State Programs for Funding Teacher Professional Development: Survey Findings

Survey Findings

The Policy Context for Teacher Professional Development

Professional development financial data by itself is not as meaningful as analyzing it in the context of state policies, requirements, and practices. This section discusses that policy context.

State Mandates and Mechanisms

Some states reported using intermediate school districts or intermediate service agencies for the design and delivery of teacher professional development. In the North Central Region, Illinois and Iowa require intermediate service agencies to develop plans for teacher professional development. Iowa requires local school districts to develop annual plans. No state in the region reported requirements for schools to develop such plans. Iowa reported having draft rules for local school districts to address teacher professional development aligned with priorities and standards. In addition, professional development is required as part of the district's comprehensive school improvement plan. Minnesota requires local school districts and schools to establish professional development plans aligned with district goals through staff development committees and to provide financial support by dedicating 1 percent of base funding. Half of the district funds must be allocated at the school-site level.

Outside of the North Central Region, a number of states reported that they require intermediate service agencies to develop plans for teacher professional development. These state are California, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, and Oregon. Ten states reported requiring local school districts to develop annual plans for teacher professional development (California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas). No such requirements exist in Nebraska, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. Missouri, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Texas also imposed such requirements on individual schools.

Texas, Oregon, and Missouri reported that intermediate agencies work with local school districts in developing teacher professional development plans. In Texas the 20 Educational Service Centers require annual district plans for teacher training and assistance. The same is true in Oregon through its Educational Service Districts and in Missouri through its Regional Professional Development Centers. Florida requires each school district to develop and annually approve a “master plan for inservice educational training.” This plan is based on extensive assessment of need, must include professional development activities in a wide variety of areas, and is funded according to a state formula that specifies a percentage of the base student allocation that must be devoted to professional development. Georgia reports that it requires a comprehensive school district plan for teacher professional development; and Tennessee reports that local districts must develop plans locally under state guidelines that call for five days of teacher inservice training. In Rhode Island, local school district committees must develop an annual professional development plan for state funding. In Tennessee and Missouri, local school plans for teacher professional development must be part of school improvement plans.

Teacher Professional Development and Teacher Certification and Employment

Within the North Central Region, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio all reported having requirements that certified teachers enroll in continuing education courses for continued certification. Only Illinois reported that it did not. Indiana and Michigan also reported that such an action was required for continued employment.

The typical requirement was that each teacher needed to complete a specified number of graduate credit hours, or the equivalent, each year or over a certain period of years. The most common requirement— found in Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio—was for six credit hours per year. Indiana requires 36 credit hours beyond the bachelor's degree over a five-year period. In general, three credit hours of graduate study translates into 45 to 48 actual hours of class instruction and additional time for preparation, including required readings, course papers, and other assignments. Teachers not meeting these requirements cannot get their teaching certificates or licenses renewed and, therefore, are not eligible for employment. A teacher who loses his or her certificate in this manner may be employed as a substitute teacher in Indiana and may apply for a conditional license in Iowa. Minnesota requires local district approval of continuing education credits, which may be met through college and university study. Currently, 125 clock hours must be completed every five years. New requirements are being developed and will be adopted in Minnesota in 1999. Failure to complete the requirement leads to the loss of licensure.

The experience of the states outside of the North Central Region was substantially the same. Of the states surveyed, only Nebraska, New Hampshire, and New York reported that they do not require certified teachers to enroll in continuing education courses for continued certification. New York reported having regulations to require annual professional performance review that might result in required continuing professional development. Missouri and Oregon reported that they require continuing education credit for continued employment. Although the specific requirements vary greatly among states, the norm seems to be six credit hours per year to maintain certification. Failure to meet this requirement results in the inability to renew a certificate or the invalidation of the existing certificate. Rhode Island and South Dakota provide for a special certificate to be issued until the deficiency in continuing education is remedied.

Financial and Time Resources for Teacher Professional Development

One source of resources for general teacher professional development would be direct state funding for tuition and fees paid for graduate courses or professional development credits. No state in the North Central Region reported having such a program. Minnesota did report a program called Teacher of Color that supports professional development of teachers of color; $710,000 is appropriated by the state to 17 Minnesota school districts. Of the 11 states surveyed outside of the North Central Region, only Georgia and Missouri reported having direct state funding plans, and the details of those plans are not clear. In most instances, direct funding would be locally determined for graduate courses taken by teachers, payment on the salary schedule for such courses, and district professional development courses. Such local policies would be the result of local board of education policy or would be negotiated through collective bargaining.

Within the North Central Region, both Illinois and Michigan reported that the state requires local school districts to provide released time for teachers for professional development. Illinois requires 2 days per year and Michigan requires 15 days for teachers in their first three years of employment. The state has additional requirements for experienced teachers. The number of requirements are increasing each year for a five-year period. Indiana reports that six one-half days in excess of the state-required minimum number of school days may be used for teacher professional development and that one-half of each of those days may be used with students present and one-half without students. Indiana counts these days as instructional days, and they count, therefore, toward general state aid computation. Proposed legislation seeks to replace the Indiana requirement with five state-funded professional development days per year. Illinois reported that students may not attend school on the two mandated professional development days. In Ohio, schools must be open for 182 days per year, but up to two of those days may be used for teacher professional development. Minnesota reported that all districts provide released time for professional development as part of their master collective bargaining agreements.

In the other states, Florida reports a Critical Teacher Shortage Tuition Reimbursement Program that provides $78 per semester hour for teachers who are currently employed and certified and who are preparing to teach in approved critical teacher shortage subjects. For professional development time, Florida specifies that the 16 days remaining between the 196-day teacher employment period and the 180-day student attendance requirement may be used for professional development. These days are used at district discretion. Georgia requires local districts to provide ten days per year for teacher professional development, and these are financed through the regular general state aid formula as part of the Quality Basic Education (QBE) Act. Missouri requires 174 days per year with students present, and any locally designed teacher development time is financed through the general state aid formula. Nebraska requires ten hours of teacher professional time per year as part of the school calendar. In Oregon, October 13 is traditionally Professional Development Day, but no funds are provided for local districts.

Conclusions About the Policy Context

Examining the responses of the states regarding issues that make up the policy context for state funding of professional development for teachers, we identified six patterns in the policy context. First, state requirements for school districts or schools to develop professional development plans were underused as a policy mechanism for school change. When such mandates did exist, they were part of required school improvement plans. This may be due to the fact that professional development for teachers is relatively new as a major policy issue at the state level. For the most part, it historically has been left to local school districts to determine and implement professional development policies and programs with minimal state regulation.

Second, regionalization of state services was linked to a more direct state role in professional development. States with intermediate school districts or intermediate service agencies viewed teacher professional development as a function of those districts and as a service offered to local school districts and schools.

Third, state policy on ongoing teacher certification is in flux. Where professional development requirements were attached to teacher certification, the mandates were fairly traditional: typically with six credit hours of teacher-selected graduate credit required per year for certificate renewal. However, this is an area in which there was some policy action. Many states were considering changes in their teacher certification and licensure requirements, such as increasing licensure requirements, offering alternative routes to licensure, and introducing renewable licenses and requiring increased professional development requirements for continued licensure.

Fourth, alternative certification is still widely used. Most states that had professional development requirements for continued certification allowed for some kind of alternative, temporary certificate for those who do not meet the standards.

Fifth, states rarely provide special subsidies for professional development. It was uncommon for states to provide direct financial assistance to teachers for their professional development, leaving local school districts to provide such funding, if it is provided at all. Additional compensation for continuing professional development was typically provided for in teacher collective bargaining contracts. In school districts in nonbargaining states, it was provided for in a professional agreement or in school district policy.

Sixth, release days were most often built into state financial systems. Many states provide for a limited number of school district professional development days. The state does not provide additional funds for these days, but does count the professional development days as allowable days in the general state aid formula computation.

In general, states did not seem to play an active role in mandating teacher professional development or supporting it with resources. An impediment to doing this may be the overall cost of such a policy initiative. The next section of the study will examine specific state funding programs for teacher professional development.

State Funding for Teacher Professional Development

State departments of education were asked to identify state funding programs that specifically support teacher professional development. For each program listed, the state was asked to provide the annual funding level, the proportion of the annual funding that may be used for teacher professional development, and any program requirements or limitations imposed by the state for the expenditure of these funds.

The responses to this question varied greatly from state to state in terms of the detail provided, making the data somewhat difficult to interpret in a manner that would allow for cross-state comparisons or to ascertain the total amount of state funds being used for teacher professional development. Selected examples of state programs that provide significant support for teacher professional development in the state are included in the Appendix. In general, programs that appear to provide less than $1 million each in teacher professional development statewide are not listed.

Conclusions About State Funding Programs

An analysis of the state funding programs for teacher professional development both within the North Central Region and among the other states yields some tentative conclusions.

First, it is difficult to determine just how much states spend on teacher professional development in most cases. Programs that fund professional development are often combined with programs that have other functions (e.g., curriculum reform, technology, standards and assessment, preservice teacher education), and it is not clear how much is expended for professional development.

Second, there is tremendous variation among the states in the number and kinds of state-funded teacher professional development programs and in the funding levels. Even though there is an absence of comprehensive and coherent policy in professional development in most states, some states seem to have very well developed and robust funding programs, while others have almost none or none at all. A tentative conclusion would be that states that have been leaders in a number of aspects of general education reform and have more centralized state systems—such as California, Florida, and Georgia—seem more likely to have better developed state-funded programs for professional development.

Third, because of the multiple goals of many state-funded programs that include professional development, it is not clear that a great deal of state funding is directed primarily at the comprehensive and systematic professional development of teachers at the local level. Many programs seem to have school improvement or more general school reform as their primary focus. Human resource development is an important but secondary goal.

Fourth, where there are state-funded programs focused directly on teacher professional development, they are likely to be targeted on fairly narrow curricular areas such as reading, technology, Tech Prep, or early childhood education. There is less evidence that there are state-funded programs designed to address the broader issues of general curriculum development or improving teaching and learning across the curriculum in teacher professional development.

Finally, the role of regional education agencies or intermediate education service units needs further exploration. Where these agencies or units exist, they tend to have teacher professional development as a major responsibility. The funding of these agencies and units and their relationship to both state agencies and local school districts are not clear from these data.

Federal Funds for Teacher Professional Development

This research study is focused on state funds for teacher professional development, but a number of states also reported using federal funds for that purpose. The dilemma is that a combination of federal and state funds supports many education programs, and it is difficult to separate federal and state funds and still establish any meaning for the data. This section will enumerate the major federal funding programs that some states listed as supporting teacher professional development. This list is intended to be illustrative and not exhaustive. Detailed program information is not provided.

Improving America's Schools Act (P.L. 103-382, amends ESEA of 1965)

Title I: Helping Disadvantaged Children Meet High Standards
Title II: Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional-Development Program
Title III: Technology for Education
Title IV: Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities
Title VI: Innovative Education Program Strategies
Reading Excellence Act (amends Title II, ESEA of 1965)

Goals 2000: Educate American Act
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

Part B
Part D
Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education
Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA)
Community and Adult Basic Education Programs of Instruction
Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program

All states that provided federal funding data noted that only a portion of these funds may be used for teacher professional development. A discussion of these programs, their program requirements, and the level of funding are well beyond the scope of this study.

Next | Previous | Contents