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TEACHERS SAY MORE THAN EIGHT HOURS OF TRAINING MAKES THE DIFFERENCEJune 9, 2000EDITOR'S NOTE: Special Education News presents this monthly feature to give readers a glimpse of interesting developments in the special education field. Special Education News welcomes submissions for future monthly data reports. It may seem like an obvious point, but the U.S. Department of Education finds it important nonetheless to remind teachers that those who spend more time on professional development get better in the classroom. The department made this observation in its recent report, "The Condition of Education 2000," drawing the data from a 1999 federally funded study on teacher quality. Eight hours of professional development, focused on a particular activity or topic, was the threshold at which teachers reported a corresponding significant improvement in their effectiveness in the classroom. In 1998, 7 to 12 percent of full-time public school teachers reported their classroom teaching improved "a lot" after one to eight hours of topical training. By comparison, the portion of teachers who saw such improvement with more than eight hours of training ranged from 20 to 42 percent, depending on the topic. Teachers of all ages drew similar conclusions about the duration of training. "Years of teaching experience generally were not associated with feeling that participation in professional development improved classroom teaching a lot," the department noted. Extended training time was most important for teachers learning how to address the needs of students with disabilities. Eight percent said they saw improvement after one to eight hours of training, while 42 percent said more than eight hours made the difference in the classroom. This may be a testament to both the difficulty of teaching students with special needs and the generally low level of educator understanding of disability issues. Impacts of short and long training regimens for other training topics:
Despite the obvious value of extended professional development programs, the majority of training programs lasted one to eight hours in 1998, according to the report. Only 8 percent of teachers who attended professional development sessions on special education topics spent nine or more hours on it, and only 10 percent of teachers spent more than eight hours learning to teach students with limited English proficiency or culturally diverse backgrounds. Attendance at training sessions on addressing the needs of students with disabilities and students struggling with the English language was the lowest among eight different types of training the report outlined. "State and district curriculum and performance standards" was the most popular teacher training topic, even though, as reported above, those sessions yielded the fewest teachers making significant improvements in the classroom. Teachers getting professional development help of any duration in 1998, by topic:
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