The Need to Improve Professional Learning and Advancement

Investments in teachers’ professional learning in the United States are substantial. Most public school teachers’ employment contracts specify a required number of PD hours per school year—a 2014 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study estimated that teachers engage in an average of 68 hours of district-directed professional development (PD) activities per year, and a total of 89 hours per year when self-guided PD is included.¹ All told, roughly $18 billion is invested in PD annually from a variety of federal, state, and local sources² (although this does not capture the amount teachers spend on PD out of their own pockets). The bulk of the federal portion of this funding—$2.3 billion in fiscal year 2020—comes through Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which can be used for educator professional learning, among other activities.³ Overall, it has been estimated that most LEAs spend between 1 and 3 percent of their total budgets on teacher PD,⁴ although there is wide variation across agencies.⁵

But this large investment⁶ does not translate into high quality or relevance of learning opportunities. A significant portion of teachers’ PD is done to fulfill state-mandated “credit hours,” time-based units that teachers must earn in order to retain or advance the license that allows them to work in public schools.⁷ Most of this PD does not reflect the scientific evidence on how adults best learn (e.g., personalized, sustained areas of focus over time, with formal opportunities for guided practice, collaborative feedback, and individual reflection).⁸ In fact, PD often manifests itself as the exact opposite: all teachers in a school, regardless of their experience or subject area, attend lecture-based trainings on the same topics, with no opportunities to practice concepts or follow up with peers or supervisors on how they incorporated them in the classroom. A nationally representative survey of teachers in 2015 found that only 20 percent were satisfied with current approaches to PD.”⁹

The following What Happens vs. What Works charts provide more details on the PD offering and PD system level approaches that teachers often experience relative to those proven to improve teacher competence and/or retention.

These current PD practices culminate in lower teacher satisfaction, decreased retention, and unhealthy school cultures, in addition to lower overall quality of instruction—all of which have detrimental effects on student learning and other outcomes.¹⁰

As discussed in detail in New America’s 2016 No Panacea report, several obstacles exist to achieving a high-functioning system of teacher professional development and advancement. One obstacle that can impede every aspect of such a system is a compliance-focused professional culture that eschews risk and vulnerability, oftentimes in conjunction with the belief that professional improvement is unnecessary.¹¹ As we wrote in No Panacea, “for meaningful collaboration to occur…teachers need more than structures that provide time and space to meet together. They also need to establish trusting relationships with each other, demonstrate respect for each other’s viewpoints, and be open to considering a new way forward that may not fit neatly with one’s preferred methods of teaching. But historically…teachers have worked in isolation, tucked away in their own classrooms,” which creates “cultural norms [against]…asking for assistance…in improving their practice.”¹²

Additionally, many teachers have felt that implementation of the more rigorous performance evaluation systems rolled out over the past decade has been more focused on categorizing teachers as “good” or “bad” rather than identifying and supporting growth,¹³ which has limited their comfort with voicing professional struggles, as well as evaluators’ comfort in highlighting them.¹⁴

When teachers do regularly seek out meaningful opportunities to grow professionally, it often goes unrecognized. The outcome of these ineffective approaches to PD is that they leave many teachers with the view that PD is something they must endure, rather than something that supports them and their students.

These issues with PD are compounded by minimal opportunities for teachers to advance their careers. Teachers looking to progress professionally often have to become school or district administrators, or even leave education altogether. The rare opportunities for teachers to gain increased recognition, authority, and compensation while staying in the classroom are often tied to experience or degree attainment, instead of demonstrable, on-the-job skills. And recent attempts to observe and recognize ability in the classroom have not panned out as expected. For example, despite policies aimed at improving performance evaluations, principals remain reluctant to provide their teachers with constructive feedback even when they are aware of areas for improvement.¹⁵ As a result, almost all teachers receive high ratings with little differentiation in areas for growth. This outcome can be particularly demotivating for our most skilled teachers, increasing the likelihood that they will leave the profession seeking recognition and and reward for their superlative skills.¹⁶

Given this lack of support and opportunity, it is not surprising that the educator workforce is sometimes described as a “leaky bucket,” with substantial turnover in many schools across the U.S., particularly in those serving our highest-need students.¹⁷ Alarmingly, a 2019 poll reported half of teachers seriously considering quitting the profession, a statistic that COVID-19 could increase further.¹⁸ The leaky bucket is not a recent phenomenon; researchers and policymakers have wrestled with how to recruit and retain teachers for decades.¹⁹

Research shows that high teacher turnover rates in schools negatively impact student achievement for all the students in a school. Which means the biggest losers from current educator advancement policies and practices are students, particularly the low-income students and students of color most in need of strong teacher talent.