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

Executive Summary
Designing Effective Professional Development:
Lessons From the Eisenhower Program

The professional development of teachers is a crucial element of the nation?s efforts to improve education. In recent years, these efforts have sought to foster high standards for teaching and learning for all of the nation?s children, and almost all states have met federal requirements for developing challenging statewide content standards. Such standards seek a fundamental shift in what students learn. However, children?s learning will be transformed only if high standards are reflected in teachers? classroom practice. Education reforms will not succeed without teachers who are immersed in the subjects they teach and who know how to foster both basic knowledge and advanced thinking and problem solving among their students.

The Program: The Eisenhower Professional Development Program, Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is the federal government?s largest investment that is solely focused on developing the knowledge and skills of classroom teachers. The program is key to meeting the U.S. Department of Education?s objective of ensuring that a "talented and dedicated teacher is in every classroom in America" (U.S. Department of Education, 1999c). Part B of the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, with a 1999 appropriation of about $335 million, provides funds through state education agencies (SEAs) to school districts, and through state agencies for higher education (SAHEs) to institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations. These funds primarily support professional development in mathematics and science.

The Evaluation Report: This is the second report of the National Evaluation of the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, Part B (State and Local Activities), a multi-year evaluation being conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education?s Planning and Evaluation Service. The first report was based on six exploratory case studies of school districts conducted during the first months of the evaluation (Birman, Reeve, and Sattler, 1998). The purpose of that report was to obtain an initial description of the program and the issues that it faced in different local contexts. This second report describes the current status of the program, based primarily on data from national probability samples of districts, SAHE grantees (i.e., the institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations supported through the SAHE component of the program), and teachers, as well as on data from 10 in-depth case studies in five states. The third report of the evaluation, to be issued in early 2000, will augment the results reported here with a longitudinal account of teachers' experiences in Eisenhower and other professional development activities and resulting changes in their teaching practices.

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[The Policy Context]