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

Although the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies administer programs to support state and local efforts to improve education, the federal role is limited. Federal programs exist to help promote excellence and equity in education, but they support rather than substitute for the school and district's own program of instruction. The federal government does not -- and cannot -- make decisions about what students should learn and how teachers should teach. These are state and local decisions. Moreover, the total federal contribution to pre-K - grade 12 education is only a small fraction of the nation's spending on public education. Therefore, successful strategies for raising levels of student achievement, and for bringing the Mission and Principles of Professional Development to life, depend upon local (and state) imagination, initiative and careful use of resources. Nonetheless, resources of federal programs can play a significant role in helping schools and districts fill existing gaps and improve the overall quality of their school improvement -- and professional development -- efforts. Indeed, recent changes in law now permit schools and districts to use funds that they already receive under many federal programs to support high-quality professional development activities.

Building an Integrated Professional Development Strategy

Most educators know about the Eisenhower Professional Development Program, the only federal program specifically designed to support high-quality professional development activities in all school districts in the nation. The program is important for the funding that it provides, for the visibility that it gives to best practice, and the flexibility it offers districts.

However, a number of reasons compel us to think beyond the Eisenhower Program to a coordinated approach of integrating federal programs. The first and most obvious reason is money. Eisenhower is simply much too small to enable districts to make high-quality professional development available to all teachers. Beyond this, if federal programs like Title I, migrant education, adult and vocational education, programs for homeless children, and safe and drug-free schools are truly to help particular subgroups of students achieve challenging content standards, teachers and other staff who work with those students must receive the kinds of high-quality professional development that they need to do their jobs. Since each of these programs now clearly authorizes the use of program funds for needed professional development, it makes sense to look to them to help defray the costs of high-quality professional development activities.

Perhaps most important, no one federal program can address all of the needs students may have. Children served by Title I, for example, also may be limited English proficient, migrant, disabled, and in need of a safe and drug-free learning environment. Therefore, they would need the special support of more targeted programs. Plainly, if there is to be order rather than chaos, the various professional development activities supported by each program will need to be brought together as part of a coherent plan for school change and improvement. Recent changes in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) [reauthorized as the Improving America's Schools Act] give schools and districts a number of new tools for integrating the help provided by many Department of Education programs into the school or district's own professional development strategies. These tools include:

• Broader Program Authority to Focus on Improved Teaching and Learning The ESEA (and other laws) now emphasize the availability of funds under many programs to support professional development that teachers need to provide program services effectively.

• Schoolwide Programs The Title I statute authorizes schools in high poverty areas to use Title I, Part A funds along with funds provided by most other federal programs, to upgrade the entire education program of a school. As a schoolwide program, the school would use the funds it receives under nearly all Federal programs (except the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)) as a common pool of resources. Federal funds used in the schoolwide program would have to supplement resources that the school otherwise would have available from non-Federal funds. But instead of being separately tracked, the school only would have to ensure that where a particular federal program contributes to the schoolwide program, the school's activities meet the intent and purposes of that program (rather than the program's individual requirements.

• Availability of Waivers. While ESEA programs now are very flexible, there may be situations in which a program's requirements seem to impede a school or district's ability to increase student achievement. Therefore, the ESEA authorizes the Secretary to waive most program statutes and regulations that a school, district, or state education agency demonstrates is hampering its efforts to improve teaching and learning, including funding for and implementation of high-quality professional development activities. In addition, both the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the School to Work Opportunities Act authorize the Secretary of Education to waive certain statutory and regulatory provisions of the ESEA and the Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act. Under Ed-Flex (the Education Flexibility Partnership Demonstration Program), the Secretary of Education has granted six state education agencies the authority to waive these same provisions. These states are: Oregon, Massachusetts, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and Vermont.

• Consolidated Local Plans. The ESEA also invites districts and state education agencies to revamp the very ways in which they plan the use of Federal program funds. Districts (and states) are no longer required, as a condition of receiving federal formula grant funds, to develop and submit a separate and detailed plan or application for each federal program in which it wants to participate. Instead, for most formula grant programs, the ESEA now permits the use of a single consolidated plan that focuses specifically on what the district will do to promote cross-program coordination, integration of service provided under those programs with State and local-sponsored activities, and improved service delivery. Use of a consolidated plan does not eliminate federal program requirements and does not authorize commingling of program funds. Consolidated planning does, however, encourage thinking about how all of the individual federal programs included in the plan, notwithstanding their distinct purposes and different beneficiaries, can fit together and support the district's own program to improve teaching and learning.

These new areas of flexibility offer creative opportunities to use the resources provided by various federal programs so that those programs fit not only the overall education reform strategies that schools and districts develop, but also their overall approach to professional development.
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[Mission and Principles of Professional Development]

[Finding the Resources - Formula Grant Programs]