Case Studies: Overview | Boston | Chicago | Cincinnati | Philadelphia
In the fall of 2007, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) was invited by Philadelphia's School Reform Commission to conduct a Strategic Professional Development Review for the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). The Strategic Professional Development Review is designed to help school districts create a coherent and comprehensive professional development strategy tied to system-wide and school-specific performance goals and needs. The goal of this project with the School District of Philadelphia is to improve teacher and leadership capacity in the district by
- Creating an adequately funded professional development plan that is based on evidence-based metrics of teaching quality and links to a broader human capital strategy.
- Redesigning the current investment in school-based expert support, including clearly defining roles and accountability and providing collaborative planning time to work with teachers.
- Building on current efforts to support new teachers and principals.
Within each of these priorities, there are both immediate and longer-term opportunities for SDP to improve teaching and leadership capacity. ERS' full report provides an overview of the analysis' findings, recommendations, and outcomes, which are discussed in more detail below.
Findings
The contextual challenges the district faces in improving teaching quality and leadership capacity are listed below.
Low and Unstable Funding
Funding for professional development (PD) initiatives is relatively low compared to other districts ERS has studied, totaling 2.8% of the operating budget or $6K per teacher.
- SDP relies heavily on non-permanent revenue sources, which comprise 23% of all spending on PD initiatives.
- While SDP devoted significant contractual teacher time for professional development in 2007-08 (five full days and 11 half days), this commitment was not sustained in 2008-09.
Limited Understanding and Tracking of Key Teacher and Leadership Needs
SDP does not systematically measure, collect, and/or use evidence-based data on teaching, leadership, and school capacity to determine PD needs or to allocate PD resources.
- Even by traditional measures of teaching and leadership capacity, SDP has significant need for a strategic PD plan: 17% of teachers have three or fewer years experience; 28% of teachers are unqualified by SDP's definition; 29% of principals have three or fewer years of experience as an SDP principal.
Constraints on Flexibility of Resource Use
- Only 15% of PD resources are fully flexible.
- Teacher union contract provisions around school schedules and teachers' salary, time, and responsibilities impact the effectiveness of current resource use.
Recommendations
ERS recommended three priority areas for professional development restructuring (which mirror the goals above), and ten opportunities available to SDP within these priority areas. For each opportunity, ERS identified key areas for additional analysis and some implications for practice and implementation.
Create an adequately funded PD plan that is based on evidence-based metrics of teacher quality and links to a broader human capital management strategy.
- Create and implement a multi-year professional development plan that aligns with district priorities and supports a district-wide strategic plan.
- Implement practices to measure, collect, and disseminate evidence-based metrics on teaching quality to inform professional development priorities and related career and staffing decisions.
- Create a comprehensive human capital management strategy that supports teacher and leadership professional development by focusing on staffing equity, career lattice, evaluation, and compensation structures.
- Increase investment in effective strategies, including school-based expertise and new teacher and principal support, focusing on more permanent and stable funding sources.
Revamp the current investment in school-based expert support, including clearly defining roles and accountability, and providing collaborative planning time to work with teachers.
- Improve effectiveness of school-based expertise investment by redefining coach and lead teacher job responsibilities and tightening selection and accountability.
- Focus scarce resources on high-priority areas such as literacy and math.
- Align the type and amount of professional development support with school need and capacity, while holding schools accountable for effective use.
- Create regular time during the school day and year for teachers to work collaboratively, and with school-based experts, to improve practice.
Build on current efforts to support new teachers and principals.
- Improve implementation of new teacher support by more closely aligning resources and need.
- Ensure stability of principal pipeline program and expand support for new principals.
ERS helped SDP strengthen its professional development program by providing concrete ways for SDP to improve teaching quality and leadership capacity. SDP has incorporated these priorities into a strategic professional development plan that focuses on both short- and long-term goals. In addition, The Education First Compact and the Cross City Campaign have led the development of a teaching quality and equity platform, Effective Teaching for All Children: What It Will Take. The platform suggests that the district adopt many recommendations from ERS' Strategic Professional Development Review.
After the completion of the professional development project in August 2008, ERS was hired by the School Reform Commission to work with SDP around a funding analysis in an effort to review the district process for creating school budgets. As a result of that work, district leaders now understand the nature and causes of resource differences and are moving forward with funding system reform that addresses these challenges and increases the transparency of the budgeting process.