In Covering Professional Development, It’s Not Just the Dollars That Count
says EWA public editor Linda Perlstein

In November, as part of the "You Paid For It" series produced by St. Louis’s Fox 2 News station, a televised report complained about the "Taxpayer Tab" of $30,000 for a group of educators to attend an ASCD conference in California. Nobody came off well: not the ambush-happy reporter or the defensive school system administrator who refused to answer his questions. And the story, frankly, didn’t tell us anything about anything.

But it did point to something very important: In public perception, professional development has become a boondoggle.

We want teacher quality to improve, but do we want districts to spend money to make that happen? Most people would say that depends on the quality of the training. That’s where the Fox story failed. How could we assume the conference was a waste of money if the story contained no information about what the St. Louis teachers and administrators, who came from a 14-school district, learned there, or didn’t?

The school improvement industry is massive, with billions of dollars spent each year. Some of that money goes to people: consulting firms for school system audits and school overhauls, motivational speakers, conferences and coaches for teacher training. Some goes to products: computer-based tools, "manipulatives," the new book everyone has to read and discuss at the next staff meeting. Add to that the business of conferring degrees on aspiring teachers, online and off-, and you’ve got one of the biggest ongoing stories, and budget items, in American education today. Which we aren’t covering.
There are some exceptions—I particularly liked Alec McGillis’s 2004 Baltimore Sun series on peddling educational software—but in general, the media has been weak in exploring who is making money off school improvement, and what kind of impacts these efforts are having. Given the current obsession with teacher quality, professional development is a great place to train our eyes.
Reporters need to be looking at not just how much is spent to send teachers to conferences, but what skills and knowledge they bring back. (In the case of the St. Louis Fox story, I suspect those teachers might have learned a thing or two, given the meatiness of ASCD’s agendas, but I wouldn’t judge one way or the other without far more information.) Reporters should attend the workshops their district cancels school to stage. Read the faddish, required-reading educational leadership books. Sit in on required courses at the local school of education.

If your district is one of the many that spends thousands of dollars on private consultants, ask to tag along as one of those consultants visits a school to evaluate teaching and learning. If you have spent time at that school before, assess whether the lessons the visitor sees reflect what you know to be the norm. See how the consultant makes his or her judgments, what kind of changes are suggested, and whether—months later—any of the recommendations are implemented.

Visit the vendor hall at any educational conference that comes to your town to see what kinds of products are being hawked. Or go to conferences that are held specifically for those in the improvement business. If you are in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of March, for example, check out the Education Industry Association conference, where participants will learn what business opportunities can be made of NCLB reauthorization, dropout prevention and online learning.

Follow not just the money but the politics. Former President Bush adviser Gene Hickok, who was instrumental in the creation of No Child Left Behind, now lobbies on behalf of a coalition of tutoring firms created by the Education Industry Association. He charges that parents don’t take advantage of supplemental services for their children because schools keep the information from them. The EIA boasts on its website that it has "crafted the issue of parent access in a civil rights tone."

Under No Child Left Behind, states are supposed to ensure that when federal funds are used for professional development, the training is of high quality. According to the research—there is, naturally, research on this, which I can point you to if you’re interested—the most effective programs involve collaboration among colleagues, a narrow focus on the classroom and, of course, time. How is your district spending its professional development dollars? What do teachers say about what helps and doesn’t? Are they grumbling about wasted time? Coming back refreshed with new, sustainable ideas?
For a struggling school district, $30,000—the cost of a first-year teacher’s aide and her benefits for a year, perhaps?—could be a small price to pay to bring in some new great curricular practices. Might not.

But viewers in St. Louis may never know.

Linda Perlstein is available to help you. Contact her at 410-539-2464 or mailto:lperlstein@ewa.org.