhower coordinators and obtained complete lists of projects supported during the 1997-98 school year. We sampled SAHE grantees in proportion to the size of their Eisenhower grant, based on the assumption that the number of teachers served was proportional to the size of the grant. After collecting information on the number of teachers who participated in SAHE-grantee activities, we weighted the data according to the number of teachers actually served by the SAHE grantees.1 As a result, our data are representative of all teachers participating in SAHE-grantee projects.2
We asked the project directors questions that referred to the time period from July 1 through December 31, 1997 (the same time period for which district coordinators answered questions, as reported in Chapters 4 and 5 of this report). All data presented in this chapter refer to that time period, unless otherwise noted. SAHE grantees can use Eisenhower funding to support one activity, or several activities. On our survey, a single activity is defined as an event with a common group of participants.3 Some questions on the survey apply to all SAHE-grantee activities, and some questions apply only to the grantee?s "primary" activity.4 For questions that pertained to characteristics of activities, such as structural and core features, we asked SAHE-grantee project directors about the primary professional development activity that they support with Eisenhower funds. Questions that refer to general practices, such as targeting and coordination, apply to all of the grantee?s Eisenhower-assisted activities. The exhibits in this chapter indicate when the data apply only to the IHE/NPO?s primary activity; otherwise, the data report on general practices that apply to all of the SAHE grantee?s Eisenhower-assisted activities.5 While a SAHE can play a key role in shaping its grantees? projects through the guidelines and criteria it establishes for the grants competition, in this chapter we focus primarily on the quality and operation of the grantees? Eisenhower project.6
We use our case studies of SAHE grantees to explain and describe particular aspects of professional development structure, substance, and organization. In the spring and summer of 1998, we conducted open-ended telephone interviews with project directors at six IHEs that served teachers in our case-study districts. We conducted in-depth interviews with the directors, and collected their Eisenhower grant proposals, and descriptions of the Eisenhower activities that they provided.
The data reported in this chapter refer to Eisenhower-assisted in-service activities that are provided by SAHE grantees. Most SAHE grantees conduct pre-service as well as in-service professional development activities, and Eisenhower funds can be used for either purpose. We focus in this report on in-service activities, since nearly all of SAHE-grantees use Eisenhower funds for this purpose.7 Also, while districts sometimes may use IHE/NPOs to supply Eisenhower-assisted professional development activities, this chapter describes only the IHE/NPO professional development activities that SAHEs administer through the Eisenhower Professional Development Program.
We begin the chapter by describing the characteristics of the SAHE grantees in our national sample. We then provide data about the subject-area and structural features of the primary professional development activities provided by our sample of SAHE grantees. The structural features are type of activity (traditional vs. reform); duration, including both contact hours and span across days, weeks, months, or years; and collective participation (i.e., the extent to which activities are designed for groups of teachers or whole schools).
The next section reports findings on core features of activities, specifically the strength of the content focus of the activity and the number of active learning opportunities provided in the activity. Next, we focus on the targeting and recruitment of teachers of special populations of students. Here we examine how frequently SAHE grantees target teachers of special populations of students, how teachers come to participate in SAHE-grantee projects, and strategies that SAHE grantees use to increase teacher participation.
After the targeting section, we analyze the extent to which SAHE grantees? projects are aligned with state and district standards and assessments and coordinated with districts. We then report on the continuous improvement efforts of SAHE grantees—whether they use state and district indicators in designing professional development, and whether and how they conduct needs assessments and evaluate their projects.
The continuous improvement section is followed by a summary and analysis of findings concerning significant differences on key variables according to type of institution and departmental affiliation. Throughout the chapter, we report findings according to the type of institution in which the Eisenhower project director works, and the department with which the project director is affiliated because these factors may shape the structure and substance of professional development activities in systematic ways. We distinguish two types of institutions?research universities and universities that grant doctorates; and all other types of colleges and universities (e.g., two-year colleges, private liberal arts colleges, and institutions that grant only bachelor?s or master?s degrees). We distinguish three departmental affiliations—mathematics or science departments; education departments; and "other" departments (e.g., administrative, media, or broadcasting). NPOs are excluded from comparisons of institution type and departmental affiliation, since these characteristics do not apply to them. Otherwise, all analyses combine data from SAHE-supported IHEs and NPOs.
The potential significance of these departmental affiliation distinctions is highlighted in the legislation, which defines another joint effort that is required of IHEs—between the IHE?s school of education and the discipline in which the professional development is being provided. The law states that
Each activity assisted under this section, where applicable, shall involve the joint effort of the institution of higher education?s school or department of education, if any, and the schools or departments in the specific disciplines in which such professional development will be provided (Section 2211(A)(4)).
The variation in project directors? educational training and pedagogical practices across disciplines and in different types of IHEs may play a role in shaping the professional development activities that the project director develops and provides. To examine whether or not the structural and core features and implementation of professional development differs according to the type of IHE or the departmental affiliation of the project director, we include both of these factors when we analyze the main variables in our study (i.e., participations in traditional vs. reform activities, duration, span, collective participation, active learning opportunities, content focus, targeting, alignment, coordination, and continuous improvement). Although a project that is housed in a particular department may be administered collaboratively by the school of education and the college or school in which the mathematics/science department resides, our study focuses on the departmental affiliation of the project director. Both factors are included in all analyses we present; therefore institution type effects are independent of affiliation effects, and affiliation effects are independent of the effects of institution type. Further, whenever we test for significant differences according to institution type and departmental affiliation, we test for interaction effects, and report where these are significant.
After the summary analysis of results by institution type and departmental affiliation, we discuss a path model that shows the relationships among many of the variables in the chapter, and we suggest how they may work together to foster high-quality professional development. The last section of the chapter highlights the major findings and suggests implications for both the legislation and practice.
2 Throughout the chapter, we refer to the percent of teachers in SAHE-grantee projects; but our data actually represent the percent of teacher participations in SAHE-grantee projects. These two figures differ based on the extent to which the same teacher participated in more than one SAHE-grantee activity. For clarity of presentation, and because multiple participations in IHE/NPO activities are minimal, we present our findings in terms of percent of teachers.
3 For example, if four different groups of teachers attended the same workshop on four separate occasions, this would count as four activities. But if one group of teachers attended a workshop and a follow-up event, this would count as one activity.
4 If SAHE-grantee project directors provided more than one Eisenhower-assisted activity, we asked them to identify one as their primary activity.
5 Since our survey asked SAHE grantees to describe characteristics of their primary activity, and our district survey asked district coordinators to describe characteristics across all activities, comparisons of responses to these questions are inappropriate. However, questions about targeting, alignment, coordination, and continuous improvement efforts refer to the activities of both SAHE grantees and districts overall; therefore, we are able to compare these responses, and, where such comparisons seem instructive, we do so.
6 Due to the small number of grantees, SAHEs may be able to monitor their grantees' projects to help ensure faithful implementation; but we did not examine the SAHE's monitoring role.
7 In 1992-1993, 1993-1994, and 1994-1995, the average percent of Eisenhower funds that State Agencies of Higher Education (SAHEs) used for pre-service activities was 3 percent in each year (Donly & Gutman, 1997); for 1996-1997, SAHEs reported that 14 percent of Eisenhower funds were used to support pre-service professional development (Celebuski et al., 1998).
 [Chapter 5 Summary and Conclusions] |
![[Table of Contents]](/icons/up.gif){kind=icon} |
 [Characteristics of IHE/NPO Recipients of Eisenhower Grants] |