State Policy on Professional Development: Rethinking the Linkages to Student Outcomes

As states have begun to consider requests fund more extensive professional development opportunities for teachers, many state legislators have asked what returns they can expect from their increased investment. Frequently, these questions focus on how increased spending on programs supporting the professional education and training of teachers will improve student achievement. Unfortunately, this question has seldom been addressed in a systematic way.

This paper develops a preliminary framework for reshaping the linkages between state policy on professional development and student out-comes. We first review the changing policy context for state policy on professional development in education. Then, we propose a framework that identifies possible ways of linking professional development to student outcomes. Next, we examine case studies of two states to illustrate how the framework might be used to inform state policy development. Finally, we identify a set of policy issues that merit more careful exploration in states' efforts to reshape their policies on teacher professional development.

Changing Policy Context

A number of recent policy reports have focused specifically on how state investments in professional development link to improvement in student outcomes (e.g., Bull & Buechler, 1996; The Finance Project, 1998; Choy & Ross, 1998). However, establishing such a linkage—a way of assessing how increases in a state's investment in professional development links to improvement in student outcomes—is not a simple matter. Not only are few professional development programs linked to student outcomes in discernable ways, but there is little shared understanding about how professional development should be linked to improvement in educational out-comes in ways that can be measured. Few states have professional development programs that require schools to make these linkages in specific ways when they propose major new funding for professional development.

States implement their professional development policies within a context that includes many potentially conflicting mandates. Indeed, after four decades of federal, state, and local efforts aimed at improving student outcomes, it is difficult to discern how any particular intervention influenced them. Even when professional development has been implemented on a broad scale in a state (Cody & Guskey, 1997) and there has been discernable improvement in student outcomes (Petrosko, 1997), it has not been possible to establish a causal linkage. Without well-defined programs and systematic assessments, it simply is not possible to untangle the influence of professional development from the influence of many other policies, mandates, and practices. This paper takes an initial step in this direction by suggesting an approach to guide future policy discussions and research.

Refocusing State Policies on Professional Development

While the idea of treating state spending on professional development as an investment with a direct link to student outcomes is a new notion in many states, it is the natural outgrowth of nearly 20 years of policy focusing on educational improvement.

Historically, states and local boards shared responsibility for funding education. However, there was great variability in the level of funding and quality of education across and within school districts and states. In the 1960s, the federal government got involved in funding special programs aimed at equalizing educational opportunities. State and local support for the ongoing professional development of teachers was embedded within this structure of public funding.

This pattern of public support evolved through the early 1980s with a primary focus of policy on equalizing both financial resources and the opportunity to attain a quality education. About the time of the publication of A Nation at Risk, policy researchers were beginning to define the linkage between public policy and improvement in teaching (Shulman & Sykes, 1983; Sykes, 1979). For example, Sykes (1983) identified the problems with the supply of high-quality teaching professionals and outlined ways states could focus on rethinking teaching preparation and licensure, such as pay incentives, ongoing professional development, funding teacher-initiated projects, and engaging teachers in curriculum reform.

Early in the reform movement, states began to focus on student outcomes without giving adequate consideration to the need to promote improvement in teaching and teacher development. Initially, federal policymakers began to argue that state and federal policy should focus on outcomes, such as student achievement, rather than inputs (Finn, 1990). State policymakers soon began to adopt this emphasis, linking their funding to outcomes through an emphasis on accountability (Choy & Ross, 1998; Massell & Fuhrman, 1994). Indeed, state adoption of these outcomes-oriented policies was often required to secure funding in federal programs. States encouraged schools to develop plans for school improvement, and federal and state monies were often provided for these efforts through federal (e.g., Title I) and state programs. However, the success of most of these broad-scale improvement efforts was mixed at best.

In the past few years, the idea of specifically linking professional development to educational outcomes has emerged from these reform efforts because teachers are thought to be at the heart of educational improvement. The American Federation of Teachers (1995), the U.S. Department of Education (1996), and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory have convened groups to focus on developing guidelines for linking professional development to educational improvement. These efforts tend to reach similar conclusions about the new principles for professional development. According to Choy and Ross (1998, p. 4), “a consensus seems to be emerging that effective professional development involves teachers in planning their professional development activities; that professional development for individual teachers needs to be linked to broader organizational goals of their schools, districts, and states; and that teachers need to work closely with other teachers inside and outside their schools to share ideas and coordinate activities.”

Frankly, it is difficult not to view this consensus as a rehashing of the same set of conceptions that attempted to link site-based improvement to educational outcomes during most of the past decade. It brings teachers more directly into the formulation of the process, but it does not suggest how professional development relates to school activities or student outcomes.

The concept of professional development has traditionally included (1) the preservice education of teachers and (2) ongoing training aimed at retaining certification and gaining a higher job classification (and salary). The preservice education of teachers was generally thought to be a responsibility of universities. States set requirements for certification, usually in collaboration with university teacher educators. Further, boards with diverse representation of constituents were usually set up to establish requirements for recertification. This basic pattern is still evident in the way most states define professional development (Ward, St. John, & Laine, 1999). However, as a result of the education reform movement, a new set of strategies evolved. These new strategies take at least two forms.

First, systematic schoolwide restructuring has emerged as one form of educational improvement that had a tighter link between professional development and the school improvement process. Initially, schoolwide reform efforts were linked with nationally known professors, such as Robert Slavin and Ted Sizer. Some of their early efforts gained notice because of their success with improvement in student outcomes. Then in the early 1990s, the Title I program was modified to include a schoolwide option that included a focus on professional development for all teachers. More recently, the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program has created a recommended list of research-based programs that are eligible for relatively large grants that are intended to support professional development as a means of school improvement. Several states have also provided support for these comprehensive reform efforts through their own revenue sources.¹ These comprehensive reforms are appropriately viewed as schoolwide professional development processes.

Second, a number of other reform programs have emerged in the past decade that emphasized systematic approaches for specific reforms. Many integrate specific approaches to staff development with tightly structured programs that focus on improvement in student outcomes. Some of these are costly but have been widely cited for their approaches to professional development. For example, the Reading Recovery program was praised by the National Research Council (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) for its approach to professional development, even though the Council thought the program did not have a sustained influence on reading. Many states have also invested in these programs or collaborated on their development with universities and states.

Thus, it is possible for states to begin to reexamine and reshape diverse policies that include aspects of systematic professional development. However, the historic structure of state policy on professional development—the certification and recertification of teachers—has at best a loose linkage to student outcomes.

If the goal that new professional development initiatives affect student outcomes is to be realized, then the structure of state policies will need to be reexamined, if not radically restructured. The old approach of requiring units for recertification did not identify adequately the types of knowledge and skills teachers would need in their efforts to improve student out-comes. The policy discourse needs to focus on the ways the knowledge and skills attained through formal and embedded professional development influence teaching practices and student learning outcomes.

State Funding for Professonal Development

State funding for professional development can take many forms, which complicates attempts to discern the amount of money states actually invest in professional development. Below we explore some of the reasons why it is difficult to discern the actual costs.

It is difficult to estimate direct subsidies.
The simplest and most direct approach to funding professional development is to subsidize teachers either for their time or their direct costs. To the extent that teachers use paid time for professional development, their schools incur costs for their salaries and/or for substitutes. Thus release time for teachers can be one of the largest costs of professional development programs. Similarly, schools can reimburse teachers for part of their educational costs (e.g., for travel, food, lodging, or tuition). States subsidize these costs to the extent that release days for training and professional development are embedded in their funding formulas. Subsidies for training also can be built into school grant proposals for programs that were formally intended for other purposes. In addition, professional development processes can be embedded into the daily activities of teachers.

The costs to states and local districts of the direct subsidies provided to teachers for their professional development can be very difficult to estimate. Schools usually do not routinely record and report on this type of support. Usually these costs must be estimated, even when a case study method is used (Education Commission of the States, 1997; Miller, Lord, & Dorney, 1994).
Categorical programs often provide local discretion.
Some state-administered categorical programs for other purposes either directly or indirectly support professional development. Sometimes states will require schools to include professional development for teachers as a part of their proposals and consider these plans in the proposal evaluation process. In addition, the federal government has a number of programs that provide money to support professional development in schools. These programs are also administered by states. In our survey of states, we found a great deal of variability in the number and types of programs that states reported and in whether they indicated a percentage of categorical program funds that were used to support professional development (Ward, et al., 1999).
Ambiguous linkages occur between professional development and school improvement.
In some states, school improvement programs are specifically intended to be part of a professional development program. In some instances, they take the shape of supplemental state funding for school restructuring or for other types of interventions. For example, Ohio classifies its innovative Venture Capital Program, a comprehensive school improvement program, as a professional development program. In other states, school improvement programs may take the form of providing subsidies to schools to fund their local professional development plans (Ward et al., 1999). There is, of course, the potential in all states to develop a policy that not only links these various forms of support for professional development into a cohesive state frame-work, but also provides a coherent way of tracking whether these programs actually influence improvement. To accomplish this goal, most states would have to substantially reshape state education policy.
Some professional development is embedded in educational practice.
As an integral part of their educational practice, teachers assess students' abilities and progress, plan for curriculum and instruction, conduct classes, evaluate student performance, and reflect on the efficacy of their instructional strategies. To the extent that these embedded professional development activities influence student outcomes, they must do so through these educational practices. However, the integration of professional development and educational practice has seldom been examined. Thus, a better understanding of role of professional development within educational practice is needed.

¹For example, Ohio's Venture Capital Program funds comprehensive reforms as part of its statewide professional development program (Ohio NCTAF Task Force, 1997).

Next | Previous | Contents