CTP Publications Related to this Core Substudy:

What School Districts Spend on Professional Development

CTP STUDY DESCRIPTION

Core Substudy:
Analysis of Resource Allocation in Contrasting Teaching Policy Environments

Principal Investigators:

David Monk, Pennsylvania State University
Margaret Plecki, University of Washington

Overview:

This crosscutting analysis, drawn from the Core Study, explored issues related to the comparative costs and benefits of alternative policy strategies for enhancing the quality of teaching. The project combined conceptual and methodological work necessary to carry out embedded fiscal analyses of this sort, with analyses of (1) existing fiscal data sources and (2) new resource data (both quantitative and qualitative) that was being collected in the Core Study.

Main Research Questions:

1. What is the nature and level of investments made in teacher improvement policies from federal, state, and local sources?
2. How are resources from multiple levels of the system and from multiple sources actually configured at the school level?
3. What variation exists among states, districts, and schools regarding the allocation and use of resources targeted at improving teaching quality? What equity issues emerge from the study of these resource allocation practices?
4. What are teachers' perceptions of what interferes with their ability to take full advantage of the resources that are available to support their teaching?
5. What role do teaching policy strategies from federal, state, and district levels play in influencing the allocation and use of fiscal resources at the school level?

Method:

Document analysis, case study research, analyses of fiscal databases

Status:

Research Completed

Publications:

CTP Policy Brief: What School districts Spend on Professional Development, November 2002.

Related Journal Article: Killeen, K. M., Monk, D. H., & Plecki, M. (2002). School District Spending on Professional Development: Insights Available from National Data (1992-1998) Journal of Education Finance, 28 (1), 25-49. (This article is available on the CTP web site with permission from The Association of School Business Officials International. Any variation in appearance from the printed document is due to technical limitations.)

Related Journal Article: Killeen, K. M., Monk, D. H., & Plecki, M. (2000). Spending on instructional staff support in big school districts: Why are urban districts spending at such high levels? Educational Considerations, 28, 8-25.

Journal Article: Monk, D.H., Plecki, M. L. & Killeen, K. (2003). Examining investments in teacher professional development: A look at current practice and a proposal for improving the research base. In Plecki, M.L. & Monk, D.H. (Eds.) School Finance and Teacher Quality: Exploring the Connections. The 2003 Yearbook of the American Education Finance Association. Larchmont, NJ: Eye on Education: 137-156.