Teacher Quality
Sustained Coordination among Key Federal Education Programs Could Enhance State Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality Gao ID: GAO-09-593 July 6, 2009Policymakers and researchers have focused on improving the quality of our nation's 3 million teachers to raise the achievement of students in key academic areas, such as reading and mathematics. Given the importance of teacher quality to student achievement and the key role federal and state governments play in supporting teacher quality, GAO's objectives included examining (1) the extent that the U.S. Department of Education (Education) funds and coordinates teacher quality programs, (2) studies that Education conducts on teacher quality and how it provides and coordinates research-related assistance to states and school districts, and (3) challenges to collaboration within states and how Education helps address those challenges. GAO interviewed experts and Education officials, administered surveys to officials at state educational agencies and state agencies for higher education in the fall of 2008, and conducted site visits to three states.
Education allocates billions of federal dollars for teacher quality improvement efforts through many statutorily authorized programs that nine offices administer. Education officials said these offices share information with one another as needed, and from time to time Education has established and completed broader collaborative efforts. Yet, GAO found little sustained coordination and no strategy for working systematically across program lines. Education also has not described how it will coordinate crosscutting teacher quality improvement activities intended to support its goal of improving student achievement in its annual performance plan. Our previous work has identified the use of strategic and annual plans as a practice that can help enhance and sustain collaboration. Without clear strategies for sustained coordination, Education may be missing key opportunities to leverage and align its resources, activities, and processes to assist states, school districts, and institutions of higher education improve teacher quality. Education has conducted evaluations for some of its teacher quality programs and has awarded grants to researchers for a variety of research on teacher quality interventions, which are intended to inform policymakers and educators about program operations and which programs or interventions are having an impact. While evaluations have been done or are under way for about two-fifths of these programs, little is known about whether most of the programs are achieving their desired results. Education provides information from evaluations and also from research through the Internet and a system of regional and national providers. These providers also either conduct or synthesize research and provide assistance mainly to states and school districts. These providers coordinate among themselves and with one another in various ways. State agency officials reported through our surveys that limited resources and incompatible data systems were the greatest challenges to their collaborative efforts to improve teacher quality. State officials reported that data systems could be used to inform teacher quality policy efforts by linking student and teacher data, or linking data from kindergarten through 12th grade and the postsecondary education systems. To help address these challenges, Education provides some financial support and other assistance. For example, one $65 million program that helps states develop statewide data systems also received another $250 million in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Also, the act requires states to report on the progress they are making toward linking statewide data systems that allow matching of individual student achievement to individual teachers. This additional funding could help states defray costs associated with these efforts.
RecommendationsOur recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-09-593, Teacher Quality: Sustained Coordination among Key Federal Education Programs Could Enhance State Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality
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Report to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education,
Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness, Committee on Education and
Labor, House of Representatives:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
July 2009:
Teacher Quality:
Sustained Coordination among Key Federal Education Programs Could
Enhance State Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality:
GAO-09-593:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-09-593, a report to the Chairman of the Subcommittee
on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness, Committee
on Education and Labor, House of Representatives.
Why GAO Did This Study:
Policymakers and researchers have focused on improving the quality of
our nation‘s 3 million teachers to raise the achievement of students in
key academic areas, such as reading and mathematics. Given the
importance of teacher quality to student achievement and the key role
federal and state governments play in supporting teacher quality, GAO‘s
objectives included examining (1) the extent that the U.S. Department
of Education (Education) funds and coordinates teacher quality
programs, (2) studies that Education conducts on teacher quality and
how it provides and coordinates research-related assistance to states
and school districts, and (3) challenges to collaboration within states
and how Education helps address those challenges. GAO interviewed
experts and Education officials, administered surveys to officials at
state educational agencies and state agencies for higher education in
the fall of 2008, and conducted site visits to three states.
What GAO Found:
Education allocates billions of federal dollars for teacher quality
improvement efforts through many statutorily authorized programs that
nine offices administer. Education officials said these offices share
information with one another as needed, and from time to time Education
has established and completed broader collaborative efforts. Yet, GAO
found little sustained coordination and no strategy for working
systematically across program lines. Education also has not described
how it will coordinate crosscutting teacher quality improvement
activities intended to support its goal of improving student
achievement in its annual performance plan. Our previous work has
identified the use of strategic and annual plans as a practice that can
help enhance and sustain collaboration. Without clear strategies for
sustained coordination, Education may be missing key opportunities to
leverage and align its resources, activities, and processes to assist
states, school districts, and institutions of higher education improve
teacher quality.
Education has conducted evaluations for some of its teacher quality
programs and has awarded grants to researchers for a variety of
research on teacher quality interventions, which are intended to inform
policymakers and educators about program operations and which programs
or interventions are having an impact. While evaluations have been done
or are under way for about two-fifths of these programs, little is
known about whether most of the programs are achieving their desired
results. Education provides information from evaluations and also from
research through the Internet and a system of regional and national
providers. These providers also either conduct or synthesize research
and provide assistance mainly to states and school districts. These
providers coordinate among themselves and with one another in various
ways.
State agency officials reported through our surveys that limited
resources and incompatible data systems were the greatest challenges to
their collaborative efforts to improve teacher quality. State officials
reported that data systems could be used to inform teacher quality
policy efforts by linking student and teacher data, or linking data
from kindergarten through 12th grade and the postsecondary education
systems. To help address these challenges, Education provides some
financial support and other assistance. For example, one $65 million
program that helps states develop statewide data systems also received
another $250 million in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009. Also, the act requires states to report on the progress they are
making toward linking statewide data systems that allow matching of
individual student achievement to individual teachers. This additional
funding could help states defray costs associated with these efforts.
What GAO Recommends:
GAO recommends that the Secretary of Education implement a strategy for
sustained coordination among program offices. A key purpose would be to
aid information and resource sharing, and strengthen linkages among its
efforts to help improve teacher quality. While Education will consider
forming a cross-program group, it favors short-term, issue-specific
coordination. We continue to believe sustained coordination is needed.
View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-593] or key
components. For more information, contact Cornelia Ashby at (202) 512-
7215 or AshbyC@gao.gov. To view the e-supplement online, click on
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-594SP].
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Background:
Education Funds a Wide Array of Programs Intended to Improve Teacher
Quality and Has Taken Some Steps to Coordinate These Programs on
Occasion:
Offices Administering Education's Teacher Improvement Programs Use a
Variety of Methods to Target Monitoring, and Education Is Beginning to
Implement Mechanisms Intended to Improve and Coordinate These Efforts:
Education Conducts a Variety of Teacher Quality Improvement Studies and
Provides Assistance to States and Districts through Regional and
National Service Providers, Which Coordinate in Various Ways:
States Face Several Challenges in Collaborating Internally to Improve
Teacher Quality; Education Provides Some Assistance to Help Address
These Challenges:
Conclusion:
Recommendation for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
Appendix II: Primary Programs: Twenty-three Programs Providing Funding
Specifically to Improve the Quality of Teachers:
Appendix III: Programs That Support Broad Objectives but Allow or
Require Some Funds to Be Used for Teacher Quality:
Appendix IV: Institute of Education Sciences' Sponsored Research on
Teacher Quality, 2003-2009:
Appendix V: Comments from the U.S. Department of Education:
Appendix VI: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
Tables:
Table 1: Roles and Responsibilities of State and Local Education
Institutions:
Table 2: Principal and Program Offices within Education:
Table 3: Activities Funded by Programs Specifically Focused on Teacher
Quality:
Table 4: Offices That Administer the 23 Programs Focused Primarily on
Teacher Quality:
Table 5: Evaluations of the 23 Programs Specifically Focused on Teacher
Quality:
Figures:
Figure 1: Career Path of Teachers:
Figure 2: Funding Levels of the 23 Programs Specifically Focused on
Teacher Quality:
Figure 3: SEA and SAHE Views of the Usefulness of Education Assistance
Vary:
Figure 4: Challenges to Collaborative Efforts within States to Improve
Teacher Quality:
Abbreviations:
ESEA: Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965:
GPRA: Government Performance and Results Act:
HEA: Higher Education Act:
IES: Institute of Education Sciences:
IHE: Institution of higher education:
K-12: Kindergarten through 12th grade:
NCLBA: No Child Left Behind Act:
OIG: Office of Inspector General:
Recover Act: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:
REL: Regional Educational Laboratories:
SAHE: State agency for higher education:
SEA: State education agency:
STEM: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics:
[End of section]
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
July 6, 2009:
The Honorable Rubén Hinojosa:
Chairman:
Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and
Competitiveness:
Committee on Education and Labor:
House of Representatives:
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Nationwide there are about 3 million teachers employed in approximately
14,000 public school districts with about 89,000 schools. Policymakers,
researchers, and educators have focused on improving the quality of our
nation's teachers in an attempt to raise the achievement of students in
key academic areas, such as reading and mathematics. A variety of
approaches have been taken to improve the quality of teachers,
including focusing on instructional practices. Among these approaches,
improving the qualifications of teachers is a focus of federal policy.
Specifically, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA), which
amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (ESEA), established federal requirements that all teachers of core
academic subjects be "highly qualified." This means teachers must
generally have a bachelor's degree, be fully certified, and demonstrate
their knowledge of the subjects they teach. According to the U.S.
Department of Education (Education), most teachers meet their states'
requirements to be considered highly qualified under ESEA. However, the
percentage of teachers who are not highly qualified is higher for
certain populations of teachers, such as special education teachers and
teachers in high-poverty and high-minority schools.[Footnote 1]
ESEA as well as several other federal statutes, such as the Higher
Education Act and the Education Sciences Reform Act, authorize various
grant programs and other forms of assistance, like research, for
states, school districts, and institutions of higher education to help
individuals meet the teacher qualification requirements as well as
other efforts aimed at improving teacher quality. This funding and
assistance are administered by Education, either directly or indirectly
through state and local entities.
Student access to high-quality teachers may be affected, in part, by
the extent to which the kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) and
higher education systems work together at the federal, state, and local
levels. However, it is unclear how conducive the current configuration
of entities is to these complementary relationships. Given the
importance of teacher quality to student achievement and the role that
the federal and state governments play in this area, you asked us to
address the following questions: (1) To what extent does Education fund
and coordinate teacher quality programs? (2) How does Education target
monitoring of its teacher quality program grantees and coordinate these
efforts? (3) What evaluation and research does Education conduct on
teacher quality, and how does it provide and coordinate research-
related assistance to states and school districts? (4) What are the
challenges to collaboration within states and how does Education
address these challenges?
To conduct our work, we used a variety of methods, including interviews
with Education officials, surveys of states and the District of
Columbia, and site visits in three states. To learn about the major
federal programs supporting teacher quality efforts, we selected
programs from the Guide to U.S. Department of Education Programs 2008
and verified that these were the relevant programs with Education
officials. For each grant program, we reviewed federal laws,
nonregulatory guidance, policies, procedure manuals, and other
documentation, and interviewed officials from a range of Education
offices overseeing teacher quality programs to determine how they
coordinate program efforts as well as how they monitor grantees. We
also interviewed officials from a selection of relevant Education-
funded research organizations and related assistance providers at the
regional and national levels to understand how Education funds and
supports efforts to improve teacher quality. To learn about the
specific areas of teacher quality that state agencies are focusing on
and the challenges to collaboration within their states,[Footnote 2] we
administered two surveys between August and November 2008--one to heads
of state educational agencies and another to heads of state agencies
for higher education in states and the District of Columbia using self-
administered, electronic questionnaires posted on the Internet.
[Footnote 3] We received a 94 percent response rate for the state
educational agency survey and a 96 percent response rate for the state
agency for higher education survey. We also conducted site visits to
three states--Louisiana, New Jersey, and Oregon--that were selected
based on their having initiatives that focus on teacher quality, such
as coordinating bodies that are intended to bridge the K-12 and higher
education systems,[Footnote 4] and on diversity in terms of geographic
location, population, and amount of federal teacher quality program
funding. We met with state officials in each state and, to understand
the local perspective, we met with officials in at least one school
district and two universities in each state. A more detailed
explanation of our scope and methodology can be found in appendix I.
The surveys and a more complete tabulation of aggregated results can be
viewed at GAO-09-594SP.
We conducted our work from February 2008 through July 2009 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those
standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that
the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and
conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Background:
Research points to teacher quality as an important school-level factor
influencing student learning and ultimately preparing children for
their futures as citizens and workers in a knowledge-based economy.
However, efforts to improve the quality of teachers face several
challenges. One challenge is a lack of consensus about what makes
teachers effective. Even though research demonstrates that some
teachers affect their students' academic growth more than other
teachers, research has not categorically identified the specific
indicators of teacher quality, such as the characteristics, classroom
practices, and qualifications that are most likely to improve student
learning.[Footnote 5] Some researchers have shown that with the
exception of a few factors, they cannot state, with a strong degree of
certainty and consistency, which aspects of teacher quality matter most
for student learning. Another challenge is the high attrition rates and
shortages of teachers, especially in high-poverty areas. For example,
almost half of teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years of
teaching, and there is an anticipated surge in retirements of teachers
from the baby boom generation. Moreover, research has shown that many
students, especially those in high-poverty and high-minority schools,
have teachers who have limited knowledge of the subjects they teach. In
addition, there are concerns that graduates of teacher education
programs are inadequately prepared to teach to high standards and that
once teachers are in the classroom, training to help remedy this
situation is sporadic and uncoordinated.
While many teachers follow a traditional career path of preparation
followed by ongoing professional development, there are also
alternative career paths. Many prospective teachers receive their
undergraduate degrees through teacher preparation programs administered
by institutions of higher education. Traditional teaching preparation
programs typically include field-based experience, courses in specific
subject matter, and strategies of instruction or pedagogy. Within
institutions of higher education, these prospective teachers generally
learn subject matter content in schools of arts and sciences and learn
pedagogy in schools of education. Under this traditional approach,
prospective teachers must complete all their certification requirements
before beginning to teach. Teachers may also gain certification through
alternative routes designed for prospective teachers who have been out
of the job market (e.g., stay-at-home mothers) or have a career in a
different field and who hold at least an undergraduate degree.
Alternative route candidates receive training needed to meet the
certification requirements of other teachers while teaching in the
classroom. Generally, after completing a traditional or alternative
teacher preparation program, teachers in the classroom participate in
ongoing training or professional development. Training for new and
veteran teachers may differ, with some states and school districts
providing mentoring or induction programs for new teachers. Induction
for new teachers may include district-or school-level orientation
sessions, special in-service training, mentoring by an experienced
teacher, and classroom observation. See figure 1 for an illustration of
the various steps in the career path for teachers.
Figure 1: Career Path of Teachers:
[Refer to PDF for image: illustration]
(1) Preparation of prospective teachers (preservice):
* Recruiting prospective teachers into the field;
* Traditional or alternative programs:
– Training in pedagogy;
– Acquisition of subject matter knowledge;
– Field experiences, including student teaching;
Service providers: Institutions of higher education and/or alternative
route programs.
(2) Certification and continuing training for new practicing teachers:
* Initial license or professional license;
* Mentoring or induction program during first years of teaching;
Service providers: States, districts, and institutions of higher
education.
(3) Ongoing professional training for practicing teachers (in-service):
* Professional development courses;
* Advanced certification;
* License renewal;
Service providers: States, districts, institutions of higher education,
and other providers.
Source: GAO analysis, Art Explosion (images).
[End of figure]
Entities at the local, state, and federal levels each play a role in
the preparation and ongoing professional development training of
teachers. The roles and responsibilities of these entities sometimes
overlap (see table 1). For example, about half of alternative teacher
certification programs are administered by institutions of higher
education, and school districts, state educational agencies (SEA), and
other entities can also offer alternative routes to certification.
Table 1: Roles and Responsibilities of State and Local Education
Institutions:
Responsible entity for each activity[A]:
Education activity: Legal and administrative responsibility for state
education system;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Check];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Recruitment;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Check];
School district: [Check];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Hiring;
State educational agency: [Empty];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Compensation;
State educational agency: [Empty];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Retention;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Certification;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Empty];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Classroom teacher training;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Check];
Institution of higher education: [Check];
School district: [Check];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Teacher assignments;
State educational agency: [Empty];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Teacher evaluations;
State educational agency: [Empty];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Empty];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Alternative routes to certification;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Check];
School district: [Check];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Traditional routes to certification;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Check];
School district: [Empty];
School: [Empty].
Education activity: Mentoring or induction;
State educational agency: [Check];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Empty];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Check];
School: [Check].
Education activity: Academic program approval at public institutions of
higher education;
State educational agency: [Empty];
State agency for higher education[B]: [Check];
Institution of higher education: [Empty];
School district: [Empty];
School: [Empty].
Sources: Education, Congressional Research Service, and state education
sources.
[A] The roles and responsibilities of each entity may vary from state
to state depending on the school governance system; for example, some
states delegate more control to the local level than others do.
[B] State agencies for higher education have varied levels of formal
authority, such as authority for academic programs and budget, over
public institutions of higher education.
[End of table]
State agencies for higher education (SAHE)--also referred to as the
board of regents or the department, commission, or council for
postsecondary or higher education--can also play a role in teacher
quality. These agencies oversee state institutions of higher education
where most teachers are trained. SAHEs generally approve of new
academic programs at institutions of higher education and some may have
budgetary authority.
School districts, institutions of higher education, and states collect
and report data, which include tracking teachers' professional
development hours, maintaining records of certified teachers, tracking
student test scores and graduation rates, as well as producing teacher
supply and demand studies. These and other data are intended to inform
efforts such as improving schools, reducing student achievement gaps,
and tracking the highly qualified status of all teachers. To make
better use of these data, many states are putting in place longitudinal
data systems that link data, such as student test scores and enrollment
patterns, of individuals or groups of students over time. In addition,
many states are using or have interest in using growth models--a term
that refers to a variety of methods for tracking changes in a variable
over time--to measure progress for schools and for student groups or
individual students. For example, one type of model (known as a value-
added model) measures students' gains from previous test scores. GAO
has reported that states with a longitudinal data system will be better
positioned to implement a growth model than they would have been
without it.[Footnote 6]
The federal government plays an important role in education.
Education's mission is, among other things, to ensure equal access to
education and promote educational excellence throughout the nation by
supporting state and local educational improvement efforts, as well as
improving coordination and management of federal education programs.
For example, Education provides financial assistance through various
formula and competitive grant programs. Formula grants allocate federal
funds to states or school districts in accordance with a distribution
formula prescribed by statute or administrative regulation. Competitive
grants are awarded through a competitive process, whereby grant
applications are reviewed according to published selection criteria and
legislative and regulatory requirements established for the program.
Education has discretion to determine which applications best address
the program requirements and are thus worthy of funding. In addition,
Education monitors and conducts activities related to the particular
program and grantees receiving these funds. Education has eight
principal offices responsible for specific program areas. These
principal offices award and manage all grant programs for that program
area. In addition, each principal office contains several program
offices that administer the day-to-day activities of one or more grant
programs, such as those authorized in Title I of ESEA (see table 2).
Thirty-two program offices manage about 150 grant programs
departmentwide.
Table 2: Principal and Program Offices within Education:
Principal office: Office of English Language Acquisition;
Program offices:
* Continuation and Professional Grants Division.
Principal office: Institute of Education Sciences;
Program offices:
* National Center for Education Research;
* National Center for Special Education Research;
* National Center for Education Statistics.
Principal office: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education;
Program offices:
* Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs;
* School Support and Technology Programs;
* Impact Aid Programs;
* Student Achievement and School Accountability;
* Office of Migrant Education;
* Office of Indian Education.
Principal office: Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools;
Program offices:
* Center for School Preparedness;
* Drug-Violence Prevention-State Programs;
* Drug-Violence Prevention-National Programs;
* Health, Mental Health, Environmental Health and Physical Education;
* Character and Civic Education;
* Policy and Cross-Cutting Programs.
Principal office: Office of Innovation and Improvement;
Program offices:
* Improvement Programs;
* Fund for the Improvement in Education;
* Parental Options and Information;
* Teacher Quality Programs;
* Technology in Education Programs.
Principal office: Office of Postsecondary Education;
Program offices:
* Higher Education Preparation and Support Service;
* Institutional Development and Undergraduate Education Service;
* International Education Programs Service;
* Teacher and Student Development Programs Service;
* Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.
Principal office: Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services;
Program offices:
* National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research;
* Rehabilitation Services Administration;
* Office of Special Education Programs.
Principal office: Office of Vocational and Adult Education;
Program offices:
* Adult Education and Literacy Division;
* Academic and Technical Education Division;
* Policy Research and Evaluation Staff.
Source: Education.
[End of table]
A goal of ESEA is improving student achievement so that all students
will be proficient in math and reading by 2014. To accomplish this
goal, Education has established a series of strategic objectives that
include improving teacher quality.[Footnote 7] To assess its progress
in meeting this objective, Education has established performance
measures in its strategic plan. These measures all relate to having
highly qualified teachers in core academic classes at elementary and
secondary schools, including low-and high-poverty schools. These
measures are also included in Education's annual performance plan.
These plans are intended to provide a direct linkage between an
agency's longer-term goals (as defined in the strategic plan) and what
its managers and staff are doing on a day-to-day basis.
A number of federal laws govern teacher quality. With the 2001
reauthorization of ESEA, which requires public school teachers to be
highly qualified in every core academic subject they teach, the federal
government established specific criteria for teachers.[Footnote 8]
Title I of ESEA requires every state and school district receiving
Title I funds to develop and submit a plan for how it intends to meet
the teacher qualification requirements, which is part of a broader plan
outlining how it will meet other requirements of the act such as those
requiring challenging academic content and student achievement
standards. In addition, the state plan must establish each district's
and school's annual measurable objectives for increasing the number of
teachers meeting qualification requirements and receiving high-quality
professional development with the goal of ensuring that all teachers
met the requirements by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. While
there is evidence that most teachers meet their states' requirements to
be considered highly qualified, schools and school districts with high
student poverty rates have generally had particular difficulty
attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers; as a result, their
students are often assigned to teachers with less experience,
education, and skills than those who teach other students.
As GAO has reported, Title II of ESEA provides states and districts
with funding to help them implement various initiatives for raising
teacher and principal qualifications.[Footnote 9] In addition, other
federal laws that authorize programs intended to influence teacher
quality include the following:
* The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is the primary
federal law addressing the educational needs of students with
disabilities. The act, as amended, cross-references the ESEA "highly
qualified" teacher definition, but unlike ESEA, this act requires that
all special education teachers--not just those teaching core subjects-
-must meet certain requirements.
* The Higher Education Act (HEA), as amended by the Higher Education
Opportunity Act, authorizes most of Education's programs targeted to
postsecondary education. Specifically, the act established
discretionary grants to prepare prospective teachers and accountability
requirements for teacher preparation programs and states.[Footnote 10]
For example, it requires annual reporting on the quality of traditional
and alternative teacher preparation programs, including the efforts of
institutions of higher education to increase the number of prospective
teachers teaching in high-need areas and being responsive to the needs
of school districts.[Footnote 11]
* The Education Sciences Reform Act is intended to strengthen the
principal education research, statistics, and evaluation activities of
Education. Within Education, it established the Institute of Education
Sciences, which has a mission to provide reliable information about the
condition and progress of education in the United States, educational
practices that support learning and improve achievement, and the
effectiveness of federal and other education programs.
Education Funds a Wide Array of Programs Intended to Improve Teacher
Quality and Has Taken Some Steps to Coordinate These Programs on
Occasion:
Over a third of the programs that Education administers support efforts
to improve teacher quality. Many of these statutorily authorized
programs supporting teacher quality are intended to specifically
support teacher quality activities, such as professional development
training for teachers already serving in the classroom; the remaining
programs support teacher quality activities but do so in pursuit of
other program purposes or goals. Education officials said they have
taken some steps to share information among the multiple offices
administering these programs and have established and completed broader
collaborative efforts on occasion.
Education Administers 56 Programs Supporting Efforts to Improve Teacher
Quality, Especially for Local Efforts to Train Existing Teachers:
In fiscal year 2009, Education administered 56 statutorily authorized
programs that support efforts to improve teacher quality. Of these 56
programs, Education allocated about $4.1 billion to 23 programs that
have, as a specific purpose, improving teacher quality, including
increasing the number of highly qualified teachers in the classroom.
The remaining 33 programs do not have the primary purpose of improving
teacher quality and focus on other program goals or purposes, such as
increasing student access to institutions of higher education.
Nevertheless, these programs allow or require some portion of program
funding to be used for teacher quality activities. Education officials
said that they do not collect specific data on the amount of funding
going to teacher quality activities for most of these programs.
Appendixes II and III provide information about each of the programs.
Twenty-three Programs Specifically Focus on Teacher Quality:
Of the 23 programs that specifically focus on improving teacher
quality, a majority of the funds (approximately $3 billion) are
concentrated in one program, the Improving Teacher Quality State Grant
program. This formula grant is allocated primarily to school districts
and may be used for a wide variety of activities to improve teacher
quality, such as providing funding for teacher preparation, training
for teachers already in the classroom, and recruitment.[Footnote 12] In
addition, states may retain approximately 5 percent of these program
funds to support teacher quality efforts--generally split evenly
between state educational agencies (to support state-level teacher
initiatives) and state agencies for higher education (to support
partnerships between institutions of higher education and high-need
school districts that work to provide training to teachers already
teaching in the classroom).
As shown in figure 2, 16 of the 23 programs specifically focused on
teacher quality each received less than $50 million. Nearly all of
these programs are competitive grants, and each has its own policies,
applications, award competitions, reporting requirements, and, in some
cases, federal evaluations. Furthermore, these programs are focused to
support specific activities, such as improving teachers' knowledge and
understanding of American history, recruiting midcareer professionals
to teaching, or training existing teachers in music, dance, and drama.
Figure 2: Funding Levels of the 23 Programs Specifically Focused on
Teacher Quality:
[Refer to PDF for image: illustrated vertical bar graph]
Fiscal year 2009 program funding levels (Dollars in millions):
Over $500 million (1):
* Improving Teacher Quality State Grants;
Total funding level: $2,948.
Between $51 million and $500 million (6):
* Enhancing Education Through Technology;
* Mathematics and Science Partnership;
* Teaching American History;
* Early Reading First;
* Teacher Incentive Fund;
* Special Education–Personnel Development to Improve Services and
Results for Children with Disabilities;
Total funding level: $868.
Between $15 million and $50 million (7):
* Teacher Quality Partnership Grant;
* Special Education–State Personnel Development Grant;
* English Language Acquisition National Professional Development;
* Transition to Teaching;
* Striving Readers;
* National Writing Project;
* School Leadership Program;
Total funding level: $262.
Less than $15 million (9):
* Troops-to-Teachers;
* Ready-to-Teach;
* Advanced Certification or Advanced Credentialing;
* Indian Education Professional Development;
* Professional Development for Arts Educators;
* Territories and Freely Associated States Education;
* Academies for American History and Civics;
* Teachers for Competitive Tomorrow Program–Baccalaureate STEM and
Foreign Language Teacher Training;
* Teachers for Competitive Tomorrow Program–Masters STEM and Foreign
Language Training;
Total funding level: $60.
Sources: GAO analysis of documents obtained from and discussions with
Education.
Note: Education's fiscal year 2010 budget request proposes eliminating
2 of these 23 programs: the Ready-to-Teach program and the Academies
for American History and Civics program. In fiscal year 2009, both
programs are funded at less than $15 million. Education proposes
eliminating the Ready-to-Teach program because it limits eligibility
only to telecommunications providers and not additional professional
development providers that utilize other delivery methods, such as the
Internet and other digital media platforms. Education proposes
eliminating the American History and Civics program because the program
is considered too small to leverage funding effectively and Education
has minimal evidence that the program has a positive impact on
participating students and teachers. Further, Education states that
school districts and other entities that wish to implement history and
civics training programs can use funds provided under other federal
programs, such as the Teaching American History program.
[End of figure]
As illustrated in table 3, most of the 23 programs allow funds to be
used for professional development training for teachers already in the
classroom, but many allow grantees to use funding for a range of
activities throughout a teacher's career path, such as teacher
preparation, teacher recruitment or retention, certification or
licensure, and induction or mentoring.
Table 3: Activities Funded by Programs Specifically Focused on Teacher
Quality:
Program: Improving Teacher Quality State Grants;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Check].
Program: Mathematics and Science Partnerships;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Enhancing Education Through Technology Program;
Recruitment or retention:
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: National Writing Project;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Advanced Certification or Advanced Credentialing;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Empty];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Troops-to-Teachers;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Empty];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Early Reading First;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Striving Readers;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Teacher Incentive Fund;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Empty];
Compensation: [Check].
Program: Territories and Freely Associated States Education Grant
Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Indian Education Professional Development Grants[C];
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: School Leadership Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Check].
Program: Teaching American History;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Transition to Teaching Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Empty];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Professional Development for Arts Educators;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Ready-to-Teach Grant Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Academies for American History and Civics;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: English Language Acquisition Professional Development Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Empty];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Special Education–Personnel Development to Improve Services
and Results for Children with Disabilities;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Special Education–State Personnel Development Grant Program;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Teacher Quality Partnership Grants;
Recruitment or retention: [Check];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Masters STEM and
Foreign Language Teacher Training;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Empty];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Empty];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Program: Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Baccalaureate
STEM and Foreign Language Teacher Training;
Recruitment or retention: [Empty];
Teacher preparation[A]: [Check];
Certification or licensure: [Check];
Induction or mentoring[B]: [Check];
Professional development: [Check];
Compensation: [Empty].
Source: Analysis of statutes authorizing these programs and Education
documents.
[A] The category "teacher preparation" may include teaching residency
programs. A teaching residency program for prospective teachers is a
school-based teacher preparation program for recent college graduates
and midcareer professional s who are not teaching. These prospective
teachers teach alongside a mentor teacher and receive concurrent
instruction in the teaching of a content area in which the teacher will
become certified.
[B] Induction for new teachers might include district-or school-level
orientation sessions, special in-service training, mentoring by an
experienced teacher, classroom observation, and formative assessment.
[C] Although one of the purposes stated in the statute authorizing the
Indian Education Professional Development Grants program is to provide
professional development, the focus of the fiscal year 2009 grant
competition is on preservice or teacher preparation.
[End of table]
Thirty-three Programs Allow or Require Portions of Funds to Be Used for
Teacher Quality Activities but Have Other Program Goals or Purposes:
The remaining 33 programs allow or require portions of their funds to
be used for teacher quality activities, but their primary focus is not
on improving the quality of teachers. Education does not routinely
track spending on teacher quality activities for nearly all of these
programs[Footnote 13]. Specifically, only 3 of these 33 programs have
collected information about the portion of funds spent on teacher-
related activities. For example, according to Education, ESEA Title I,
Part A, which provides support to programs designed to address the
needs of educationally disadvantaged children, also provided
approximately $1.9 billion (or about 8 percent of Title I, Part A
funds) for spending on training for existing teachers in fiscal year
200[Footnote 14]9. According to Education, between fiscal years 2000
and 2008, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education-
Comprehensive Program--a program supporting innovative reform projects
for improving the quality of postsecondary education and increasing
student access--awarded about $82 million in grants for teacher quality-
related activities. For example, in fiscal year 2007 Western Oregon
University received a grant totaling $685,685 to support a statewide
collaboration of institutions of higher education to build the capacity
of elementary grades math and science instruction. Education officials
said the department does not collect data on expenditures for most
other programs in this category.
In addition to the funds provided through the regular fiscal year 2009
appropriations for Education, the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) provides additional funds to several of
these 56 teacher quality programs for fiscal year 2009. For example,
$200 million in Recovery Act funds was provided to the Teacher
Incentive Fund, which is a competitive grant program intended to help
states and school districts design performance-based teacher
compensation systems that incorporate student performance as a factor
in assessing the effectiveness of practicing teachers.[Footnote 15]
Moreover, the Recovery Act requires that the Secretary of Education set
aside $5 billion for State Incentive Grants, referred to by Education
as the Reach for the Top program, and the establishment of an
Innovation Fund. Education is providing most of this $5 billion of
funding to states for efforts that could include making improvements in
evaluating teacher effectiveness as well as ensuring that all students
have access to highly qualified and effective teachers. Appendix II
contains information on the 23 programs receiving Recovery Act funds.
Education Has Taken Some Steps to Coordinate These Programs and
Completed Broader Collaborative Efforts on Occasion:
According to Education officials, the multiple offices administering
the 23 programs specifically focused on teacher quality coordinate with
one another, and on occasion the department has established and
completed broader collaborative efforts. Federal support for teacher
quality is dispersed across a wide array of grant programs in
Education, with nine program offices responsible for administering them
(see table 4). Education's program office officials said their offices
take some steps to coordinate with one another, such as participating
in informal discussions to share ideas, attending and presenting at one
another's conferences, and reviewing one another's draft grant
announcements. In addition, officials said that they have formed task
groups to address broader issues and phase them out once their tasks
are complete. For example, in early 2003, Education formed a teacher
quality policy group under the auspices of the Office of the
Undersecretary of Education to coordinate multiple offices' efforts
related to ESEA implementation of the highly qualified teacher
requirements. Nevertheless, in the past, GAO's and Education's
Inspector General's findings have shown that Education's programs could
better plan and coordinate to, among other things, leverage expertise
and resources as well as guide consideration of different options for
addressing potential problems among the current configuration of
programs.[Footnote 16] While Education's collaborative efforts have
occurred intermittently, several Education officials told us that they
see value in routinely working together to exchange information across
the program offices. Officials we spoke with noted that this type of
sustained coordination required support and attention from senior
departmental officials, such as formalizing the responsibilities and
roles of a working group and its members. Given that the Recovery Act
provides funds to improve teacher effectiveness, Education officials
said that this presents an opportunity to coordinate Education's
resources to improve teacher quality. Specifically, Education officials
said that they recently have initiated coordination efforts to address
the Recovery Act requirements related to teachers by forming a team
made up of representatives from several program offices and led by the
Secretary's advisors.
Table 4: Offices That Administer the 23 Programs Focused Primarily on
Teacher Quality:
Principal offices[A]: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education;
Program offices: School Support and Technology Programs;
Teacher quality programs:
* Territories and Freely Associated States Education Grant Program;
* Enhancing Education Through Technology Program.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education;
Program offices: Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality;
Teacher quality programs:
* Striving Readers;
* Improving Teacher Quality State Grants;
* Mathematics and Science Partnerships;
* Teacher Incentive Fund;
* Early Reading First.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education;
Program offices: Office of Indian Education;
Teacher quality programs:
* Indian Education Professional Development Grants.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Innovation and Improvement;
Program offices: Teacher Quality Programs;
Teacher quality programs:
* Advanced Certification or Advanced Credentialing;
* School Leadership Program;
* Teaching American History;
* National Writing Project;
* Transition to Teaching Program;
* Troops-to-Teachers;
* Academies for American History and Civics;
* Teacher Quality Partnership Grants[B].
Principal offices[A]: Office of Innovation and Improvement;
Program offices: Improvement Programs;
Teacher quality programs:
* Professional Development for Arts Educators.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Innovation and Improvement;
Program offices: Technology in Education Programs;
Teacher quality programs:
* Ready-to-Teach Grant Program.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Postsecondary Education;
Program offices: Teacher and Student Development Programs Service;
Teacher quality programs:
* Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Baccalaureate STEM and
Foreign Language Teacher Training;
* Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Masters STEM and Foreign
Language Teacher Training.
Principal offices[A]: Office of English Language Acquisition;
Program offices: Continuation and Professional Grants Division;
Teacher quality programs:
* English Language Acquisition Professional Development Program.
Principal offices[A]: Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services;
Program offices: Office of Special Education Programs;
Teacher quality programs:
* Special Education-State Personnel Development Grant Program;
* Special Education-Personnel Development to Improve Services and
Results for Children with Disabilities.
Source: GAO analysis of Education documentation.
[A] A principal office is an organizational unit of Education
responsible for administering grant programs. A program office is a
subunit of a principal office that conducts the daily work of
administering grant programs.
[B] As of fiscal year 2009, the Teacher Quality Partnership Program was
moved from the Office of Postsecondary Education to the Office of
Innovation and Improvement. However, the Office of Postsecondary
Education will continue overseeing all grants awarded prior to fiscal
year 2009.
[End of table]
Education officials said that although several teacher quality programs
support similar activities, differing statutory requirements can hamper
coordination among the programs. Specifically, some officials said that
statutory barriers, such as programs with differing definitions for
similar populations of grantees, create an impediment to coordination.
For example, Education officials told us that the Mathematics and
Science Partnerships grant and the Improving Teacher Quality State
(Title II, Part A) Grant to institutions of higher education both
require partnerships that include a "high-need" school district.
However, while the Title II, Part A program's authorizing legislation
contains a specific statutory definition of a high-need school
district, the Mathematics and Science Partnerships program allows
states to define this term. This may hinder states' ability to
coordinate resources among these initiatives because in most states far
fewer school districts meet the Title II, Part A definition than meet
the definition that the state develops for the Mathematics and Science
Partnerships program.
Education has not described in its annual performance plan how it will
coordinate various crosscutting teacher quality activities supporting
its goal of improving student achievement. Our previous work has
identified using strategic and annual plans as a practice that can help
enhance and sustain collaboration[Footnote 17]. As indicated in
Education's strategic plan required by the Government Performance and
Results Act (GPRA), one of Education's primary goals is improving
student achievement so that all students will be proficient in math and
reading by 2014. To accomplish this goal, it has established improving
teacher quality as a strategic objective. However, the annual
performance plan neither describes how Education coordinates or will
coordinate its teacher quality efforts nor identifies barriers to such
coordination. GPRA offers a structured means for identifying multiple
programs--within and outside the agency--that are to contribute to the
same or similar goals and for describing coordination efforts to ensure
that goals are consistent and program efforts are mutually reinforcing.
As GAO has previously reported, agencies can strengthen their
commitment to work collaboratively by articulating their efforts in
formal documents, such as in a planning document.[Footnote 18] We have
also reported that uncoordinated program efforts can waste scarce
funds, confuse and frustrate program customers, and limit the overall
effectiveness of the federal effort.[Footnote 19]
Offices Administering Education's Teacher Improvement Programs Use a
Variety of Methods to Target Monitoring, and Education Is Beginning to
Implement Mechanisms Intended to Improve and Coordinate These Efforts:
Officials we spoke with in four principal offices overseeing some of
the teacher quality improvement programs said that they use a variety
of methods and sources of information throughout the life of the grant
process to gain insight into the performance of grantees and to target
monitoring assistance accordingly. To help ensure grantee
accountability for using teacher quality program resources, monitoring
begins with pre-award planning, training, and guidance to potential
grantees and continues through all phases of the award and postaward
processes (i.e., a so-called cradle-to-grave approach). For example,
for the Teaching American History program, program officials said they
provide guidance to applicants and grantees about how to develop
performance measures related to program goals so that Education can
obtain credible information on funded project outcomes from grantees.
For competitive grant programs, officials in the relevant principal
offices we spoke with said they review grantees' annual performance
reports to assess whether grantees' activities are consistent with
planned objectives, with Office of Innovation and Improvement officials
saying they use a standard form to guide their review.
Furthermore, staff from the Office of Elementary and Secondary
Education visit each state at least once every 3 years to monitor state
efforts to meet the teacher qualification requirements and states'
administration of ESEA Title II, Part A Improving Teacher Quality State
Grants. In 2008, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
conducted monitoring visits to 18 states and Puerto Rico, including 2
of our 3 site visit states and provided written monitoring reports on
Education's Web site about these states' implementation of the ESEA
teacher qualification requirements. For example, Education found
instances in 2 of our site visit states of grants being awarded by
state agencies for higher education that included an ineligible
partnership. In 2009 Education officials said they plan to conduct
monitoring visits to 15 other states through June as part of the
department's goal to monitor each state every 3 years. In addition,
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services officials said
they use the results of telephone conversations with grantees,
technical assistance meetings, and conferences to understand grantee
activities.
In addition to these methods of targeting teacher quality program
grantees, senior Education officials said that Education is beginning
to implement risk management mechanisms to help program offices,
including those administering teacher quality programs, better identify
and target grantees not in compliance with grant requirements or not
meeting performance goals. Senior Education officials said that
applying risk management in Education is a relatively new endeavor and
that responsibility rests with individual program offices for
identifying risks confronting each program and for using risk
indicators. These officials said Education's risk management approaches
will continue to evolve as processes mature and lessons are learned.
Given that this endeavor is relatively new and that principal and
program offices tailor their monitoring to the particular teacher
quality program or grantee involved, we found that some of the program
offices are further along in developing risk indicators than others.
For example, the Office of Postsecondary Education has developed an
electronic grants monitoring system using risk-based criteria for its
competitive grants. Officials we spoke with in some of the other
program offices that administer teacher quality programs had not
developed formal risk-based criteria or electronic systems; however, as
described previously, they have a means for identifying and targeting
grantees that may be at risk of noncompliance with grant requirements
or not meeting performance goals.
Education is beginning to implement mechanisms intended to enhance as
well as coordinate these efforts, such as sharing information about
grantees. To coordinate a departmentwide risk-based management
strategy, as well as assist program offices with their monitoring
efforts, Education created the Risk Management Service. This office
provides services to program offices, such as responding to their
inquiries about policy interpretations and monitoring grants. Some
program office officials we spoke with said that the Risk Management
Service alerts them about grantees that are having problems managing
other Education grants.
As part of this effort, senior Education officials described plans for
standardizing departmentwide systems for sharing information about
grantees' management of federal funds and performance. For example,
Education is developing an automated process for enhancing its review
of the findings of financial audits, called single audits, within their
programs.[Footnote 20] As has been done in the past, this information
is shared with teacher quality program managers and others in the
department. Education officials we spoke with who are in several of the
offices overseeing teacher quality programs said they review single-
audit results, as required, to determine whether entities receiving an
Education grant may have compliance or financial management issues. In
addition, officials also said that Education is in the process of
developing a departmentwide electronic tool to help program offices
improve efforts to quantify, evaluate, and report on grantee risk.
Education Conducts a Variety of Teacher Quality Improvement Studies and
Provides Assistance to States and Districts through Regional and
National Service Providers, Which Coordinate in Various Ways:
In addition to providing grants for teacher quality, Education has
conducted evaluations for some of its 23 teacher quality programs,
although little is known about the effectiveness of these programs.
Moreover, Education awards grants to researchers for original research
on teacher quality programs and interventions. Information from the
evaluation and research is provided mainly through various vehicles on
the Internet, and Education directs research and assistance to states
and school districts through a system of regional and national
providers. Education officials reported that these regional and
national providers coordinate to provide this assistance to states and
school districts.
Education Conducts a Variety of Evaluations of Program Operations and
Their Outcomes, but Evaluations Have Been Done or Are Under Way for
about Two-fifths of the Teacher Quality Programs:
Education conducts various types of evaluations, such as process or
implementation, outcome, and impact, which are intended to inform
policymakers, program managers, and educators about program operations,
how well programs are working, and which programs or interventions are
having the greatest impact.[Footnote 21] Officials said that these
evaluations are done in response to congressional mandates, requests
from Education's program offices or management, or proposals developed
by the Institute of Education Sciences.
While evaluations have been done or are under way for about two-fifths
of the teacher quality programs, little is known about the extent to
which most programs are achieving their desired results. Among the 23
programs focusing specifically on teacher quality, Education reported
that it has awarded contracts, totaling about $36.5 million, to
evaluate 9 federal programs, of which 6 have been completed (see table
5). Three of the completed evaluations--those for the Early Reading
First program, Teacher Quality Partnership Grants, and one of two
evaluations of the Mathematics and Science Partnerships program--
provide information about how a program focused on teacher quality is
directly affecting student achievement or how program outcomes could be
indirectly affecting student achievement through their effect on
teacher quality. For example, the impact evaluation of the Early
Reading First program found that providing scientifically based
materials and professional development to teachers had a statistically
significant impact on children's ability to recognize letters of the
alphabet and to associate letters with their sounds, but it did not
have a statistically discernable impact on other aspects of children's
reading or listening skills.[Footnote 22] The outcome evaluation of the
Teacher Quality Partnership Grants found that funded partnerships that
included colleges of education, schools of arts and sciences, and
school districts led to changes in teacher preparation programs and the
development of professional development programs for veteran
teachers.[Footnote 23] The three remaining completed evaluations, which
include a second evaluation for the Mathematics and Science
Partnerships program, are process evaluations that provide information
about program operations, but they do not directly address how the
program is affecting student achievement through improved teacher
quality.
The three evaluations under way are impact or outcome evaluations.
Education officials said that for the remaining 14 programs that do not
have an evaluation under way, evaluations are not planned over the next
3 years. Of these 14 programs, 2 were initially funded in fiscal year
2008 and another 1 in 2005, but the other 11 have been operating for at
least 7 years and have never been evaluated.
According to Education officials, some programs may be difficult to
evaluate. In some cases federal funds are combined with state and local
funds, such as under the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (Title
II, Part A) program, making it difficult to isolate the impact of
federal funds. While the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program
has not been evaluated, Education has examined the implementation of
teacher quality provisions in the ESEA, primarily those related to the
teacher qualification requirements. Moreover, Education officials said
that several of the teacher quality programs are small in terms of
their funding levels and as a result, have few program-associated funds
for evaluation. However, as we have reported in the past, evaluations
can be designed to consider the size of the program and the costs
associated with measuring outcomes and collecting data.[Footnote 24]
Table 5: Evaluations of the 23 Programs Specifically Focused on Teacher
Quality:
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Teaching American
History[A];
Focus of evaluation: To identify (1) the types of activities that
grantees implemented; (2) the content of the activities, including
specific subjects and areas of American history on which projects
focused; and (3) the characteristics and qualifications of teachers
participating in the activities for the first 2 years of the program.
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Transition to Teaching[B];
Focus of evaluation: Interim report examines whether grantees are (1)
increasing the pool of highly qualified teachers by recruiting
nontraditional candidates into teaching; (2) bringing increased
flexibility to the teacher preparation system by encouraging the
creation and expansion of alternative routes or pathways to teacher
certification and lowering barriers of time and cost of preparations
while raising standards and program rigor; and (3) improving the
retention rate of new teachers by supporting mentoring and induction
programs, including a 3-year commitment to high-need schools in high-
need districts.
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Teacher Quality Partnership
Grants;
Focus of evaluation: To determine if partnerships encouraged colleges
and universities to (1) partner with and address the teacher
preparation needs of high-need districts, (2) implement activities to
improve the academic content knowledge of new or veteran teachers, (3)
change student internship component associated with a partnership
effort to improve teacher preparation, and (4) institute accountability
for teacher preparation programs.
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Enhancing Education Through
Technology;
Focus of evaluation: To determine the role that the Enhancing Education
Through Technology program plays, the state priorities and programs
that it supports, and the relationship between state programs that the
program supports, and the relationship between state educational
technology activities and the goals and the purposes of ESEA.
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Early Reading First;
Focus of evaluation: To determine the effects of providing preschools
with funds to provide teachers with focused professional development
and scientifically based methods and materials on children's language
development and emergent literacy.
Programs that have a completed evaluation: Mathematics and Science
Partnerships;
Focus of evaluation: This evaluation describes the participants and
activities of the Mathematics and Science Partnerships projects for
2003-2004 as they began the initial year of program implementation.
Programs currently being evaluated: Striving Readers;
Focus of evaluation: To examine the extent that (1) targeted
interventions improve reading proficiency among struggling adolescent
readers, and (2) schoolwide literacy-throughout-the-curriculum
interventions to improve reading proficiency among secondary students.
Programs currently being evaluated: Special Education-Personnel
Development to Improve Services and Results for Children with
Disabilities;
Focus of evaluation: This evaluation will (1) examine the quality of
materials developed and the services provided by national centers with
funds provided by the program, and (2) examine the use of the grant
funds, qualifications of the faculty hired, and the quality of the
study materials created using the funds. Also it will estimate how many
new students enrolled and how many completed the course.
Programs currently being evaluated: Teacher Incentive Fund;
Focus of evaluation: To determine the degree of success and challenges
to implementing the variety of pay-for-performance systems in the
program and, given adequate implementation, any increases in effective
principal and teacher recruitment and retention in high-need schools
and hard-to-staff subjects.
Programs that have not been evaluated:
* English Language Acquisition National Professional Development
Project;
* Troops-to-Teachers;
* Ready-to-Teach;
* Territories and Freely Associated States Education Grant Program;
* Special Education-State Personnel Development Grant Program;
* Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow: Baccalaureate STEM and Foreign
Language Teacher Training;
* Professional Development for Arts Educators;
* School Leadership Program;
* Indian Education Professional Development Grants;
* Advanced Certification or Advanced Credentialing;
* National Writing Project;
* Academies for American History and Civics;
* Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Masters STEM and Foreign
Language Teacher Training;
* Improving Teacher Quality State Grants.
Source: GAO analysis of Education data.
[A] Another evaluation of Teaching American History is currently under
way.
[B] Transition to Teaching is an interim evaluation.
[End of table]
In addition to the federal program evaluations shown in table 5,
Education evaluates specific interventions intended to improve teacher
quality. For example, Education has conducted or has under way
evaluations on teacher induction programs, teacher preparation
programs, and reading and mathematics professional development and
software programs. Specifically, Education completed studies on the
impact of professional development on teacher practices and student
achievement in early reading as well as on teachers trained through
different routes to certification.[Footnote 25] Moreover, Education and
the National Academy of Sciences completed another study on the
National Board for Professional Standards, which offers advanced-level
certification to teachers.[Footnote 26] Further, Education officials
said that they have 5 other studies under way, such as a study on
moving high-performing teachers to low-performing schools.
Interventions such as teacher induction programs and professional
development are funded under a broad array of teacher quality programs,
such as the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants, the Teacher Quality
Partnership Grants, the Transition to Teaching program, and Mathematics
and Science Partnerships. Education officials overseeing evaluations
said that to inform staff in program offices working on related issues,
they provide briefings on the results of pertinent evaluations. These
briefings include discussions about how the evaluation might be useful
for program improvement.
Education Awards Grants to Researchers to Study Interventions Related
to Teacher Quality to Inform Policymakers and Educators about Their
Impact:
In addition to evaluating federal programs, Education also awards
grants to researchers to conduct studies related to teacher quality
ranging from assessing the effectiveness of reading and mathematics
programs to measuring the relationship between teacher content
knowledge and student achievement. For example, Education sponsors
scientifically rigorous research on strategies for improving the
performance of classroom teachers, 1 of 13 research areas established
by Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES).[Footnote 27]
Between 2003 and 2009, Education awarded almost $160 million in grants
to research institutions for 69 studies focused on teacher quality.
(See appendix IV more information about these studies.)
Education Provides Research and Related Assistance to States and School
Districts through the Internet and a System of Regional and National
Providers:
Education disseminates results from its research to educators and
policymakers mainly through the Internet and a system of regional and
national providers. Overall, while SEAs reported that the assistance
was more useful than SAHEs reported, the results of our survey and
discussions with state officials suggest that most of these services
are targeted to SEAs and school districts rather than higher education
entities. For example, one of the primary Internet vehicles for
disseminating research--the What Works Clearinghouse--was identified by
officials in 24 of the 48 SEAs as moderately to extremely useful, but
only by officials in 15 of the 47 SAHEs that responded to our survey as
moderately to extremely useful, as shown in figure 3. Overseen by IES,
the What Works Clearinghouse provides educators, policymakers,
researchers, and other users with information on what IES considers the
best evidence on the effectiveness of specific interventions. For
example, IES officials told us that the results of research are
synthesized into Practice Guides to make them more usable to
practitioners. Current Practice Guides provide information in areas
such as reducing behavior problems in the classroom and encouraging
girls in math and science.[Footnote 28]
Figure 3: SEA and SAHE Views of the Usefulness of Education Assistance
Vary:
[Refer to PDF for image: horizontal bar graph]
What Works Clearinghouse:
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 24;
SAHE: 15;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 7;
SAHE: 3;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 17;
SAHE: 28.
Doing What Works:
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 16;
SAHE: 10;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 6;
SAHE: 2;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 24;
SAHE: 34.
Regional Educational Laboratories:
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 30;
SAHE: 17;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 4;
SAHE: 2;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 13;
SAHE: 27.
Regional Comprehensive Centers:
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 33;
SAHE: 6;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 5;
SAHE: 4;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 10;
SAHE: 36.
Teacher Quality Content Center
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 21;
SAHE: 5;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 7;
SAHE: 3;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 20;
SAHE: 37.
Institute of Education Sciences Studies:
* Extremely/very/moderately useful:
SEA: 17;
SAHE: 14;
* Slightly/not useful:
SEA: 7;
SAHE: 3;
*Not applicable/or no basis to judge:
SEA: 23;
SAHE: 29.
Source: GAO surveys.
Note: In some cases, respondents do not total 48 for the SEAs and 47
for the SAHEs because not all SEA and SAHE officials responding to the
surveys answered every question.
[End of figure]
Education also disseminates research through another Internet vehicle,
the Doing What Works Web site, which is intended to help teachers make
use of effective teaching practices. Most of the content of Doing What
Works is based on information provided through the What Works
Clearinghouse, such as classroom practices that are distilled from
research contained in the Practice Guides; the site is overseen by the
Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. Only 16 of the
48 SEA and 10 of 47 SAHE officials who responded to our respective
surveys identified the Doing What Works Internet site as moderately to
extremely useful. According to an Education official, these views may
reflect the fact that the site is relatively new, and Education has not
widely publicized it.
Education provides research and research-related assistance on teacher
quality through regional and national service providers, which work
directly with states and school districts. Regional services are
provided through the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (REL) and 16
Regional Comprehensive Centers; national services are provided through
the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. The RELs provide
policymakers and educators with technical assistance, training, and
research that are based on findings from scientifically valid research.
The RELs distill and explain research as well as conduct research to
identify effective programs and to address classroom issues facing the
states, school districts, schools, and policymakers within their
respective regions.[Footnote 29] Among the 48 SEA officials who
responded to our survey, 30 reported that the RELs are moderately to
extremely useful, and 17 of the 47 SAHE officials who responded to our
survey reported that the RELs are moderately to extremely useful.
Education's 16 Regional Comprehensive Centers assist SEAs within their
regions to implement ESEA and to build SEA capacity to help their
districts and schools meet student achievement goals. Unlike the RELs,
the Regional Comprehensive Centers do not conduct research, but they do
identify and synthesize existing research to help SEA officials
understand what information is available to improve their schools and
student achievement, according to Education officials. Among the 48 SEA
officials who responded to our survey, 33 reported Regional
Comprehensive Centers' assistance as moderately to extremely useful,
while only 6 of the 47 SAHE officials who responded to our survey said
that the Regional Comprehensive Centers were moderately to extremely
useful.
The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (one of five
National Content Centers supported by the Office of Elementary and
Secondary Education) assists the 16 Regional Comprehensive Centers by
providing technical assistance in conjunction with their work with the
states.[Footnote 30] Like the Regional Comprehensive Centers, the
National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality does not conduct
original research but provides technical assistance as well as
synthesizes and disseminates scientifically based research on effective
practice and research-based products on teacher quality.
Regional and National Providers Coordinate in Various Ways to Assist
States and Districts:
Regional and national providers coordinate among themselves and with
each other to assist states and districts to improve teacher quality.
For example, REL officials said that RELs coordinate among themselves
to prevent unnecessary duplication of activities among the regions, as
required by their funding agreements with Education. The REL Mid-
Atlantic is responsible for ensuring that there is coordination among
the 10 RELs. In this role, it manages a REL Web site, which includes
information on past and ongoing projects, and it holds regular meetings
among the RELs. Regional Comprehensive Center officials also reported
that they share information among themselves but on a more informal
basis than the RELs.[Footnote 31] One comprehensive center director
reported that the comprehensive center network has several mechanisms
for discussing work with states, including semiannual director meetings
and conferences that are attended by the staff and directors from the
various Regional Comprehensive Centers.
RELs, Regional Comprehensive Centers, and the National Comprehensive
Center on Teacher Quality also coordinate with each other as needed.
For example, an official with the National Comprehensive Center on
Teacher Quality told us that officials often coordinate with the
Regional Comprehensive Centers and the SEAs to provide expertise on
teacher quality issues. In addition, Education officials said that RELs
and the Regional Comprehensive Centers coordinate as needed to address
common concerns as well. For example, in one region the Regional
Comprehensive Center brought together the REL and the National
Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality to conduct a study of the
distribution of highly qualified teachers in one state, as well as the
policies, practices, and conditions that affect that distribution. In
this effort, the REL used its expertise in research to provide support
on research design and data analysis; the National Comprehensive Center
for Teacher Quality, while not involved directly with the research,
developed surveys and interview protocols for the study; and the
Regional Comprehensive Center coordinated the project and piloted the
data collection instruments.
States Face Several Challenges in Collaborating Internally to Improve
Teacher Quality; Education Provides Some Assistance to Help Address
These Challenges:
State agency officials cited limited resources and incompatible data
systems as the greatest challenges to their collaborative efforts
within the state to improve teacher quality. Resistance to change,
sustained commitment, and state governance structure also affected
their efforts to collaborate. While state officials reported some
challenges, they also reported successes in their efforts to
collaborate within their states across a wide array of teacher quality
areas. Nevertheless, they also cite a need for more collaboration,
specifically to address training for existing teachers. To help address
some of these challenges, Education provides financial support and
other forms of assistance to some states.
State Officials Cite Limited Funding, Available Staff and Time, as well
as Incompatible K-12 and Postsecondary Data Systems, as the Greatest
Challenges, among Other Factors:
State officials reported through our surveys (see figure 4) and state
site visits that state budget cuts and reduced staff levels at their
agencies inhibit teacher quality collaborative efforts. Collaborative
efforts require a commitment of resources, staff, and time, and state
officials report that reduced staffing levels have limited the
available time that they can commit to collaborating, and it is
difficult to be continuously involved. One state official told us that
staff are focused on fulfilling state and federal requirements and have
little time to address other teacher quality initiatives.
Figure 4: Challenges to Collaborative Efforts within States to Improve
Teacher Quality:
[Refer to PDF for image: horizontal bar graph]
Level of funding:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 28;
SAHE: 31;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 17;
SAHE: 11;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 2;
SAHE: 2.
Amount of time allotted given other priorities:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 30;
SAHE: 33;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 16;
SAHE: 10;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 1;
SAHE: 0.
Level of staffing or allocation of human resources:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 31;
SAHE: 31;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 16;
SAHE: 12;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 0;
SAHE: 1.
Separate data systems that do not communicate with each other:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 30;
SAHE: 28;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 15;
SAHE: 13;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 1;
SAHE: 3.
Level of resistance to change shown by stakeholders:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 13;
SAHE: 13;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 33;
SAHE: 23;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 1;
SAHE: 5.
Level of sustained interest or commitment on the part of institutional
partners:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 8;
SAHE: 8;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 32;
SAHE: 23;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 6;
SAHE: 11.
Separate PK-12 and higher education state governance systems:
* Very great or great challenge:
SEA: 9;
SAHE: 17;
* Moderate or some challenge:
SEA: 32;
SAHE: 21;
* No challenge at all:
SEA: 5;
SAHE: 7.
Source: GAO survey.
Note: In some cases, respondents do not total 48 for the SEAs and 47
for the SAHEs because not all SEA and SAHE officials responding to the
surveys answered every question.
[End of figure]
State officials also reported that incompatible data systems across the
educational information system, such as those containing student-level,
teacher-level, and postsecondary data, pose challenges to collaboration
on teacher quality efforts. State officials said that some of their
objectives for data systems are to link student and teacher data, or to
link data from the K-12 education system and the postsecondary
education system, to inform and measure teacher quality policy efforts.
For example, state officials and experts we spoke with said
longitudinal data systems can be used to measure teacher effectiveness
through value-added models that estimate existing teachers'
contributions to student learning, and that these models may also allow
states to determine which teacher preparation programs produce
graduates whose students have the strongest academic growth. For
example, Louisiana officials said that although it has taken several
years, they have developed a value-added model, based on longitudinal
data, that allows them to evaluate the extent to which graduates from
teacher preparation programs improve student learning in the classroom.
However, experts, a state official, and an Education report cautioned
about using student and teacher data in value-added models for reasons
such as methodological concerns and an overemphasis on student test
scores to the exclusion of other teacher factors that may positively
affect students and schools. Moreover, senior officials from Education
and state agencies we spoke with said that some key education
stakeholders have reservations about linking student and teacher data
to measure teacher effectiveness and/or the implications for privacy.
Nevertheless, several states reported that statewide longitudinal data
for the K-12 through higher education systems can increase
collaboration by enhancing feedback loops between the K-12 and higher
education systems. This information could, for example, help state
agencies address professional development for teachers in the classroom
as well as the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs for
prospective teachers.
In addition to citing limited resources and incompatible data systems,
state agency officials reported that several other factors, such as
resistance to change, sustaining commitment, and state governance
structures pose challenges to their collaborative efforts to improve
teacher quality in their states. For example, state officials reported
that different agencies and institutions are resistant to change as a
result of long-held beliefs or difficulty in valuing new approaches to
improving teacher quality. In one instance, state officials also told
us that it is hard to maintain a sustained commitment to address
teacher preparation issues because of the volume of state initiatives
focused on improving student achievement. Another state official
reported that the K-12 and postsecondary systems have separate
governance systems, a factor that, given the different missions of each
agency, limits how the two interact on education policy. Other state
officials said the number of entities playing a role in teacher quality
policy limits the state agencies' ability to collaborate on statewide
teacher quality initiatives because the state agency must facilitate
feedback from a multitude of stakeholders, which can be a time
consuming process.
Although states face challenges to collaboration, state officials
responding to our surveys and during site visits stressed the
importance of these efforts and said that more collaboration is needed,
especially to improve professional development training for existing
teachers. Our survey results illustrate that states' teacher quality
policy efforts cut across many interrelated areas within the K-12 and
postsecondary systems, such as preservice preparation, recruitment,
mentoring and induction, teacher assessments for licensure/
certification, and continued learning for veteran teachers. State
officials reported that improving teacher quality is best achieved
through several interrelated initiatives that involve the various
stakeholders within the two systems. In our survey, 22 of 48 SEA
officials and 34 of 47 SAHE officials cited a great to very great need
for more collaboration on teacher quality issues. Although state
officials who provided written responses cited a range of teacher
quality issues for which more collaboration was needed, including
teacher preparation and retention, 16 SEA officials and 21 SAHE
officials specifically cited training for existing teachers as a need.
In an effort to further enhance collaboration within the education
system, several states have established coordinating bodies to address
state education issues, including teacher quality improvement.
According to our survey results, these coordinating bodies (often
referred to as P-16 or P-20 bodies)--which are intended to create a
seamless education system from prekindergarten through the
postsecondary system through comprehensive education initiatives--have
been generally effective at fostering an integrated approach to teacher
quality within states that reported having a coordinating body. For
example, one state official reported that the state coordinating body
facilitates open communication among state agencies. Nevertheless,
state officials reported through our surveys that these coordinating
bodies also face challenges to enhancing collaboration, including
having limited resources and needing to set priorities and allocate
roles and responsibilities. In their review of state coordinating
bodies, the Education Commission of the States reported that for these
coordinating bodies to be successful, they must commit to long-term
reform, include representatives from key stakeholder groups, coordinate
initiatives at the state level, and integrate reform into other ongoing
efforts.[Footnote 32]
Education Provides Some Financial Support and Other Assistance That May
Help Address State-Reported Challenges as well as Enhance Other
Collaborative Efforts, Especially for Local-Level Activities:
Education administers a grant program designed to help states develop
longitudinal data systems and provides some assistance related to these
efforts.[Footnote 33] The State Longitudinal Data Systems grant program
is aimed at enhancing SEAs' ability to develop statewide longitudinal
data systems. These systems are intended to efficiently manage and
analyze education data (including individual student records) to
address federal reporting, accountability, and other requirements such
as those related to ESEA. One of the program's allowable activities is
to expand existing data systems to include teacher data and to link K-
12 and higher education data systems. (As shown in appendix III, the
State Longitudinal Data Systems grant program is 1 of 33 programs that
allow or require portions of funding to be used for teacher quality
activities, but does so in pursuit of other program purposes or goals.)
In our review of applications of states that received grant awards in
2006 or 2007, we found that most states are seeking to link student and
teacher data or to link the K-12 and higher education data systems. For
fiscal years 2006, 2007, and 2009, 41 states and the District of
Columbia were awarded at least one grant ranging from about $1.5
million to $9.0 million.[Footnote 34] In fiscal year 2009, Congress
appropriated $65 million to support the State Longitudinal Data Systems
grant program, about a $17 million increase over the fiscal year 2008
level.
Establishing a longitudinal data system that links prekindergarten
through 12th grade and higher education data systems is one of the
assurances that states must make to be eligible to receive their
portion of the Recovery Act's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.[Footnote
35] Specifically, Education is asking states to report their progress
toward implementing a statewide data system that includes the 12
elements described in the America COMPETES Act (Pub. L. No. 110-69),
one of which is the matching of student data with individual teacher
data. Education has provided preliminary guidance on the specific
information that states must provide in their applications for funding
through the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.[Footnote 36] Another $250
million is provided for the State Longitudinal Data Systems grant
program in the Recovery Act that could help states defray costs
associated with these efforts.
Education also facilitates information sharing and provides assistance
with and research results on state data systems to state officials
through technical assistance related to the State Longitudinal Data
Systems grant program as well as through a network of regional and
national providers that we described previously. Education's Web site
contains information on a variety of topics related to data system
development and management. Further, Education has hosted grantee
conferences that have included panels on topics ranging from data
privacy to how states can leverage one another's experiences with these
data systems. In addition, a 2007 REL Midwest report outlined how
states within its region use data systems and the promising practices
of and challenges confronting these states, concluding that
opportunities exist to capitalize on states' commitment to developing
longitudinal data systems by thinking about these issues more
comprehensively and systematically.[Footnote 37] In March 2009, the REL
Midwest and National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality
cosponsored a live webcast to discuss and disseminate ongoing research
on utilizing data systems in teacher evaluation models. In addition to
grant funds provided by the State Longitudinal Data System Grant
program, state officials told us that conferences, training, and
technical assistance from the REL network would assist states in
addressing their data system challenges.
In addition to providing the specific funding and assistance for data
systems, Education also provides funding to support partnerships within
states to address teacher quality. Some of these programs are intended
to support accountability for teacher preparation programs at
institutions of higher education or to improve teacher preparation
programs by requiring partnerships, mainly between school districts and
institutions of higher education. Of the 23 programs directed at
improving teacher quality that we discussed previously, 8 fund projects
specifically requiring partnerships. For example, according to state
and university officials in New Jersey, Teacher Quality Enhancement
grants have funded efforts to recruit high school students who are
interested in pursing teaching in high-need school districts and
designing teacher preparation programs for middle school students based
on strong content knowledge. These types of efforts are accomplished
through consortia, such as partnerships among universities and their
respective teacher preparation programs and liberal arts and sciences
departments as well as school districts. State and university officials
in our site visit states said that these partnership grants generally
facilitate useful collaboration among the grant partners. However, one
state official told us that outside of federal-and state-funded
partnerships between some school districts and institutions of higher
education, there are limited opportunities for collaboration between K-
12 and higher education. These officials also said the partnerships are
sometimes difficult to sustain after the grants have expired. Moreover,
another state official and an expert we spoke with explained that these
partnership grants do not support a systemic collaboration between the
K-12 and higher education systems because the grants involve only a
select few institutions in partnerships.
Conclusion:
Providing all children with qualified teachers is a focus of federal
policy, and this goal is reflected in Education's strategic and annual
performance plans. To help accomplish this goal, Education distributes
billions of federal dollars and provides research and other assistance
for teacher quality activities through multiple offices and statutorily
authorized programs. While Education has engaged in some coordination
to share information and expertise within the department, and from time
to time has established and completed broader collaborative efforts,
coordination among all the relevant offices does not occur on a regular
basis.
The success of Education's mission and the achievement of its goals for
improving teacher quality and ultimately for increasing student
achievement depend in part on how well it manages its wide array of
programs and initiatives with regard to funding, assistance, and other
priorities, as well as its evaluation and research efforts. Also, the
Recovery Act, with its large infusion of onetime funds, as well as its
provisions encouraging states, school districts, and institutions of
higher education to make improvements in assessing teacher
effectiveness and in distributing qualified and effective teachers
equitably, creates an opportunity for the department to leverage new
resources with existing structures in a way to improve teacher quality
and effectiveness. However, this wide array of programs, initiatives,
and structures also creates a challenge for the department. In the
absence of a written departmentwide strategy for integrating its wide
array of teacher quality programs and efforts, Education's offices may
not be aligned in their actions to achieve Education's long-term goal
of improving teacher quality. A departmental strategy for collaboration
could help states overcome their barriers to improving teacher quality
through facilitating compatible data systems as well as encouraging
systemic collaboration between state K-12 and higher education
institutions and detailing the role each plays in the success of the
other. Without clearly articulated strategies and sustained
collaborative activities, Education may be missing important
opportunities to leverage its financial and other resources, align its
activities and processes, as well as develop joint strategies to assist
states, districts, and institutions of higher education in improving
teacher quality.
Recommendation for Executive Action:
To ensure that departmental goals to improve teacher quality are
achieved and that the department's many related efforts are mutually
reinforcing, we recommend that the Secretary of Education establish and
implement a strategy for sustained coordination among existing
departmental offices and programs. A key purpose of this coordination
would be to facilitate information and resource sharing as well as
strengthening linkages among teacher quality improvement efforts to
help states, school districts, and institutions of higher education in
their initiatives to improve teacher quality.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We provided a draft of this report to Education for review and comment.
Education's comments are reproduced in appendix V. In its comments,
Education agreed that coordination is beneficial, but it favors short-
term coordination focused on discrete issues or problems. Education
will review the advisability of forming a cross-program committee, but
it would first want to ensure that such a group would lead to
improvements in the way Education coordinates its approach to teacher
quality and the way states and school districts promote teacher
quality. Education officials pointed out that these efforts do not
always prove useful and said that efforts to coordinate program
implementation cannot fully eliminate barriers to program alignment.
While we agree with Education that these efforts have not always been
useful and they face numerous barriers and challenges, we nonetheless
believe that it is important for the department to develop a strategy
for sustained coordination. As it develops a coordination strategy,
Education should use its knowledge of past efforts and existing
barriers to put in place the conditions necessary for addressing these
and other challenges. For example, in their comments Education
officials highlighted a barrier from this report of some teacher
quality programs having inconsistent legislative definitions and
requirements. As part of establishing and implementing a strategy for
sustained coordination, Education could consider identifying these
specific definitional barriers and others and develop a strategy for
addressing them. Successful strategic and annual planning involve
identifying goals and challenges facing an agency and detailing how an
agency intends to achieve these goals and address these challenges. As
we mention in the report, these efforts should include information on
how program officials will coordinate and plan crosscutting efforts
with other related programs. We encourage Education to formalize its
coordination efforts by incorporating them into its planning efforts.
Because responsibilities for improving teacher quality are shared among
multiple offices, we believe taking a more systematic approach than
what has occurred will ensure that different offices routinely become
involved in sharing information and resources as well as facilitating
linkages among teacher quality improvement efforts.
We acknowledged Education's effort to bring together different offices
to work together on discrete issues or problems related to teacher
quality and we modified the report to reflect Education's recent
coordination effort to address the Recovery Act requirements related to
teachers. Education also provided technical comments that we
incorporated into the report as appropriate.
As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce its contents
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days
after its issue date. At that time we will send copies of this report
to the Secretary of Education, relevant congressional committees, and
other interested parties. In addition, this report will also be
available at no charge on GAO's Web site at [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/]. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional
Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this
report. Major contributors to this report are listed in appendix VI.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
Cornelia M. Ashby:
Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
To address the objectives of this study, we used a variety of methods.
To document the extent to which Education funds and coordinates teacher
quality programs, we interviewed Education officials as well as
reviewed Education documents and relevant laws. To understand how
Education funds and supports research efforts to improve teacher
quality, we interviewed officials from a selection of relevant
Education-funded research and related assistance providers and at the
regional and national levels. To understand the challenges to
collaboration within states, we conducted two national surveys--one was
sent to state educational agency (SEA) officials in the 50 states and
the District of Columbia and a separate survey was sent to state agency
for higher education (SAHE) officials in 48 states plus the District of
Columbia.[Footnote 38] We did not send a SAHE survey to New York or
Michigan because (1) in New York the executive official of higher
education is also responsible for directing kindergarten through 12th
grade education and (2) in Michigan there is no state agency or officer
with governance authority over higher education. In addition, we
conducted site visits in 3 states to understand further the state
perspective as well as that of school districts and institutions of
higher education. In addition, we interviewed national experts on the
various areas of teacher quality. We conducted our work between
February 2008 and July 2009 in accordance with generally accepted
government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and
perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide
a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit
objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Objectives 1 and 2: Extent of Education Funding and Coordination of
Teacher Quality Programs as well as Education's Monitoring of these
Programs:
To determine the extent that Education funds and coordinates teacher
quality programs, we first identified relevant programs from the Guide
to U.S. Department of Education Programs 2008 and classified these
programs into two groups based on these differences:[Footnote 39] (1)
programs designed to support teacher quality improvement, and (2)
programs that may support teacher quality improvement but do so in
pursuit of other goals or purposes. For the first group, or "primary
programs," we reviewed the program description for each program,
identifying those with a purpose of improving teaching in the classroom
for elementary and secondary schools. The description statement of
these programs included terms such as professional development, teacher
training, teacher preparation, teacher retention, teacher
certification, improving teaching through scientifically based research
and curriculum development. In addition, we identified the second group
of programs--which have a purpose other than improving teacher quality--
through a review of the descriptions of the types of projects funded in
Education's Program Guide to determine that training teachers or
improving instructional programs was an allowable activity. After
identifying the respective group of programs, Education officials
reviewed the list of programs to verify that we had identified the
relevant programs and categorized each program correctly. To understand
Education's efforts and requirements for coordinating the 23 programs
that we identified as primarily focusing on teacher quality, we
reviewed relevant federal laws, performance and accountability reports,
and other documentation to identify requirements for coordinating its
programs. In addition, we interviewed officials for the offices that
oversee these programs to determine whether and how they coordinate
their programs to improve teacher quality. These interviews included
officials from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the
Office of Innovation and Improvement, the Office of Postsecondary
Education, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services,
and the Office of English Language Acquisition. We also interviewed
officials in Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) and reviewed
relevant OIG reports on Education's efforts to coordinate programs.
To understand how Education monitors states and districts that receive
formula and discretionary grants on teacher quality we reviewed
relevant federal laws, nonregulatory guidance, policy and procedure
manuals, monitoring checklists, and monitoring reports or letters to
grantees, as well as outside evaluations or audits such as OIG and GAO
reports. In addition, to determine the process and procedures for
monitoring these programs, we conducted interviews with the relevant
officials from each of the five program offices overseeing each of
these programs, including officials from the Office of Elementary and
Secondary Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, Office of
Postsecondary Education, and Office of Special Education and
Rehabilitation Services as well as OIG, and the Office of Risk
Management Service in the Secretary of Education's office. Finally, to
gather information about Education's monitoring, we interviewed state
and district officials during our site visits.
Objective 3: Evaluation and Research as well as Related Assistance
Pertaining to Teacher Quality:
To gather information on Education's evaluation of federal programs,
research on teacher quality, and research-related assistance provided
to states and districts, we interviewed relevant Education officials as
well as state and district officials during our site visits, and
reviewed documents and responses to questions on research-related
assistance in the survey. To obtain information on Education's
evaluation and research efforts as well as dissemination practices, we
interviewed relevant officials from Education's Institute of Education
Sciences, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the
Office of Planning Evaluation and Policy Development, as well as
submitted written follow-up questions to these offices. In addition, we
reviewed documented information available on the evaluations conducted
on federal programs on teacher quality and on completed and ongoing
research on teacher quality practices and interventions. To learn about
the research-related assistance provided directly to states, we
interviewed officials from the three Regional Educational Laboratories
and Regional Comprehensive Centers that provide assistance to our three
site visit states.[Footnote 40] We also interviewed officials from the
National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality. In addition, during
our site visits we asked state and district officials about the kinds
of assistance that they receive directly from Education, the Regional
Educational Laboratories, Regional Comprehensive Centers, and the
National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality. Finally, in our
surveys, we asked state respondents about the usefulness of the
Regional Educational Laboratories, the Regional Comprehensive Centers,
the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality, the Institute of
Education Sciences studies, as well as the What Works Clearinghouse and
Doing What Works Internet sites.
Objective 4: Challenges to Collaboration within States and Education
Efforts to Address these Challenges:
To understand the challenges facing state agencies' in their efforts to
collaborate within their states on efforts to improve teacher quality,
we used two approaches--two state surveys and site visits to three
states. First we designed and administered two identical Web-based
surveys--one that was sent to SEA officials in all 50 states and the
District of Columbia and a second to SAHE officials in 48 states and
the District of Columbia. We did not send a SAHE survey to New York or
Michigan because (1) in New York the executive official of higher
education is also responsible for directing kindergarten through 12th
grade education and (2) in Michigan there is no state agency or officer
with governance authority over higher education. The surveys were
conducted between August and November 2008. Questionnaires were
completed by SEA officials in 48 states for a response rate of 94
percent, and SAHE officials in 47 states for a response rate of 96
percent.
The surveys posed a combination of questions that allowed for open-
ended and closed-ended responses. They included questions about state
efforts including (1) state agency initiatives across a wide range of
teacher quality areas, (2) state agencies' collaborative activities
within their state, (3) the role of a state coordinating body (where
applicable) in teacher quality initiatives, and (4) the usefulness of
grant funds and technical assistance provided by Education.
The surveys were conducted using self-administered electronic
questionnaires posted on the World Wide Web. We sent e-mail
notifications to all 51 SEA officials and 49 SAHE officials beginning
on September 15, 2008. To encourage respondents to complete the
questionnaire, we sent an e-mail message to prompt each nonrespondent
each week after the initial e-mail, on September 22, 2008, and October
1, 2008. We also contacted officials by telephone to further increase
our response rate. We closed both surveys on November 23, 2008.
Some of the survey questions were open-ended, allowing respondents an
opportunity to provide thoughts and opinions in their own words. To
categorize and summarize these responses, we performed a systematic
content analysis of a select number of open-ended questions. Two GAO
staff independently coded the responses. All initial disagreements
regarding placement into categories were discussed and reconciled.
Agreement regarding each placement was reached again between at least
two analysts. The numbers of responses in each content category were
then summarized and tallied.
Because this was not a sample survey, there are no sampling errors.
However, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey may
introduce nonsampling errors, such as variations in how respondents
interpret questions and their willingness to offer accurate responses.
We took a number of steps to minimize nonsampling errors. For example,
a social science survey specialist designed the questionnaires in
collaboration with GAO staff with subject matter expertise. During
survey development, we received feedback from three external peer
reviewers and Education officials. The questionnaires also underwent a
peer review by a second GAO survey specialist. Each draft instrument
was then pretested two times with appropriate officials in New Mexico,
Wisconsin, and West Virginia to ensure that the questions and
information provided to respondents were relevant, clearly stated, and
easy to comprehend. The pretesting took place during July and August
2008. Since these were Web-based surveys, respondents entered their
answers directly into electronic questionnaires. This eliminated the
need to have data keyed into databases, thus removing an additional
source of error. Finally, to further minimize errors, computer programs
used to analyze the survey data were independently verified by a second
GAO data analyst to ensure the accuracy of this work.
While we did not fully validate specific information that states
reported through our survey, we took several steps to ensure that the
information was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report.
For example, we contacted state officials via phone and e-mail to
follow up on obvious inconsistencies, errors, or incomplete answers. We
also performed computer analyses to identify inconsistencies in
responses and other indications of error. On the basis of our checks,
we believe our survey data are sufficient for the purposes of this
report. The surveys and a complete tabulation of aggregated results can
be viewed at GAO-09-594SP.
We also conducted site visits to three states--Louisiana, New Jersey,
and Oregon. These states were selected based on their having
initiatives that focus on teacher quality, such as coordinating bodies
that are intended to bridge the K-12 and higher education
systems,[Footnote 41] and on diversity in terms of geographic location,
population, and amount of federal teacher quality program funding. In
each state we met with SEA and SAHE officials, and to understand the
local perspective, we met with officials in at least one school
district and two universities. In addition, we interviewed experts on
teacher quality, including those at the American Institutes for
Research, Education Trust, Congressional Research Service, and the
University of Pennsylvania. We also reviewed several studies on teacher
quality funding and activities.
[End of section]
Appendix II: Primary Programs: Twenty-three Programs Providing Funding
Specifically to Improve the Quality of Teachers:
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (also known as
Title II, Part A);
Grant design: Formula;
Eligible recipients: Awards made to state educational agencies (SEA)
that, in turn, make formula subgrants to school districts. State
agencies for higher education (SAHE) also receive a formula grant that,
in turn, is awarded competitively to partnerships that must include at
least one institution of higher education (IHE) and its division that
prepares teachers and principals, a school of arts and sciences, and a
high-need school district;
Purpose: To increase academic achievement by improving teacher and
principal quality;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $2,947,749.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Enhancing Education Through Technology Program;
Grant design: Formula;
Eligible recipients: SEAs;
Purpose: To improve student achievement through use of technology in
elementary and secondary schools and to help all students become
technologically literate by the end of the eighth grade and, through
the integration of technology with both teacher training and curriculum
development, establishing research-based instructional methods that can
be widely implemented;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $269,872.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Mathematics and Science Partnerships;
Grant design: Formula;
Eligible recipients: Awards are made to SEAs. Partnerships of school
districts and IHEs may apply to states for subgrants. Partnership must
include, at a minimum, an engineering, mathematics, or science
department of an IHE, and a high-need school district;
Purpose: To increase the academic achievement of students in
mathematics and science by enhancing the content knowledge, teaching
skills, and instruction practices of classroom teachers;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $178,978.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Teaching American History;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: School districts applying in partnership with one
or more of the following: IHEs, nonprofit history or humanities
organizations, libraries, or museums;
Purpose: To raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge
and understanding of and appreciation for traditional U.S. history;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $118,952.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Early Reading First;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: School districts eligible for a Reading First
subgrant and public or private organizations or agencies located in a
community served by an eligible district may apply;
Purpose: Supports local efforts to enhance the early language,
literacy, and prereading development of preschool-age children,
particularly those from low-income families, through strategies and
professional development that are based on scientifically based reading
research; Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands):
$112,549.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Teacher Incentive Fund;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: School districts, including charter schools that
are districts in their state, SEAs, or partnerships of (1) a district,
SEA, or both, and (2) at least one nonprofit organization may apply;
Purpose: To support efforts to develop and implement performance-based
teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $97,270[A].
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Transition to Teaching;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: High-need school districts, SEAs, for-profit or
nonprofit organizations, IHEs, regional consortia of SEAs, or consortia
of high-need districts may apply. IHEs, for-profits, and nonprofits
must be in partnership with a high-need district or an SEA;
Purpose: To support the recruitment and retention of highly qualified
mid-career professionals, including qualified paraprofessionals, and
recent college graduates who have not majored in education to teach in
high-need schools and districts through the development of new or
enhanced alternative routes to certification;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $43,707.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: English Language Acquisition National Professional
Development Project;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: IHEs as well as consortia of these institutions
and SEAs or school districts;
Purpose: To support professional development activities for education
personnel working with English language learners;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $41,800.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Striving Readers;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: (1) School district that (a) are eligible to
receive funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
Title I, Part A, pursuant to Sec. 1113 of ESEA and (b) serve students
in one or more of grades 6 through 12. Eligible districts may apply
individually, with other eligible districts, or in partnership with one
or more of the following entities: SEAs; intermediate service agencies;
public or private IHEs; and public or private organizations with
expertise in adolescent literacy, rigorous evaluation, or both. (2)
SEAs on behalf of one or more districts that meet the requirements
above. SEAs must apply on behalf of one or more eligible districts and
also may partner with one or more of the following entities:
intermediate service agencies; public or private IHEs; and public or
private organizations with expertise in adolescent literacy, rigorous
evaluation, or both. For any application, the fiscal agent must be an
eligible district or an SEA;
Purpose: To raise student achievement in middle-and high-school-aged
students who are reading below grade level, and serve schools by
improving the literacy skills of struggling adolescent readers and to
help build a strong, scientific research base around specific
strategies that improve adolescent literacy skills;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $35,371.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: School Leadership Program;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: High-need school districts, consortia of high-need
districts, or partnerships that consist of at least one high-need
school district and at least one nonprofit organization (which may be a
community-or faith-based organization) or institutions of higher
education may apply;
Purpose: To support the development, enhancement, or expansion of
innovative programs to recruit, train, and mentor principals (including
assistant principals) for high-need districts;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $19,220.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Troops-to-Teachers;
Grant design: Noncompetitive;
Eligible recipients: Current and former members of the U.S. armed
forces, including members of the Armed Forces Reserves;
Purpose: Provides financial assistance and counseling to help military
personnel obtain their teacher licenses, especially in shortage areas,
such as math, science, and special education, and find employment in
high-need districts and schools, as well as charter schools;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $14,389.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Indian Education Professional Development Grants;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: (1) IHEs, including Indian IHEs; (2) SEAs or
school districts, in consortium with these institutions; (3) Indian
tribes or organizations, in consortium with IHEs; and (4) the U.S.
Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools
in consortium with IHEs;
Purpose: To prepare and train Indian individuals to serve as teachers
and education professionals. Professional development grants are
awarded to increase the number of qualified Indian individuals in
professions that serve Indians; provide training to qualified Indians
to become teachers, administrators, teacher aides, social workers, and
ancillary education personnel; and improve the skills of those
qualified Indians who serve currently in those capacities;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $8,211.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Ready-to-Teach;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: For National Telecommunications Grants, nonprofit
telecommunication entities or a partnership of such entities may apply;
Purpose: Supports two types of grants to nonprofit telecommunications
entities: (1) grants to carry out a national telecommunications-based
program to improve teaching in core curriculum areas and (2) digital
educational programming grants that enable eligible entities to
develop, produce, and distribute educational and instructional video
programming;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $10,700.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Advanced Certification or Advanced Credentialing;
Grant design: Noncompetitive;
Eligible recipients: SEAs; school districts; the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards, in partnership with a high-need school
district or SEA; the National Council on Teacher Quality, in
partnership with a high-need SEA or district; or another recognized
entity, including another recognized certification or credentialing
organization, in partnership with a high-need SEA or district;
Purpose: Supports activities to encourage and support teachers seeking
advanced certification or advanced credentialing through high-quality
professional teacher enhancement programs designed to improve teaching
and learning;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $10,649.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Professional Development for Arts Educators;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: (1) A school district acting on behalf of a school
or schools where at least 50 percent of the children are from low-
income families; and (2) must work in partnership with at least one of
the following: a state or local nonprofit or governmental arts
organization; an institution of higher education; a SEA or regional
education service agency; a public or private agency, institution, or
organization including a museum, arts education association, library,
theater, or community-or faith-based organization;
Purpose: Supports the implementation of high-quality professional
development model programs in elementary and secondary education in
music, dance, drama, media arts, and visual arts for arts educators and
other instructional staff of K-12 students in high-poverty schools;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $7,464.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: Territories and Freely Associated States Education Grant
Program;
Grant design: Competitive, but limited to outlying areas;
Eligible recipients: School districts in the outlying areas (American
Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S.
Virgin Islands) and the Republic of Palau;
Purpose: To support teacher training, curriculum development,
instructional materials or general school improvement and reform, and
direct educational services. The Pacific Regional Educational
Laboratory provides technical assistance and makes recommendations for
funding to the Secretary of Education, who conducts a grants
competition;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $5,000.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
Program name: National Writing Project;
Grant design: Noncompetitive;
Eligible recipients: Only the National Writing Project is eligible;
Purpose: The National Writing Project is a nationwide nonprofit
education organization that promotes K-16 teacher training programs in
the effective teaching of writing;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $24,291.
Higher Education Act:
Program name: Teacher Quality Partnership Grants;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: Partnership of institution of higher education,
including a teacher preparation program and a school or department of
arts and science, at least one high-need school district, and either a
high-need school or a consortium of high-need schools served by the
high-need school district; or as applicable, a high-need early
childhood education program;
Purpose: Through collaborative efforts, to support the prebaccalaureate
preparation of teachers or a teaching residency program, or a
combination of such programs. Grants may also be used to carry out a
leadership development program;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $50,000[B].
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act:
Program name: Special Education--Personnel Development to Improve
Services and Results for Children with Disabilities;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: Institutions of higher education, school
districts, nonprofit organizations, and other organizations and/or
SEAs;
Purpose: To improve the quality of K-12 special education teacher
preparation programs to ensure that program graduates are able to meet
the highly qualified teacher requirements and are well prepared to
serve children with a high incidence of disabilities;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $90,653.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act:
Program name: Special Education--State Personnel Development Grant
Program;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: SEA;
Purpose: To assist SEAs in reforming and improving their systems for
personnel preparation and professional development in early
intervention, education, and transition services in order to improve
results for children with disabilities;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $48,000.
America Competes Act:
Program name: Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program:
Baccalaureate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
and Foreign Language Teacher Training;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: Institutions of higher education;
Purpose: To develop and implement programs providing courses of study
in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields or critical
foreign languages that are integrated with teacher education. Graduates
receive baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields or critical foreign
languages, concurrent with teacher certification;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $1,092.
America Competes Act:
Program name: Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program: Masters STEM
and Foreign Language Teacher Training;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: Institutions of higher education;
Purpose: To offer a master's degree in a STEM field or critical foreign
language content areas to current teachers and to enable professionals
in these fields to pursue a 1-year master's degree that leads to
teacher certification;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $1,092.
American History and Civics Education Act of 2004:
Program name: Academies for American History and Civics;
Grant design: Competitive;
Eligible recipients: IHEs, museums, libraries, and other public and
private agencies, organizations, and institutions (including for-profit
organizations) or a consortium of such agencies, organizations, and
institutions may apply. Applicants must demonstrate expertise in
historical methodology or the teaching of history;
Purpose: Supports the establishment of Presidential Academies for
Teachers of American History and Civics that offer workshops for both
veteran and new teachers of American history and civics to strengthen
their knowledge and preparation for teaching these subjects. The
program also supports establishment of Congressional Academies for
Students of American History and Civics for high school students to
develop a broader and deeper understanding of these subjects;
Fiscal year 2009 appropriations (Dollars in thousands): $1,945.
Source: GAO analysis of Department of Education data.
[A] The Teacher Incentive Fund also received $200 million in funding
through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery
Act).
[B] The Teacher Quality Enhancement grant received an additional $100
million through the Recovery Act.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix III: Programs That Support Broad Objectives but Allow or
Require Some Funds to Be Used for Teacher Quality:
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Improving Basic Academic Achievement Programs for the
Disadvantaged;
Purpose: To ensure that all children have a fair, equal opportunity to
obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on
challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic
assessments;
Grant recipient: SEAs and school districts.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Tech Prep Education;
Purpose: Program provides assistance to states to award grants to
consortia of school districts and postsecondary education institutions
for the development and operation of programs consisting of the last 2
years of secondary education and at least 2 years of postsecondary
education, designed to provide Tech Prep education to the student
leading to an associate degree or a 2-year certificate;
Grant recipient: Awards are made to eligible state agencies for career
and technical education, which award funds on the basis of a formula or
competition to consortia. Eligible consortia must include at least one
member in each of the two following categories: (1) A school district,
an intermediate education agency, education service agency, or an area
career and technical education school serving secondary school
students, or a secondary school funded by Bureau of Indian Affairs; or
(2) either (a) a nonprofit institution of higher education (IHE) that
offers a 2-year associate degree, 2-year certificate, or 2-year
postsecondary apprenticeship program, or (b) a proprietary institution
of higher education that offers a 2-year associate degree program.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Career and Technical Education--Basic Grants to States;
Purpose: To develop the academic, career, and technical skills of
secondary and postsecondary students who enroll in career and technical
programs. This program provides states with support for leadership
activities, administration of the state plan for career and technical
education, and subgrants to eligible recipients to improve career and
technical education programs;
Grant recipient: State agencies for career and technical education.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Indian Education--Formula Grants to Local Education Agencies;
Purpose: Program designed to address the unique education and
culturally related academic needs of American Indian and Alaska Native
students, including preschool children, so that these students can
achieve the same challenging state performance standards expected of
all students. This is Education's principal vehicle for addressing the
particular needs of Indian children. Grant funds supplement the regular
school programs and support such activities as after-school programs,
early childhood education, tutoring, and dropout prevention;
Grant recipient: Districts that enroll a threshold number of eligible
Indian children and certain schools funded by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs; Indian tribes, and under certain conditions, may also apply.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Migrant Education--Basic State Formula Grants;
Purpose: Supports high-quality education programs for migratory
children and helps ensure that migratory children who move among the
states are not penalized by disparities among states in curriculum,
graduation requirements, or state academic content and student academic
achievement standards. States use program funds to identify eligible
children and provide education and support services. These may include
academic instruction, bilingual and multicultural instruction, career
education services, advocacy services, counseling and testing services,
health services, and preschool services;
Grant recipient: SEAs, which in turn make subgrants to local operating
agencies that serve migrant students. Local operating agencies may be
school districts, institutions of higher education, and other public
and nonprofit agencies.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Even Start;
Purpose: Program offers grants to support local family literacy
projects that integrate early childhood education, and adult literacy.
Five percent of funds are is aside for family literacy grants for
migratory worker families, the outlying areas, and Indian tribes and
tribal organizations; one grant must be awarded to a women's prison and
up to 3 percent is for evaluation activities. Remaining funds are
allocated to SEAs based on their Title I, Part A allocation and SEAs
make competitive subgrants to partnerships of school districts and
other organizations. Projects include providing staff training and
support services;
Grant recipient: SEAs and subgrants to school district partnerships.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Small Rural School Achievement;
Purpose: To provide financial assistance to rural school districts to
assist them in meeting their state's definition of adequate yearly
progress. Note: a school district that is eligible for this program is
not eligible for the Rural and Low-Income Schools program (see below);
Grant recipient: Primarily to districts that (1) have a total average
daily attendance of fewer than 600 students or only serve schools
located in counties of fewer than 10 persons per square mile, and (2)
serve schools with Education's National Center for Education Sciences
locale code of 7 or 8 or located in an area defined as rural by state.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Rural and Low-Income Schools;
Purpose: To provide financial assistance to rural districts to assist
them in meeting their state's definition of adequate yearly progress.
This program provides grant funds to rural districts that serve
concentrations of children from low-income families;
Grant recipient: SEAs receive grants and provide subgrants to school
districts in which (1) 20 percent or more of the children age 5-17
served by the school district are from families with incomes below the
poverty line, (2) all schools served by the district have a school
locale code of 6,7, or 8; and are (3) not eligible to participate in
the Small Rural School Achievement program.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Preschool Grants for Children with Disabilities;
Purpose: To provide special education services to children with
disabilities, ages 3-5. Permitted expenditures include the salaries of
special education teachers and costs associated with related services;
Grant recipient: SEAs.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: Special Education Grants to States;
Purpose: Assists states including the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico in meeting the costs of providing special education and related
services to children with disabilities. States may use funds to provide
a free appropriate public education to children with disabilities.
Permitted expenditures include the salaries of special education
teachers and costs associated with related services personnel, such as
speech therapists and psychologists;
Grant recipient: SEAs and school districts.
Grant design: formula grants:
Program: English Language Acquisition State Grants;
Purpose: To improve the education of limited English proficient
children and youths by helping them to learn English and meet state
academic content and student academic achievement standards;
Grant recipient: SEAs and subgrants to school districts.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Career and Technical Education--Grants to Native Americans and
Alaska Natives;
Purpose: To improve the career and technical education skills of Native
Americans and Alaska Natives. Projects make improvements in career and
technical education programs for Native American and Alaska Native
youths;
Grant recipient: Federally recognized Indian tribes, tribal
organizations, Alaska Native entities, and consortia of any of the
previously mentioned entities may apply.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Career and Technical Education--Native Hawaiians;
Purpose: Provides assistance to plan, conduct, and administer programs
or portions of programs that provide career and technical training and
related activities to Native Hawaiians. Program supports career and
technical education and training projects for the benefit of Native
Hawaiians;
Grant recipient: Community-based organizations primarily serving and
representing Native Hawaiians.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Advanced Placement Incentive Program;
Purpose: Enables grantees to increase the participation of low-income
students in both pre-advanced placement and advanced placement courses
and tests. Allowable activities include professional development for
teachers, curriculum development, the purchase of books and supplies,
and other activities directly related to expanding access to and
participation in advanced placement courses and tests for low-income
students;
Grant recipient: School districts, SEAs, and nonprofit organizations.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Improving Literacy Through School Libraries;
Purpose: Program helps school districts improve reading achievement by
providing students with increased access to up-to-date school library
materials; well-equipped, technologically advanced school library media
centers; and professionally certified school library media specialists.
School districts may use funds for a variety of activities such as
providing professional development for school library media specialists
and providing activities that foster increased collaboration among
library specialists, teachers, and administrators;
Grant recipient: School districts in which at least 20 percent of
students served are from families with incomes below the poverty line.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Indian Education Demonstration Grants for Indian Children;
Purpose: Designed to improve the education opportunities and
achievement of preschool, elementary, and secondary Indian children by
developing, testing, and demonstrating effective services and programs.
Funding priorities in 2008 were for (1) school readiness projects that
provide age-appropriate educational programs and language skills to 3-
and 4-year-old Indian students to prepare them for successful entry
into school at the kindergarten level and (2) college preparatory
programs for secondary school students designed to increase competency
and skills in challenging subject matter, such as mathematics and
science;
Grant recipient: SEAs, school districts, Indian tribes, Indian
organizations, federally supported elementary and secondary schools for
Indian students, and Indian institutions, including Indian institutions
of higher education, or consortia of such entities.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Migrant Education Program--Even Start;
Purpose: Designed to help break the cycle of poverty and improve the
literacy of participating migrant families by integrating early
childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and
parenting education into a unified family literacy program. Funds
support projects such as early childhood education, adult education;
Head Start programs, training for staff, and support services;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, and nonprofit and other organizations and agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Carol M. White Physical Education Program;
Purpose: Provides grants to initiate, expand, and improve physical
education programs for K-12 students to help them make progress toward
meeting state standards for physical education. Funds may be used to
provide equipment and support and to enable students to participate
actively in physical education activities. Funds also may support staff
and teacher training and education;
Grant recipient: School districts and community-based organizations.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Magnet Schools Assistance;
Purpose: Grants assist in the desegregation of public schools by
supporting the elimination, reduction, and prevention of minority group
isolation in elementary and secondary schools with substantial numbers
of minority group students. Projects must support the development and
implementation of magnet schools that assist in the achievement of
systemic reforms and provide all students with the opportunity to meet
challenging academic content and achievement standards. Projects
support the development and design of innovative education methods and
practices that promote diversity and increase choices in public
education programs. The program supports capacity development through
professional development and other activities, such as the
implementation of courses of instruction in magnet schools that
strengthen students' knowledge of core academic subjects. Program
supports the implementation of courses of instruction in magnet schools
that strengthen students' knowledge of core academic subjects;
Grant recipient: School districts or consortia of districts that are
implementing court-ordered or federally approved voluntary
desegregation plans that include magnet schools are eligible to apply.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Arts in Education--Model Development and Dissemination Grants
Program;
Purpose: Supports the enhancement, expansion, documentation,
evaluation, and dissemination of innovative, cohesive models that
demonstrate effectiveness in (1) integrating into and strengthening
arts in the core elementary and middle school curricula, (2)
strengthening arts instruction, and (3) improving students' academic
performance, including their skills in creating, performing, and
responding to the arts. Funds must be used to (1) further the
development of programs designed to improve or expand the integration
of arts education, (2) develop materials designed to help replicate or
adapt arts programs, (3) document and assess the results and benefits
of arts programs, and (4) develop products and services that can be
used to replicate arts programs in other settings;
Grant recipient: School districts and nonprofit organizations.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Women's Educational Equity;
Purpose: Promotes education equity for women and girls through
competitive grants. Allowable activities include training for teachers
and other school personnel to encourage gender equity in the classroom,
evaluating exemplary model programs, school-to-work transition
programs, guidance and counseling activities to increase opportunities
for women in technologically demanding workplaces, and developing
strategies to assist districts in evaluating, disseminating, and
replicating gender-equity programs;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, nonprofit organizations, other organizations and agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Native American and Alaska Native Children in School;
Purpose: Provides grants to support language instruction education
projects for Limited English Proficient children from Native American,
Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander backgrounds to
ensure that they meet the same rigorous standards for academic
achievement that all children are expected to meet;
Grant recipient: Indian tribes; tribally sanctioned education
authorities; Native Hawaiian or Native American Pacific Islander native
language education organizations; and elementary, secondary, or
postsecondary schools operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs Education, or a consortium of such schools and an institution
of higher education.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Fund for the Improvement of Education--Programs of National
Significance;
Purpose: This program provides authority for the Secretary of Education
to support nationally significant programs to improve the quality of
elementary and secondary education at the state and local levels and to
help all students meet challenging state academic standards;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, and nonprofit and other organizations and agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Student Education;
Purpose: To carry out a coordinated program of scientifically based
research, demonstration projects, innovative strategies, and similar
activities designed to enhance the ability of K-12 schools to meet the
education needs of gifted and talented students;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, nonprofit organizations, other organizations and agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Foreign Language Assistance Program (Districts);
Purpose: Provides grants to establish, improve, or expand innovative
foreign language programs for elementary and secondary school students.
In awarding grants under this program, the Secretary of Education
supports projects that (1) show the promise of being continued beyond
their project period and (2) demonstrate approaches that can be
disseminated and duplicated by other school districts;
Grant recipient: School districts.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Foreign Language Assistance Program (SEAs);
Purpose: Provides grants to establish, improve, or expand innovative
foreign language programs for elementary and secondary school students.
In awarding grants under this program, the Secretary of Education
supports projects that promote systemic approaches to improving foreign
language learning in the state;
Grant recipient: SEAs.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Native Hawaiian Education Program;
Purpose: To develop innovative educational programs to assist Native
Hawaiians and to supplement and expand programs and authorities in the
area of education;
Grant recipient: School districts, SEAs, and IHEs with experience in
developing or operating Native Hawaiian programs or programs of
instruction in the Native Hawaiian language, and Native Hawaiian
education organizations; public and private nonprofit organizations,
agencies, and institutions; and consortia thereof.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Alaska Native Education Equity;
Purpose: To meet the unique education needs of Alaska Natives and
support supplemental programs to benefit Alaska Natives. Activities
include, but are not limited to, the development of curricula and
education programs that address student needs and the development and
operation of student enrichment programs in science and mathematics.
Eligible activities also include professional development for
educators, activities carried out through Even Start and Head Start
programs, family literacy services, and dropout prevention programs;
Grant recipient: An SEA or school district may apply as part of a
consortium involving an Alaska Native organization. Also Alaska Native
organizations, education entities with experience in developing or
operating Alaska Native programs or programs of instruction conducted
in Alaska Native languages, cultural and community-based organizations
with experience in developing or operating programs to benefit Alaska
Natives, and consortia or organizations.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Special Education--National Activities-Technology and Media
Services;
Purpose: To (1) improve results for children with disabilities by
promoting the development, demonstration, and use of technology; (2)
support educational media services activities designed to be of value
in the classroom setting for children with disabilities; and (3)
provide support for captioning and video description that and
appropriate for use in the classroom setting. Program supports
technology development, demonstration, and utilization. Educational
media activities, such as video descriptions and captioning of
educational materials, also are supported;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, nonprofit organizations, or other organizations.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Special Education--National Activities--Technical Assistance
and Dissemination;
Purpose: To promote academic achievement and improve results for
children with disabilities by providing technical assistance, model
demonstration projects, dissemination of useful information, and
implementation activities that are supported by scientifically based
research;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, school districts,
SEAs, nonprofit organizations, and other organizations and/or agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Excellence in Economic Education;
Purpose: This program promotes economic and financial literacy among
all students in kindergarten through grade 12 through the award of one
grant to a national nonprofit education organization that has as its
primary purpose the improvement of the quality of student understanding
of personal finance and economics;
Grant recipient: The National Council on Economic Education, SEAs,
school districts.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education--
Comprehensive Program;
Purpose: A program supporting innovative reform projects for improving
the quality of postsecondary education and increasing student access;
Grant recipient: Institutions of higher education, and other
organizations and agencies.
Grant design: competitive grants:
Program: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems;
Purpose: To enable SEAs to design, develop, and implement statewide
longitudinal data systems to efficiently and accurately manage,
analyze, disaggregate, and use individual student data, consistent with
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (20
U.S.C. 6301 et seq.);
Grant recipient: SEAs.
Source: GAO analysis of Department of Education data.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix IV: Institute of Education Sciences' Sponsored Research on
Teacher Quality, 2003-2009:
Year: 2009;
Research recipient: University of California, Berkeley; Teacher quality
project:
Teacher Quality: The Role of Teacher Study Groups as a Model of
Professional Development in Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers;
Grant award: $1,339,403.
Year: 2009;
Research recipient: Education Development Center, Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Assessing the Efficacy of a Comprehensive
Intervention in Physical Science on Head Start Teachers and Children;
Grant award: $2,999,841.
Year: 2009; Research recipient: University of Texas Health Science
Center at Houston;
Teacher quality project: Improving School Readiness of High Risk
Preschoolers: Combining High Quality Instructional Strategies with
Responsive Training for Teachers;
Grant award: $2,653,503.
Year: 2009; Research recipient: University of Cincinnati;
Teacher quality project: INSPIRE Urban Teaching Fellows Program;
Grant award: $1,500,000.
Year: 2009; Research recipient: The Pennsylvania State University;
Teacher quality project: Improving Classroom Learning Environments by
Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education;
Grant award: $932,424.
Year: 2009; Research recipient: University of Illinois at Chicago;
Teacher quality project: Enhancing Effectiveness and Connectedness
Among Early Career Teachers in Urban Schools;
Grant award: $1,012,701.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: University of California, San Diego;
Teacher quality project: Education Research: BioBridge Teacher Quality--
The BioBridge Teacher Professional Development;
Grant award: $948,447.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: University of South Florida;
Teacher quality project: Leadership for Integrated Middle-School
Science;
Grant award: $1,444,403.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: University of Michigan;
Teacher quality project: Development of an Interactive, Multimedia
Assessment of Teachers' Knowledge of Early Reading;
Grant award: $1,770,582.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: National Bureau of Economic Research;
Teacher quality project: Value-Added Models and the Measurement of
Teacher Quality: Tracking or Causal Effects;
Grant award: $294,295.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: University of Pittsburgh;
Teacher quality project: The Iterative Design of Modules to Support
Reading Comprehension Instruction;
Grant award: $1,386,901.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: Ohio State University;
Teacher quality project: Efficacy of Read It Again! In Rural Preschool
Settings;
Grant award: $3,073,485.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: Rutgers, the State University of New
Jersey;
Teacher quality project: Development and Validation of a Teacher
Progress Monitoring Scale for Elementary School Teachers;
Grant award: $1,438,905.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: Iris Media Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Online Teacher Training: Promoting Student
Social Competence to Improve Academic and Behavioral Outcomes in Grades
K-3;
Grant award: $2,293,415.
Year: 2008; Research recipient: Mid-Continent Regional Educational
Laboratory;
Teacher quality project: Visualizing Science with Adapted Curriculum
Enhancements;
Grant award: $1,489,399.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: Mills College;
Teacher quality project: Improving the Mathematical Content Base of
Lesson Study Design and Test of a Research-Based Toolkit;
Grant award: $1,997,590.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: WestEd;
Teacher quality project: Understanding Science: Improving Achievement
of Middle School Students in Science;
Grant award: $1,990,754.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Virginia;
Teacher quality project: The Efficacy of the Responsive Classroom
Approach for Improving Teacher Quality and Children's Academic
Performance;
Grant award: $2,814,668.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: Milwaukee School of Engineering;
Teacher quality project: Effect of the SUN Teacher Workshop on Student
Achievement;
Grant award: $1,262,083.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: Purdue University;
Teacher quality project: Classroom Links to Vocabulary and Phonological
Sensitivity Skills;
Grant award: $1,738,508.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Virginia;
Teacher quality project: Pre-K Mathematics and Science for At-Risk
Children: Outcomes-Focused Curricula and Support for Teaching Quality;
Grant award: $1,949,854.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Oregon;
Teacher quality project: Reading Intervention with Spanish Speaking
Students: Maximizing Instructional Effectiveness in English and
Spanish;
Grant award: $3,498,216.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Michigan;
Teacher quality project: Modeling Situation Awareness in Teachers;
Grant award: $816,936.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Illinois, Chicago;
Teacher quality project: Collaborative Teacher Network;
Grant award: $1,207,516.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Kansas;
Teacher quality project: Improving Instruction Through Implementation
of the Partnership Instructional Coaching Model;
Grant award: $1,919,577.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: Florida State University;
Teacher quality project: The Effects of Teacher Preparation and
Professional Development on Special Education Teacher Quality;
Grant award: $640,044.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Florida;
Teacher quality project: The Influence of Collaborative Professional
Development Groups & Coaching on the Literacy Instruction of Upper
Elementary Special Education Teachers;
Grant award: $2,293,415.
Year: 2007; Research recipient: University of Florida;
Teacher quality project: Impact of Professional Development on
Preschool Teachers' Use of Embedded-Instruction Practices;
Grant award: $1,288,510.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University of California, Berkeley;
Teacher quality project: Integrating Science and Diversity Education: A
Model of Pre-Service Elementary Teacher Preparation;
Grant award: $1,473,522.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: LessonLab, Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Using Video Clips of Classroom Instruction as
Item Prompts to Measure Teacher Knowledge of Teaching Mathematics:
Instrument Development and Validation;
Grant award: $1,413,121.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: California State University, Long
Beach;
Teacher quality project: Standards-Based Differentiated ELD Instruction
to Improve English Language Arts Achievement for English Language
Learners;
Grant award: $991,630.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University at Albany, State University
of New York;
Teacher quality project: Enhancing Knowledge Related to Research-Based
Early Literacy Instruction Among Pre-Service Teachers;
Grant award: $1,440,551.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University of California, Irvine;
Teacher quality project: The Pathway Project: A Cognitive Strategies
Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for Teachers of Secondary
English Language Learners;
Grant award: $2,942,842.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University of Pittsburgh;
Teacher quality project: Content-Focused Coaching for High Quality
Reading Instruction;
Grant award: $5,946,864.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: Research Foundation of the State
University of New York;
Teacher quality project: Do Lower Barriers to Entry Affect Achievement
and Teacher Retention: The Case of New York City Math Immersion;
Grant award: $429,500.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: Miami Museum of Science;
Teacher quality project: Early Childhood Hands-On Science Curriculum
Development and Demonstration Project;
Grant award: $1,415,652.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University of Virginia;
Teacher quality project: National Center for Research on Early
Childhood Education (NCRECE): Preschool Teacher Professional
Development Study;
Grant award: $11,016,009.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: Vanderbilt University;
Teacher quality project: National Center for Performance Incentives;
Grant award: $10,835,509.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: Urban Institute;
Teacher quality project: Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data
in Education Research (CALDER);
Grant award: $10,000,000.
Year: 2006; Research recipient: University of Hawaii;
Teacher quality project: I in the IEP [IEP is the acronym for
Individual Education Program.];
Grant award: $1,500,000.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Allegheny Singer Research Institute;
Teacher quality project: Mentoring Teachers Through Pedagogical Content
Knowledge Development;
Grant award: $957,825.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Education Development Center, Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Assessing the Potential Impact of a
Professional Development Program in Science on Head Start Teachers and
Children;
Grant award: $1,367,500.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: University of Nebraska-Lincoln;
Teacher quality project: Evolving Inquiry: An Experimental Test of a
Science Instruction Model for Teachers in Rural, Culturally Diverse
Schools;
Grant award: $1,261,684.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: University of Toledo;
Teacher quality project: Utah's Improving Science Teacher Quality
Initiative;
Grant award: $913,620.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: South Carolina Department of Education;
Teacher quality project: Investigating the Efficacy of a Professional
Development Program in Classroom Assessment for Middle School Reading
and Mathematics;
Grant award: $1,680,625.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: SRI International;
Teacher quality project: Comparing the Efficacy of Three Approaches to
Improving Teaching Quality in Science Education: Curriculum
Implementation, Design, and Adaptation;
Grant award: $1,864,415.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: University of South Florida;
Teacher quality project: Replication and Outcomes of the Teaching SMART
Program in Elementary Science Classrooms;
Grant award: $2,408,168.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Florida State University;
Teacher quality project: Identifying the Conditions Under Which Large
Scale Professional Development Policy Initiatives are Related to
Teacher Knowledge Instructional Practices, and Student Reading
Outcomes;
Grant award: $500,000.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Success for All Foundation;
Teacher quality project: Embedded Classroom Multimedia: Improving
Implementation Quality and Student Achievement in a Cooperative Writing
Program;
Grant award: $1,498,045.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Texas A&M University;
Teacher quality project: Enhancing the Quality of Expository Text
Instruction Through Content and Case-Situated Professional Development;
Grant award: $1,498,530.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: University of Texas at San Antonio;
Teacher quality project: Teaching Teachers to Teach Critical Reading
Strategies (CREST) Through an Intensive Professional Development Model;
Grant award: $926,814.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Education Development Center Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Examining the Efficacy of Two Models of
Preschool Professional Development in Language and Literacy;
Grant award: $2,834,272.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: WestEd;
Teacher quality project: A Randomized Controlled Study of the Efficacy
of Reading Apprenticeship Professional Development for High School
History and Science Teaching and Learning;
Grant award: $2,997,972.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: University of Michigan;
Teacher quality project: Assessment of Pedagogical Knowledge of
Teachers of Reading;
Grant award: $1,677,575.
Year: 2005; Research recipient: Utah State University;
Teacher quality project: Connecting Primary Grade Teacher Knowledge to
Primary Grade Student Achievement: Developing the Evidence-Based
Reading/Writing Teacher Knowledge Assessment System;
Grant award: $926,814.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: DePaul University;
Teacher quality project: Algebra Connections: Teacher Education in
Clear Instruction and Responsive Assessment of Algebra Patterns and
Problem Solving;
Grant award: $1,052,822.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: Educational Testing Service;
Teacher quality project: The Relationship Between Mathematics Teachers'
Content Knowledge and Students' Mathematics Achievement: Exploring the
Predictive Validity of the Praxis Series Middle School Mathematics
Test;
Grant award: $1,573,623.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: Purdue University;
Teacher quality project: Professional Development in Early Reading;
Grant award: $1,418,091.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill;
Teacher quality project: Improving Teacher Quality to Address the
Language and Literacy Skills of Latino Children in Pre-Kindergarten
Programs;
Grant award: $1,467,046.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: University of Chicago;
Teacher quality project: Can Literacy Professional Development be
Improved With Web-Based Collaborative Learning Tools? A Randomized
Field Trial;
Grant award: $3,046,054.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: Florida State University;
Teacher quality project: Assessing Teacher Effectiveness: How Can We
Predict Who Will Be a High Quality Teacher?;
Grant award: $978,698.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: RAND Corporation;
Teacher quality project: Teacher Licensure Tests and Student
Achievement;
Grant award: $1,590,967.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: Vanderbilt University;
Teacher quality project: Opening the Black Box in Choice and Regular
Public Schools (a research project within the National Research &
Development Center on School Choice);
Grant award: $3,262,563.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill;
Teacher quality project: National Research Center on Rural Education
Support (estimated amount of total award devoted to teacher quality
research);
Grant award: $11,200,000.
Year: 2004; Research recipient: Vanderbilt University;
Teacher quality project: Scaling Up Peer Assisted Learning Strategies
to Strengthen Reading Achievement;
Grant award: $5,618,237.
Year: 2003; Research recipient: LessonLab Inc.;
Teacher quality project: Improving Achievement by Maintaining the
Learning Potential of Rich Mathematics Problems: An Experimental Study
of a Video-and Internet-Based Professional Development Program;
Grant award: $1,594,021.
Year: 2003; Research recipient: Haskins Laboratories;
Teacher quality project: Mastering Reading Instruction: A Professional
Development Project for First Grade Teachers;
Grant award: $2,912,063.
Year: 2003; Research recipient: Instructional Research Group;
Teacher quality project: Teacher Quality Study: An Investigation of the
Impact of Teacher Study Groups as a Means to Enhance The Quality of
Reading Instruction for First Graders in High Poverty Schools in Two
States;
Grant award: $2,820,670.
Year: 2003; Research recipient: University of Michigan;
Teacher quality project: Identifying Key Components of Effective
Professional Development in Reading for First Grade Teachers and Their
Students;
Grant award: $1,677,575.
Year: Total grants;
Grant award: $159,393,859.
Source: GAO analysis of IES research projects.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix V: Comments from the U.S. Department of Education:
United States Department Of Education:
Washington, D.C. 20202:
"Our mission is to ensure equal access to education and to promote
educational excellence throughout the Nation"
June 9, 2009:
Ms. Cornelia M. Ashby:
Director:
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues:
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Ms. Ashby:
I am writing in response to the recommendation made in the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) report, "Teacher Quality: Sustained
Coordination among Key Federal Education Programs Could Enhance State
Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality" (GAO-09-593).
This report had one recommendation for the Secretary of Education.
Following is the Department's response.
Recommendation: To ensure that departmental goals to improve teacher
quality are achieved and that its many related efforts are mutually
reinforcing, we recommend that the Secretary of Education establish and
implement a strategy for sustained coordination among existing
departmental offices and programs. A key purpose of this coordination
would be to facilitate information and resource sharing as well as to
strengthen linkages among teacher quality improvement efforts to help
states, school districts, and institutions of higher education in their
initiatives to improve teacher quality.
Response: While the Department agrees that coordination is beneficial,
the Department's experience indicates that creating interdepartmental
committees solely for the purpose of coordinating agency activities or
sharing information across offices is not always a useful exercise.
While the Department will review the advisability of forming a cross-
program committee, it would first want to ensure that such a group
would truly lead to improvements in the way the Department coordinates
its approach to teacher quality and the way States and school districts
promote teacher quality.
The Department has effectively brought together individuals from
different offices to work together on discrete issues or problems
related to teacher quality when such action is needed. Good examples
are the coordination that occurred on the implementation of the highly
qualified teacher (HQ l) requirements of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, as amended, (ESEA) and on the development of common
performance measures for teacher professional development programs.
In recent months, the Department has taken additional actions to
coordinate activities in response to new demands and needs. The
Department has initiated a number of coordination efforts to address
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) requirements.
One team, which is led by the Secretary's advisors on teacher issues
and made up of representatives from several program off -ices, focuses
on teachers and school leadership. As additional needs arise, such as
those that may emanate from the implementation of the ARRA or the
development of proposals for the reauthorization of the ESEA or other
legislation, the Department can create additional inter-office working
groups or coordinating bodies to address them.
Efforts to coordinate program implementation cannot fully eliminate
harriers to program alignment. Individual programs have unique, and
often inconsistent, legislative definitions and requirements. While
increased internal coordination may alleviate some problems, it is
unlikely to completely resolve them. The draft report identifies a
cogent example: on page 19, the authors note that the Improving Teacher
Quality State Grants (ITQ) program has a statutory definition of "high-
need local educational agency," while the Mathematics and Science
Partnerships program does not have a statutory definition of that term.
The authors claim that this inconsistency may hinder States' ability to
coordinate their implementation of the two programs, but intra-agency
coordination could not eliminate this inconsistency.
The enclosed document includes the Department's suggested technical
changes to the report.
We appreciate the opportunity to share our comments on the draft
report.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Joseph C. Conaty:
Delegated Authority to Perform the Functions and Duties of the
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education:
Enclosure:
[End of section]
Appendix VI: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Cornelia M. Ashby, (202) 512-7215, ashbyc@gao.gov:
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] U.S. Department of Education, Office of Policy and Program Studies
Services, State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind
Act: Volume VII--Teacher Quality Under NCLB: Final Report (U.S.
Department of Education, 2009). High-poverty and low-poverty schools
are respectively those in the top and bottom quartiles when schools in
a state are ranked by level of poverty in descending order; most states
based level of poverty on the percentage of students eligible for free
or reduced lunch in the school.
[2] "Collaboration" is a broad term that can include activities that
others have variously defined as "cooperation," "coordination," and
"integration," and previous GAO work has identified various practices
that can enhance collaboration, such as establishing compatible
policies and procedures to operate across organizational boundaries.
See GAO, Results Oriented Government: Practices that Can Help Enhance
and Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-15] (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21,
2005).
[3] Because of differences in higher education governance among states,
state agencies for higher education include offices, commissions,
boards, committees, departments, or organizations with governing
authority over higher education in the state.
[4] Coordinating bodies work to integrate a student's education from
kindergarten through a 4-year college degree by coordinating statewide
education initiatives and reforms. Examples of such coordinating bodies
include what are commonly referred to as P-16/20 councils, or
prekindergarten through college/master's, though some states refer to
them differently (e.g., commission, roundtable, committee, initiative,
etc.). On the basis of our review of the literature, we found that a
large number of these bodies address some aspect of teacher quality.
[5] Laura Goe and Leslie M. Stickler, Teacher Quality and Student
Achievement: Making the Most of Recent Research (Washington, D.C.:
National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, 2008).
[6] GAO, No Child Left Behind: States Face Challenges in Measuring
Academic Growth that Education's Initiatives May Help Address,
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-661] (Washington, D.C.:
July 17, 2006).
[7] Under the Government Performance and Results Act (Pub. L. No. 103-
62 (1993)), federal agencies are required to develop strategic plans,
performance plans, and performance reports. The plans are to include
long-term and annual goals, respectively, along with the means for
accomplishing the goals. The performance report is to include the
extent to which the goals have been achieved.
[8] Core subjects include English, reading or language arts,
mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government,
economics, arts, history, and geography.
[9] GAO, No Child Left Behind Act: Improved Accessibility to
Education's Information Could Help States Further Implement Teacher
Qualification Requirements, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-25] (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 21,
2005).
[10] GAO has reported that in general, HEA provisions tend to focus on
the preparation of prospective teachers, while ESEA provisions tend to
focus on training for teachers already in the classroom and are funded
at a higher level than HEA programs. See GAO, Teacher Quality:
Approaches, Implementation, and Evaluations of Key Federal Efforts,
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-861T] (Washington, D.C.:
May 17, 2007).
[11] Title II, section 205 of the HEA, as amended by the Higher
Education Opportunity Act, Pub. L. No. 110-315, requires the annual
preparation and submission of reports on teacher preparation and
qualifications from institutions of higher education that conduct a
traditional teacher preparation program or alternative route to state
certification or licensure. Section 206 requires these institutions of
higher education to set annual quantifiable goals for increasing the
number of prospective teachers trained in teacher shortage areas and to
provide specific assurances to the Secretary of Education that include
being responsive to the needs of school districts in which the
institution's graduates are likely to teach.
[12] According to Education, during the 2007-2008 school year,
districts used most of the funding for hiring highly qualified teachers
to reduce classroom size and professional development training for
teachers already teaching in the classroom.
[13] These 33 programs have other primary goals or purposes, such as
providing assistance to rural school districts to help them meet state
academic goals, supporting career and technical skills of secondary or
postsecondary students, or paying the salaries of teachers serving
certain student populations.
[14] This total includes an estimated $1.15 billion from the fiscal
year 2009 appropriation and about $800 million from the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. L. No. 111-5).
[15] Other teacher quality programs that received Recovery Act funds
and that are specifically focused on teacher quality include the
Enhancing Education Through Technology Program and the Teacher Quality
Partnership Grant Program.
[16] GAO, Troops to Teachers: Program Brings More Men and Minorities
into Teaching Workforce, but Education Could Improve Management to
Enhance Results, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-265]
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 1, 2006); Special Education: Additional
Assistance and Better Coordination Needed among Education Offices to
Help States Meet the NCLBA Teacher Requirements, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-659] (Washington, D.C.: July 15,
2004); and U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Inspector
General, Overlapping Services in the Department of Education's Office
of Postsecondary Education Programs, Audit Report No. ED-OIG/X07F0002
(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27, 2006).
[17] GAO, Results Oriented Government: Practices that Can Help Enhance
and Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-15] (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21,
2005).
[18] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-15].
[19] GAO, Managing for Results: Building on Agencies' Strategic Plans
to Improve Federal Management, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/T-GGD/AIMD-98-29] (Washington, D.C.:
Oct. 30, 1997).
[20] All nonfederal entities that expend $500,000 or more in federal
awards in a year are required to obtain an annual audit in accordance
with the Single Audit Act, as amended, and Office of Management and
Budget Circular A-133, "Audits of States, Local Governments and Non-
Profit Organizations."
[21] Process studies are conducted to evaluate the extent to which a
program is operating as it was intended. These studies typically use
methodologies such as case studies and surveys to assess whether
program activities conform to statutory and regulatory requirements,
program design, and professional standards or customer expectations.
Outcome evaluations assess the extent to which a program achieves its
outcome-oriented objectives, but may also assess program processes to
understand how outcomes are produced. Impact evaluations use scientific
research methods to assess the net effect of a program by comparing
program outcomes with an estimate of what would have happened in the
absence of the program.
[22] U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences,
National Evaluation of Early Reading First, Final Report to Congress
(Washington, D.C.: May 2007).
[23] U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and
Policy Development, Partnerships for Reform: Changing Teacher
Preparation Through the Title II HEA Partnership Program: Final Report
(Washington, D.C.: May 2006).
[24] GAO, Higher Education: Federal Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics Programs and Related Trends, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-114] (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 12,
2005).
[25] U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, The
Impact of Professional Development Models and Strategies on Teacher
Practice and Student Achievement in Early Reading (Washington, D.C.:
September 2008); and An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through
Different Routes to Certification (Washington, D.C.: February 2009).
[26] National Research Council, Assessing Accomplished Teaching:
Advanced-Level Certification Programs (Washington, D.C.: 2008).
[27] IES also includes the National Center for Education Statistics,
which is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and
reporting data on the condition of education in the United States and
other nations. IES maintains large data sets, such as the Schools and
Staffing Survey, which are available to the public and researchers.
[28] Research information is also provided in other products, including
Topic Reports, which compile information from intervention reports in
specific topics such as reading and mathematics, and Intervention
Reports, which examine all studies for a specific intervention within a
topic area, rating each study based on evidence standards.
[29] REL research that meet IES standards is presented on the What
Works Clearinghouse.
[30] Each of the five National Content Centers focuses on and provides
expertise, analysis, and research in one of the following areas:
accountability, instruction, teacher quality, innovation and
improvement, or high schools.
[31] The Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-
279, Title II) requires that each comprehensive center coordinate its
activities, collaborate, and regularly exchange information with the
REL in the region in which the center is located as well as with other
technical assistance providers in the region.
[32] Carl Krueger, The Progress of P-16 Collaboration in the States
(Denver, Colo.: Education Commission of the States, April 2006).
[33] Education also provides some funding for the Center for Analysis
of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), housed at the
Urban Institute. CALDER's mission is to inform education policy
development through analyses of data on individual students and
teachers over time.
[34] According to Education, new grant awards were not made in fiscal
year 2008. Most of the funding available in fiscal year 2008 supported
13 continuation awards; the remainder was combined with fiscal year
2009 funding for a new competition. In fiscal year 2009, the 12 states
that were awarded a second grant were Arkansas, California,
Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
[35] The State Fiscal Stabilization Fund is designed, in part, to help
stabilize state and local budgets to minimize and avoid reductions in
education and other essential services.
[36] Included in this guidance is information on specific data metrics
that states would use to make transparent their status in the education
reform areas. The data metrics include teacher effectiveness and
ensuring that all schools have highly qualified teachers, higher
standards and rigorous assessments that will improve both teaching and
learning, and better information to educators and the public to address
the individual needs of students and improve teacher performance. For
each metric, a state would need to demonstrate that it collects the
required data and that it will make the data easily accessible to the
public.
[37] Sarah-Kathryn McDonald, Jolynne Andal, Kevin Brown, and Barbara
Schneider, Getting the Evidence for Evidence-based Initiatives: How the
Midwest States Use Data Systems to Improve Education Processes and
Outcomes (Washington, D.C.: REL Midwest, 2007).
[38] Because of differences in higher education governance among
states, state agencies for higher education include offices,
commissions, boards, committees, departments, or organizations with
governing authority over higher education in the state.
[39] This guide is a subset of the Catalog of Federal Domestic
Assistance, which includes the federal programs from all federal
agencies. We updated fiscal year 2008 funding levels with fiscal year
2009 funding levels based on information in the fiscal year 2009
Omnibus Appropriations Act, Education budget documents, and a review of
these figures by Education officials.
[40] The Regional Educational Laboratories included the Northwest
Regional Educational Laboratory, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational
Laboratory, and the Southwest Regional Educational Laboratory; the
Regional Comprehensive Centers included the Northwest Regional
Comprehensive Center, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Comprehensive Center,
and the Southeast Regional Comprehensive Center.
[41] Coordinating bodies work to integrate a student's education from
kindergarten through a four-year college degree by coordinating
statewide education initiatives and reforms. Examples of such
coordinating bodies include what are commonly referred to as P-16/20
councils, though some states refer to them differently (e.g.,
commissions, roundtables, committees, initiatives, etc.). On the basis
of our review of the literature, we found that a large number of these
bodies address some aspect of teacher quality.
[End of section]
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