Search

This paper evaluates the usefulness of a sociocultural approach for analyzing teachers' responses to the professional learning demands of standards-based reform policies. A policy-oriented case study of the practice of six elementary teachers who worked in two high-poverty schools in a demographically changing district in the state of Washington is summarized. Key findings of that study conclude that communities of teaching practice are sites for teacher learning and are mediators of teachers' responses to standards-based reform. Characteristics of the communities of practice, including their relative strength and openness (to learning), influence the degree to which teachers work out negotiated and thoughtful responses to policy demands. The present paper discusses the efficacy of Wenger's (1998) theory of learning for the study of policy to practice connections. An appendix contains research methodology. (Contains 58 references.) (Author/SM)

It is commonly argued that teachers need ongoing engagement with ideas about using student reasoning, pedagogy, and subject matter if they are to make sense of the complex demands of current reforms in mathematics education. Drawing on similar arguments about the potential benefits of using student work to organize professional development, this study charts the development of one teacher workgroup over a year. The analysis addresses two questions: (1) How did teachers' talk about student work develop? and (2) What kinds of mathematical and pedagogical issues were raised as a result of their ongoing and changing talk? The study locates teacher learning in their interactions with one another in the workgroup. In monthly cross-grade meetings, teachers brought and discussed student work that was generated by a similar mathematical problem posed to students in each of their classrooms. The paper documents the teachers' efforts to detail their students' reasoning and discuss how their engagement with mathematical and pedagogical concerns created opportunities for teacher learning. (Contains 64 references.) (Author/SM)

This analysis considers what role district policy environments play in the lives of beginning teachers. As part of a longitudinal study of teacher learning in the language arts, the authors followed 10 teachers from their final year of teacher education into their first 3 years of teaching. In this paper, they examined the role that policies concerning curriculum, professional development, and mentoring in two reform-active districts played in shaping the experiences and concerns of three first-year language arts teachers. The questions asked in the study locate it at the intersection of two distinct literatures--the literature on beginning teachers and the literature on the relationship of policy and practice. Whereas other studies on beginning teachers concerns have taken a psychological perspective, focusing on the individual teacher as the explanatory factor, this study employs a more sociocultural view, looking at the broader contexts in which individual teachers work. The authors found that the two districts served powerful roles as teacher educators. The tasks the districts assigned the teachers, the resources they provided, the learning environments they created, the assessments they designed, and the conversations they provoked proved to be consequential for what the teachers came to learn about language arts teaching and teaching in general. (Contains 7 notes, 31 references, and a table of data.) (Author/RS)

In this monograph, the authors describe Connecticut's long-term efforts to implement a comprehensive set of teaching quality policies to support improved student learning. The authors begin by describing the 15-year evolution of policies designed to recruit, prepare, and support teachers, while also creating greater accountability for the acquisition of knowledge and skills on the part of both students and teachers. That description is followed by a summary of the large concomitant gains in student achievement in both mathematics and literacy and an evaluation of competing explanations for these gains. The authors conclude by hypothesizing that the power of Connecticut's teaching policy reforms lies not simply in their comprehensiveness and in the state's political stability over the last decade, but also in the power of the policies to build capacity in all participants: teachers, students, administrators, teacher educators, and state department staff alike. Goals and expectations are appended. (Contains 57 references.) (Author/SM)

In this paper, the researchers draw on their experience with a professional development project to propose a model for studying the formation and development of teacher community. The project described brought together 22 English and social studies teachers, as well as a Special Educator and an ESL teacher, from an urban high school for a period of 2 1/2 years. The teachers met twice a month to read together in the field of history and literature and to work on an interdisciplinary curriculum. This detailed account of the first 18 months of the project sheds new light on definitions of professional community, its stages of development, and the challenges that confront community in the workplace of high schools. One of the challenges consists of the need to negotiate an "essential tension" at the heart of teachers' professional community. Among this group of teachers, many felt that the primary reason to meet was to improve classroom practices and student learning, while others were more interested in the potential for continuing intellectual development in the subjects they taught. The researchers--who deliberately built the essential tension into the project--claim that these two views must both be respected in any successful attempt to create and sustain intellectual community in the workplace. The researchers also describe the challenges of maintaining diverse perspectives within a community and how familiar fault lines--both in society and in school--threaten the pursuit of community. The paper includes a model of the markers of community formation--as manifested in participants' talk and actions--and concludes with a discussion of why teachers must continue to care about professional communities. (Contains 33 notes, 109 references, 2 figures, and a table of data.) (Author/SR)

This paper discusses the initial development and testing of a Web-based instrument for collecting daily data on instruction. This teacher log was developed for use in the Study of Instructional Improvement, a longitudinal study on school improvement in high poverty areas. The researchers wanted to further develop the potential of teacher logs by experimenting with Web-based technology and computer branching. The 1998 teacher log study tested the feasibility of using a Web based instrument to collect data on instruction. Seven elementary teachers used the log to report on 29 mathematics and reading lessons. Researchers observed classroom instruction, completed log reports, and wrote detailed narrative descriptions for 24 lessons. All teachers were able to use the log to report on instruction. Data were successfully entered through a Web interface into a database and subsequently used to conduct provisional analyses of both instruction and instrument reliability and validity. The researchers conclude that a Web-based instrument can be used successfully to capture important information about teaching, some of which has not been available before (lesson duration, student attendance for each lesson, and instructional groupings or formats for each lesson). An appendix offers teacher log pilot help pages. (SM)

This analysis examines the effects of school and organizational characteristics on teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems. The analyses are based on data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey, a large, comprehensive, nationally representative survey of teachers and schools conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. Teacher characteristics, such as specialty field, age, and retirement, account for a significant amount of turnover. There are also significant effects of school and organizational characteristics on turnover that have largely been overlooked by previous theory and research. The data show that while high-poverty public schools have moderately higher rates, neither larger schools, nor public schools in large school districts, nor urban schools have high rates of teacher turnover. In contrast, small private schools stand out for their high rates of turnover. The analysis also shows that math and science teachers are not more likely to depart than other teachers, once other factors are controlled. Moreover, the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that resulting from two related causes teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing better jobs or other careers. Organizational characteristics such as inadequate support from the administration, low salaries, student discipline problems, and limited faculty input into school decision-making all contribute to higher rates of turnover, controlling for the characteristics of teachers and schools. The results suggest that school staffing problems are not solely a result of shortfalls driven by increasing retirement levels, but also a result of low retention due to organizational conditions. (Contains 99 references, 16 endnotes, 4 tables, and 2 figures.) (Author/MLF)

This working paper provides background for the U.S. Department of Education's first report to the nation on teacher quality, informing the ongoing work on state policy contexts for the improvement of teaching undertaken by the Center for the Study of Teacher Policy. The main goal is to illustrate the range of state-initiated actions aimed at improving the quality of teaching. Section 1 addresses state attention to educational reform and quality of teaching (recent focus on teaching quality, critical roles of states, and how states can promote teaching quality). Section 2 discusses how states are promoting visions of good teaching and learning (student standards and assessments, standards for teaching practice, and independent professional standards boards). Section 3 examines how states are attracting, rewarding, and retaining capable people in teaching (teacher recruitment needs, recruiting teachers and facilitating their mobility, ensuring teacher qualifications, using salaries to attract and retain teachers, and removing unqualified teachers). Section 4 discusses how states are improving the initial preparation and induction of teachers (standards and accountability, alternative certification, and beginning teacher induction programs). Section 5 looks at how states are motivating and supporting teachers' ongoing professional learning (differences in the quality of opportunities for professional learning, state guidance and resources for professional development, and developing or mandating specific targets for professional development). Section 6 discusses how states are enhancing the school workplace environment. (Contains 47 endnotes.) (SM)

In the last 2 decades, federally-funded research has contributed much to the understanding of teaching and learning and the critical nature of teachers' subject-matter knowledge and ability to translate academic content into effective learning activities for students of different developmental levels and backgrounds. Research findings have contributed to the development of standards for beginning teaching and accomplished practice. This paper identifies some of the principal advances leading to this understanding. Information comes from literature reviews and from interviews with leaders in research and with those who use research to improve educational practice. The report provides policymakers and others with information to help them assess the impact of relatively recent appropriation of federal educational research funds. It also helps policy officials make informed choices about the future investment of federal dollars for research on teaching. The report addresses four principal topics on which federal research investment has been concentrated and to which it has made a substantial contribution: (1) understanding teaching and learning, (2) designing and implementing more effective teacher preparation programs, (3) understanding how to support practicing teachers, and (4) creating productive school and policy environments for teaching and learning. (SM)

A new national research consortium, the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy (CTP), is designed to investigate the relation between excellent teaching and policymaking at the national, state, and local levels. Policy efforts to produce excellence in teaching must: (1) attract, recruit, and retain capable teachers; (2) develop teachers' professional norms, knowledge, and skills; (3) create incentives and organizational conditions that support teachers' work; (4) realize improvement efforts on a sufficient scale; and (5) ensure that teacher development and teaching practice relates to improved student learning. Increasing excellence in teaching requires coordinated action on a range of fronts. In the last decade there has been a growing recognition that both perspectives--the macro view from the level of the system as a whole, and the micro view from the classroom and school--are important to any promising effort to improve teaching. The CTP is examining promising experiences and experiments for addressing the five issues. This includes standards-based, school-based, and teacher development strategies, all of which overlap and have at their intersection coherent management of the teacher policy environment. The existence of promising strategies creates a need for research. The CTP's program of research seeks to cumulate understanding, both within and across studies, regarding the strategies' potency and possibilities. The CTP's program of research and analysis examines teacher policies in various contexts and at multiple levels of the system. The various investigations that CTP members are currently conducting are listed. (SM)

This report addresses the complexity of problems associated with traditional comprehensive high schools. It examines why, despite repeated calls for reform, and various efforts aimed at reform, evidence suggests that what transpires for students inside the high school classroom remains relatively impervious to change. A picture of the terrain of leadership activity important for transforming high schools is proposed followed by questions of how the work of leadership might be accomplished. (Contains 5 endnotes.) [Report commissioned by the Wallace Foundation. This is the final report in a series of 6 published as part of the Leadership Issue Project.]

This report, one of six state-of-the-field reports, explores the connection between learning-focused leadership and leadership assessment as it contributes to coherent leadership assessment systems. The report outlines the function and implication of leadership assessment in national, state and local contexts. The report clarifies the purposes and uses to which leadership assessment is--or can be--put and notes the implications for leadership assessment practices throughout educational systems. This goal is accomplished by drawing together literature that deals with personnel evaluations, professional learning, accountability, and the relation of leadership to learning. Special attention is paid to the relatively small number of actual studies of assessment in action and to related literatures that help to conceptualize or offer evidence of the ways that assessment fits into leadership practice. At the same time, this paper is not concerned with the technical details of assessment design, as these are being extensively dealt with by others engaged in the redesign of assessment instruments and systems. In the same vein, little time is spent reviewing the body of writing offering advice and tools for leadership assessment. Rather, the focus is on empirical literature that informs how leadership assessment is or can be used in relation to learning improvement. (Contains 4 endnotes.) [Funding for this report was provided by the Wallace Foundation.]

This report addresses the core challenges faced by leaders in the current context of high expectations and accountability, often accompanied by inconsistent or limited support. The report assumes the leadership role is based on a commitment to lead for learning; that is, to pursue a learning improvement agenda for the students in the school, the professionals who work directly with students, and the school as an organization. To that end, this report frames what it means to lead schools toward improvements in teaching and learning, who does or can exercise that leadership (including but not limited to the principal), how leaders can be equipped to lead learning communities, what conditions empower school leaders to lead in this way, and how such leadership is cultivated in individuals or school communities over time. In short, the report considers school leaders' roles and responsibilities, and the authority they need to pursue an agenda of improving teaching and learning. To accomplish this, we have turned to the most current literature, especially the most prominent studies of the last decade. Our review makes no claim at being exhaustive, but rather it focuses on major studies that have initiated new thinking and have the potential to shape practice. There are four purposes for this report: (1) Consider the roles, responsibilities, and authority of school leaders--both individuals in formal positions of authority and others who also exercise leadership--in light of the best research and theory concerning the nature and exercise of educational leadership; (2) Conceptualize roles and responsibilities of school leaders in relation to the improvement of teaching and learning, while paying attention to other dimensions of school leadership and the influence of context on leadership practice; (3) Review common practices and emerging strategies in the field and the implications and assumptions of such practices; and (4) Identify unanswered questions for action and research concerning the evolving roles and responsibilities of school leaders. This report addresses these matters with special attention to school principals, who occupy the most central and visible position in the leadership of schools, but it is noted that limiting attention to these positions alone is too narrow and, in a sense, may contribute to the "leadership problem" in schools. (Contains 3 figures, 1 table, and 8 endnotes.) [The development of this report was supported by a grant from The Wallace Foundation.]

This report maps out activities and supporting conditions in states, districts, and schools, that enable educational leadership to exert productive influence on learning. The report draws together threads from the research literature and from practical experimentation in a variety of states, districts, and schools, as described in greater detail within six reports that comprise the Improving Leadership for Learning series. From these sources, the report authors offer an overview of the systems of "leadership support" that guide leaders' efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools across the nation. This report is a companion to the six "state-of-the-field" reports. It offers an integrative framework, based on insights from scholarly literature, related theory, and practical activity--much of it summarized in the six reports--that can inform efforts to improve the quality of leadership and leadership support. The framework also presents a way of understanding how the different aspects of leadership and leadership support activity that fall within the areas addressed by the six Leadership Issue Groups connect to one another. Without a clear sense of these interconnections, efforts to improve leadership are at great risk of fixing the parts, but not the whole, of the leadership act. The ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate thinking and inform ongoing attempts to improve the quality of leadership practice, and thereby the quality of teaching and learning in the nation's public schools. An appendix contains: Hector's Mathematics Lesson--Reprise. (Contains 7 figures, 3 tables, and 45 endnotes.) [This report was commissioned by the Wallace Foundation.]

This report is one of a series produced by a research team at the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, a national research consortium home-based at the University of Washington. The reports are intended to clarify each leadership issue, while assembling what is known from empirical studies. The information in these reports lays the groundwork for further study and practical experimentation by leaders and reformers in states, districts, and schools. This report focuses on improving governance by taking a close look at local school boards--an enduring feature of public education governance. Using published accounts in the research literature, the paper synthesizes the frameworks, beliefs, and activities concerning the roles and responsibilities of the district school board. Using three common critiques of modern school boards as a guide, the paper further identifies the underlying currents of governance reform, conditions that influence governance structure, and the connections between governance and learning-focused leadership. Specifically, this paper synthesizes and interprets ideas, frameworks, beliefs, and activities concerning the roles and responsibilities of the district school board, the issues confronting its effectiveness, and the strategies that have been undertaken to improve the board's effectiveness. The paper is based largely on published accounts in the research literature and also descriptive material concerning current or emerging practices. Following a brief introduction to the concerns about this leadership issue, the authors review the evolution of modern school boards and note briefly how concerns about the functioning of school boards have prompted a search for better governance arrangements, especially in urban districts. Then the paper takes a closer look at the "crisis of governance" by examining three common critiques of modern school boards to identify the underlying currents of reform and other conditions that influence how governance is structured and shapes what it can do. These criticisms provide insight into not only the problems with school boards but also the context in which they operate and the enduring dilemmas from which the critiques stem. Following that, the paper notes key dimensions of the governance restructuring challenge that underlie current and emerging attempts to create more satisfactory arrangements. A number of these strategies are reviewed. The paper concludes by noting some unanswered questions that future experimentation and research will need to answer, alongside several other issues that research cannot ever answer. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.) [This publication was commissioned by the Wallace Foundation.]

This report, one of six state-of-the-field reports, details how educational leaders access data, the meaning they assign to it, and how the use data to improve teaching and learning. The report recognizes that data does not provide leaders a clear direction for action; rather that data used in educational settings is complex and indefinite. These state-of-the-field reports, developed with support from The Wallace Foundation, synthesize studies, conceptual work, and examples of current and emerging practice. The reports are intended to clarify each leadership issue (data-informed leadership, resource allocation, redefining leadership roles, leadership assessment, improving governance, high school transformation, and a synthesis framework across issues), while assembling what is known from empirical studies. This paper explores these possibilities, both conceptually and in light of research on the use of data in educational decision making. Based largely on published accounts in the research literature and descriptive material on established or emerging practices, the paper synthesizes and interprets ideas, frameworks, beliefs, and activities concerning the availability, quality, and use of data in the work of leaders at state and local levels related to the improvement of teaching and learning. The paper unfolds as follows: First, following discussion of a broader way of construing the use of data in leadership, it presents ideas that can help conceptualize the relation among the leaders' access to data, the meanings they give to it, and the uses to which they put this data, in the varying settings in which leaders seek to improve teaching and learning. Next, the paper briefly reviews the landscape of current practice, noting emerging strategies that purport to improve the leaders' access to, and use of, data for improvement purposes, as well as conditions that limit or complicate leaders' use of data. Finally, it concludes with questions that emerge from the review and beg to be answered through further experimentation and research, while noting enduring tensions that will always be present in data-informed practice and cannot be "resolved" through further effort or study. (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures, and 14 endnotes.)

The purpose of this paper is to offer insights from scholarly literature, related theory, and practical activities that can inform leaders' efforts to allocate resources and create incentives that will result in powerful, equitable learning for all. This document: (1) sketches the context for work and research related to resource allocation practices; (2) presents key ideas that can be used in conceptualizing this issue; (3) describes a range of practices, both commonly undertaken and emerging, that address this issue; and (4) notes central, unanswered questions about practices in the domain that can guide future experimentation and research. The ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate thinking and inform ongoing attempts to make resource reallocation and incentives more suited to the challenges of today's contexts. The paper is intended for a wide audience, including practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders. It frames the "state of the field" as it is known from existing empirical research. The paper, however, does not attempt to represent the full range of experimentation and activity related to resource reallocation, much of which has not yet been systematically studied. This paper begins with an illustration of some of the leadership challenges that are embedded in the allocation of resources and the provision of incentives with the following vignette. This vignette offers a glimpse of the challenges facing leaders from the perspective of an urban high school. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.) [This research report was produced in collaboration with The Wallace Foundation, New York, NY.]

This report examines teacher retention and mobility in Washington's teaching force at state, district, and school levels during a recent five-year period (1998-99 and 2002-03). First, we provide data about overall retention patterns across the state. We then turn our attention to a more intensive look at 20 districts. The 20 districts selected represent the range of district size, poverty level and regions of the state, and include many of the largest districts. The 20 districts represent nearly 30 percent of the state?s teaching force (14,286 classroom teachers) and over a quarter of the state's students (276,641 students). For these 20 districts, we present a school-by-school examination of teacher mobility, comparing patterns among districts and also looking inside districts. We examine retention and mobility in relation to student demographics, measures of student learning in reading and mathematics, and other school and district characteristics.

Given the centrality of subject matter to teaching, the design, implementation, and effects of policy related to teaching are unlikely to be understood?by analysts and policymakers alike?unless they explicitly examine the interaction of subject matter with these policies. In this article, we offer a way of anticipating where and how subject matter considerations can enter into the discourse about policies that seek improvement in teaching and learning. To accomplish this goal, we first examine conceptually the connections between instructional improvement policies and school subjects, treated as a crucial context in which such policies are enacted. We then explore three categories of educational policy characterized by their intended focus on school subjects, and demonstrate for each how subject matter contexts are likely to interact with policy. We close with reflections about the puzzles and possibilities this analysis raises for the practice of policy research.

At a time when the State of Washington, as many states, is hoping to realize the ambitious goals of standards-based reforms in education, questions arise in many quarters about how teachers are approaching this task, and how well equipped and supported they are for this work. In the best of worlds, the state would have good information sources for answering these questions, preferably with information directly from teachers. Such is not the case. The sources of data routinely gathered by the state shed light on some questions?for example, concerning attributes of the teaching force?but tell relatively little about teachers' work or how they are supported. To improve the base of information about teaching, the teaching force, and support for teachers' work, the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession engaged a research team from the University of Washington to develop and deploy a series of surveys directed to a "standing sample" of 400 classroom teachers in the state. The stratified random sample was carefully constructed to include the full range of individuals in classroom teaching positions. In response to three surveys during the 2003-04 school year, the survey system elicited teachers' views regarding various aspects of their work, assignment, preparation for teaching, and professional support. Given uniformly high response rates (in excess of 90 percent), the system offers a source of insights into teachers? response to reform across the state.

This report describes the technical aspects of the establishment of a "Fast Response Survey System" for the state of Washington. The system, supported by the Stuart Foundation and the newly created Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP), is being designed to offer timely and useful information to the state's policy community concerning K-12 teaching, the teacher workforce, and teaching conditions.

This report looks at how three secondary English teachers responded to the curriculum materials they encountered as new teachers. The authors were particularly interested in knowing how the materials helped the new teachers learn about teaching language arts. To this end, the authors explored the teachers' perception and use of two sets of curriculum materials?"Teaching the Multiparagraph Essay" and "Pacesetter English." The authors examined the materials to see what, if any, opportunities for teacher learning were embedded in them. They also considered how the teachers' prior knowledge, both of the subject matter and of approaches to teaching language arts, affected how they responded to and used the material. The authors found that the teachers in the study spent an enormous amount of time searching out curriculum materials for their classes and that the curriculum materials they encountered did, indeed, powerfully shape their ideas about teaching language arts as well as their ideas about classroom practice. The authors describe a trajectory for the teachers' use of the curriculum materials. New teachers begin by sticking close to the materials they have at hand. Then, over time, as they learn more about both students and curriculum, they adapt and adjust what they do, and their use of the materials opens up as they become more willing to play with and take liberties with the materials. The authors argue that new and aspiring teachers need opportunities to analyze and critique curriculum materials. This would begin during teacher education and continue in the company of their more experienced colleagues. Such curricular conversations are helpful to all but especially to new teachers who tend to latch on uncritically to whatever curriculum they are handed.

At the core of standards-based reform are content standards?statements about what students should know and be able to do. Although it is state standards that are the focus of much public attention and consume substantial resources, many local school districts have developed their own content standards in the major subject areas. However, we know very little about the role state standards have played in local standards efforts. In this article we report on a study of the relationship between state and local content standards in reading in four states and districts. Through interviews with key personnel in each state and district and analyses of state and local content standards in reading, we explored the alignment between state and district content standards, the path of influence between the two, and the role of high-stakes tests in state and districts reform efforts. Our findings suggest that alignment had multiple meanings and that state standards had differential utility to districts, ranging from helpful to benign to nuisance. This wide variability was influenced by the nature of the standards themselves, the state vision of alignment and local control, districts' own engagement and commitment to professional development, and student performance on high-stakes tests. We explore implications for the future of content standards as the cornerstone of standards-based reform and argue that states must promote district ownership and expand accountability if state content standards are to have any relevance for local efforts to reform teaching and learning.

During the 1990s, a new policy hypothesis focusing on the quality of teaching to provide a high-leverage means for improving student achievement began to gain currency. Based on interview, observation, survey, and record data collected at the state, district, and school levels over a five-year time period, the study offers a look at how the San Diego school district developed an aggressive set of policies to improve instruction. The research examines how the district consolidated and redirected resources, redesigned the district office as well as work in schools, and mediated and leveraged state policy to further its reform agenda. Among key reform strategies were: (1) Overhaul of recruitment, hiring, placement, and evaluation to recruit and retain high-quality teachers and principals in the district, while weeding out weak staff members; (2) Significant investment in intensive professional development, including institutes, workshops and on-site coaching in every school, focused initially on developing teachers' and principals' expertise in literacy instruction, and later branching out into mathematics, science, and other subjects; (3) Redesign of administration, replacing area superintendents with Instructional Leaders working closely with principals on improving the quality of teaching in each building and charging principals with focused evaluation and support of instruction; (4) Reallocation of resources to downsize the central office, consolidate fragmented programs and pots of money, and focus resources on classroom work; (5) More centralized approach to providing curriculum and teaching guidance based on research on learning and teaching, including the development of special courses and district-wide strategies for literacy development as well as aspects of mathematics and science instruction; and (6) Effort to develop a culture and shared expertise to enable professional accountability and to redefine the state's accountability processes to support instruction without punishing students. The study documents gains in student achievement and transformations of teaching practices, especially in San Diego's elementary and middle schools in association with these policies. Schools and students that benefited most from the changes were often those that were previously lowest-achieving. Schools that were most bureaucratically organized with the fewest opportunities for collaboration among faculty had more difficulty using new resources to transform instruction. The study also documents the difficulties of managing the politics and implementation of a coherent approach to change in a large district with an established culture of decentralization located in a state with a piecemeal, sometimes conflicting, menu of reforms. Looking at the process of school change from both the "outside in" and the "inside out," the study details how the district and individual schools initiated, coped with, and transformed the many competing policies in the school environment. Finally, the district's more difficult process of seeking to improve high schools and its new round of reforms, just launched as the research was ending, is documented. The report concludes with evidence of substantial transformation in the culture, organization, instruction, and outcomes of San Diego's schools but also with the changing of many members of the leadership team. The future will reveal whether the reforms with be sustained. Four appendixes include funding information, organization charts, student performance information, and school-by-school comparison data (Contains 29 endnotes, 1 figure and 6 tables.)

Contemporary educational thought holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. It is widely believed that schools are plagued by shortages of teachers, primarily due to recent increases in teacher retirements and student enrollments. This report summarizes a series of analyses that have investigated the possibility that there are other factors--tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools--that are behind school staffing problems. The data utilized in this investigation are from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. These data indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to a "revolving door"--where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement. The data show that the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that associated with other factors, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. This report concludes that teacher recruitment programs--traditionally dominant in the policy realm--will not solve the staffing problems of such schools if they do not also address the organizational sources of low teacher retention. The appendix contains: (1) Definitions of Measures of Reasons for Turnover. (Contains 8 figures and 2 tables.)

The failure to ensure that the nation's classrooms are all staffed with qualified teachers is one of the most important problems in contemporary American education. Over the past decade, many panels, commissions, and studies have focused attention on this problem and, in turn, numerous reforms have been initiated to upgrade the quality and quantity of the teaching force. This report focuses on the problem of underqualified teachers in the core academic fields at the 7-12th grade level. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, this analysis examined how many classes are not staffed by minimally qualified teachers, and to what extent these levels have changed in recent years. The data show that while almost all teachers hold at least basic qualifications, there are high levels of out-of-field teaching--teachers assigned to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. Moreover, the data show that out-of-field teaching has gotten slightly worse in recent years, despite a plethora of reforms targeted to improving teacher quality. The report discusses possible reasons for the failure of these reform efforts. My thesis is that, despite the unprecedented interest in and awareness of this problem, there remains little understanding of a key issue--the reasons for the prevalence of underqualified teaching in American schools--resulting thus far in a failure of teacher policy and reform. I conclude by drawing out the lessons and implications of these failures for the prospects of the No Child Left Behind Act to successfully address the problem of underqualified teachers in classrooms in the coming years. (Contains 1 chart, 2 tables and 4 figures.)

School districts have participated in multiple rounds of education reform activity in the past few decades, yet few have made headway on system-wide school improvement. This paper addresses the questions of whether districts matter for school reform progress and what successful "reforming" districts do to achieve system change and to navigate the pitfalls associated with system change efforts. Using multi-level survey data and four-year case studies of three reforming California districts, the paper offers new evidence of district effects on school reform progress and improved student outcomes and develops a picture of a reforming district. The reforming districts featured in this analysis offer instructive exception to conventional wisdom--or myths--about district reform. One myth predicts that teachers and principals will resist a strong district role. Yet, our research provides evidence that a weak central office in fact limits schools' reform progress, while a strong district role is effective and welcomed when it uses a strategic conception of responsibilities and leadership between system levels. A second myth about district reform holds that turnover or personnel "churn" will derail efforts to establish and sustain a consistent reform agenda. While this statement is true in many instances, in two districts studied, turnover in top leadership positions did not trigger significant change in district priorities or norms because planning processes and inclusive communication strategies over time had embedded them in district culture. A third myth asserts that local politics will defeat a serious reform agenda; yet, leaders in each reforming district articulated unambiguous goals and priorities and, with strong board support developed over many years, were able to navigate local political waters and protect a strong district role. Each of the reforming districts studied was a self-conscious "learning organization," investing in system-wide learning--in the central office, in schools, in cross-school teacher networks, and in units such as the business office that typically are excluded from professional development focused on instruction. This research suggests that taking the district system as the "unit of change" is essential to advancing equitable and sustainable reform. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table. Appended are: (1) Teacher Survey Scales; (2) District Administrator Survey Scales; (3) District Reform Indicators: Intercorrelations; and (4) District Demographics and Reform Indicators.)

Persuaded that quality teaching is the most important way to raise student achievement, the new leadership of the San Diego, California schools initiated a focused set of instructional reforms to "jolt" the system from bottom to top beginning in 1998. Interviews of educators at all levels of the system, district-wide surveys of principals and teachers, and case studies of three middle schools developed over a five-year period examine the interaction between the "micro" (classroom) changes and "macro" (top-down) policies that characterize San Diego's efforts. The study, summarized here, examined certain age-old tensions when top-down meets bottom-up: (1) How strategies address both systemwide needs (including equity and quality) and local differences between (and within) schools or districts. These strategies include differences among grade levels, subject matters, teacher distribution and local labor markets, and considerations of income and knowledge distribution, among others, particularly as these affect the capacity or will to implement state and/or district policy; (2) How agents maintain a commitment to locally defined goals in the face of district or state policies aimed at crosscutting, externally defined goals that seem to require redirection; and (3) How policies and agents seeking to redefine professionalism as collective responsibility for knowledge-based practice rather than individual autonomy attend to questions of principled knowledge, local context, and shared authority. The study concludes that, while the path has been rocky, in many respects the district's theory of learning, theory of teaching, and theory of change are succeeding, although to different extents in different parts of the system.

The situation with regards to reading performance in Washington State is similar to that in many other states. Although student performance in reading has improved somewhat over the past four years, too many students continue to fall below state standards. In response to poor test scores and to the outpouring of research on early reading instruction and intervention, the legislature provided extra funds to support beginning reading instruction in K-2 classrooms. While the legislation called for a comprehensive approach to instruction, some public officials and school districts endorsed a focus on phonics, a stance that was consistent with the emphasis in many other states at the time. The situation and response to it begs two critical questions: (1) Does the "solution" fit the problem? and (2) What precisely is the problem? To find out why students fell below standards on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in reading, more than 100 4th grade students from a diverse semi-urban district participated in a series of individual diagnostic reading assessments. In general, these tests provided information on five major components of reading: word identification, phonemic awareness, comprehension, reading fluency, and vocabulary. Information about students' writing ability, home language, and socio-economic status was also collected. The average scores suggest a particular pattern of student performance--one in which students' performance is slightly below grade level in word identification and substantially weaker in comprehension and fluency. However, average scores obscure important individual student differences. These, along with policy implications, are discussed. [This Brief is based on the following CTP Occasional Paper: Buly, Marsha Riddle and Valencia, Sheila. (2003) "Meeting the Needs of Failing Readers: Cautions and Considerations for State Policy."]

This report looks at and identifies emerging trends in the roles that teacher unions play in educational reform and improving the quality of teaching. A description of the efforts of six teacher unions to improve teacher quality within the context of the current systemic reform movement shows a range and depth of union initiatives beyond what is commonly known in policy research. The report highlights organizational strengths of teacher unions, the unique contributions they make to teacher quality, and some of the challenges they face. Two broad conceptions of systemic reform in support of improving teaching quality--triage and tapestry--are presented and contrasted. When educational improvement is understood as a "tapestry" of efforts that requires multiple initiatives in many arenas by many reform players, unions appear to perform several important and unique functions toward improving teacher quality. (Contains 2 tables.)

The study reported in this policy brief focuses on one aspect of unequal distribution of quality teaching--out-of-field placement. In schools serving primarily low-income and/or minority students, out-of-field teaching is an acute problem and occurs even though the causes have little to do with the lack of certified teachers. Rather, school district policies and decisions made by school leadership often create inequalities in teaching quality within schools. Quality teaching has many dimensions, but in order to use large-scale data, this study limits the definition to teachers' education, training, and experience. The first stage of analysis in this study describes statistically the levels of teacher education, certification, experience, and out-of-field placement and the extent to which these levels vary according to school poverty, minority enrollments, and the degree of urbanicity of the schools. The second stage of analysis looks at other factors linking out-of-field teaching to demographic characteristics of the students, to the teacher deficit perspective, and to an organizational perspective. A more advanced statistical analysis is used to analyze the association of various factors with out-of- field teaching at the secondary level, based on a sub-sample of more than 23,000 teachers in grades 7-12 (excluding those working in middle schools). The last stage examines the relationship between the amount of out-of-field teaching and the measures of administrative practices and organizational characteristics, while controlling for the other three independent variables. The study finds that out-of-field teaching is not primarily due to a deficit in either the quality or the quantity of teachers. Rather, it has to do with the manner in which schools are organized and teachers are assigned. Improving the assignment of teachers already employed in the schools could raise teacher quality as a low-cost alternative to other strategies now being used. On the other hand,some of the current reform strategies, such as smaller classes and smaller schools, might work against efforts to reduce out-of-field teaching. (Contains 1 table.)

The study summarized in this policy brief analyzed available data on the financing of teacher professional development in this country. It drew from data gathered in 1992, 1995, and 1998 by two national surveys of public school districts. Overall, expenditures for instructional staff support grew slightly during the 1990s. As a share of total budgets, it increased by one quarter of one percent. However, 23 states reported an increase less than this, and 17 states actually reported a decrease. A few--the District of Columbia, New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, and Wisconsin--increased their expenditures at twice the national average between 1991-92 and 1997-98. Several states decreased their expenditures quite significantly (Kentucky, Hawaii, Oregon, New Jersey, and North Carolina). The per-pupil expenditure increased from $168 to $241, or a 43% increase, but inflation makes this a nominal change. Furthermore, the spending variability within states generally remained stable although some, notably Texas, experienced a dramatic reduction in the variability of spending among its districts. Implications for research and policy are discussed. (Contains 2 tables.) [This Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy (CTP) Brief is based on an article published in The Journal of Education Finance, "School District Spending on Professional Development: Insights Available from National Data (1992-1998)," Summer 2002 (Kieran M. Killeen, David H. Monk, and Margaret L. Plecki).]

The optimum situation for a school system is one in which bureaucratic influences and practices support classroom learning. The study reported in this policy brief examines a transformation toward this state of affairs in the country's eighth largest school district, the 140,000-student San Diego City Schools. An unusual leadership arrangement allowed the district to build and nurture new instructional supports based on research, create significant changes both in the central office and at school sites, and forcefully direct a process that replaced traditions with effective learning practices. San Diego went into policy territory usually avoided by large urban districts. It used the tools of the bureaucracy to craft a district-wide professional learning culture based on research, performance data, and feedback on teaching practice. Its "boom" strategy, the antithesis of the usual incremental efforts to gain buy-in, was followed immediately by specific support structures, giving the leaders a chance to root all parts of the system in common design principles about instruction. Lessons for other large districts are discussed briefly. [This Brief is based on the following CTP Research Report: "San Diego's Big Boom: District Bureaucracy Supports Culture of Learning," January 2002 (Amy Hightower).]

Contemporary educational theory holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate student achievement, especially in disadvantaged schools, is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. Deficits in the quantity of teachers produced and in the quality of preparation prospective teachers receive have long been singled out as primary explanations for underqualified teaching. In this study, I hypothesize that the manner in which schools are organized and in which teachers are utilized can account for as much of the problem of underqualified teaching as do inadequacies in teacher training or the supply of teachers. This analysis specifically focuses on a little recognized source of underqualified teaching--the problem of out-of-field teaching--teachers being assigned by school administrators to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. I use data from the Schools and Staffing Survey--a large, comprehensive, nationally representative survey of teachers conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The results show that while most teachers, even in disadvantaged schools, hold basic qualifications, a significant proportion of these qualified teachers, especially in disadvantaged schools, are assigned to teach classes out of their fields. Data also show that out-of-field teaching is not primarily due to school hiring difficulties resulting from teacher shortages. In contrast, the analysis shows that a number of aspects of the administration and organization of schools are significantly related to out-of-field teaching. For example, school district regulations concerning minimal education requirements for new hires, the quality of principal leadership, the strategies schools use to cope with teacher recruitment and hiring, and average school class sizes all have an independent association with the extent of out-of-field teaching in schools, after controlling for other factors. (Contains 3 figures, 6 tables and 13 endnotes.)

This paper contributes to an emerging body of literature on school districts as active partners in education reform. Using qualitative methods, it details the first three years of a major districtwide initiative in San Diego City Schools as reformers sought to orient central office bureaucracy around an instructional agenda. This paper both describes the major thrusts of the reform, including reactions of participants, and wrestles with the notion that large-scale, systemic change in an entrenched urban district may require strong, even bureaucratic, methods to transition the system into supporting a culture focused on instruction. (Contains 4 endnotes.)