Conventional wisdom has suggested that increasing the knowledge and skills of teachers through professional development is the primary way to improve schools and student outcomes. Given the massive monetary spending and time devoted to teacher professional development, it is important to understand how this mechanism of change is impacting…

This study describes how principals reported spending their time and what professional development they reported participating in, based on data collected through the Schools and Staffing Survey by the National Center for Education Statistics during the 2011/12 school year. The study analyzes schools by grade level, poverty level, and within…

The 2017-18 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State representative data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. NTPS collects data on core topics including…

Department chairs occupy a potentially important leadership position in high schools, yet little is known about them, particularly with regard to who they are and how they compare to other high school teachers. This is surprising given growing expectations for distributed leadership practice in schools. In this study, I utilize a national dataset…

This study uses an innovative methodology and six waves of "Schools and Staffing Survey" data spanning two decades (1988-2008) to assess the potential of midcareer entrants--teachers who enter the profession from careers outside of education--to diversify teaching, staff public schools, and fill vacancies in high-need subjects. We find…

The authors focused on public schools expected to meet performance goals before the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2002) using data from the responses of 26,257 teachers and 6,711 principals to public school questionnaires from the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey. They examined relationships among measures of teacher commitment and…

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. In order to identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states. The…

This report presents selected findings from the Public School Teacher and Private School Teacher Data Files of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. School districts associated with…

The Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education and is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. TFS is a follow-up survey of selected elementary and secondary school teachers who participated in the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is the…

This booklet analyzes information obtained from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The SASS is a set of integrated questionnaires that collect information about schools and the staff who work in them. The survey asks for information from a random sample of schools, their principals, a subset of the teachers in each school, and public-school…

Schools and Staffing Survey data on public school teachers from 1993-94 and 1999-2000 show that more teachers participate in content-focused professional development, more policy supports provide incentives for participation, and more resources for professional development are allocated to high-poverty schools. The largest increase in sustained…

This report recommends items from international comparative education studies that are related to inservice professional development (IPD) for possible inclusion in the Schools and Staffing Survey of 1999-2000. To justify these recommendations, the value of international comparisons and of state and nation comparisons generally is discussed, along…

Provides an overview of 1999-200 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data and describes selected findings on school safety, class size, school programs, teacher salaries, prior teaching experience of principals, professional development, and school library media specialists. The SASS is the most extensive survey of elementary and secondary schools…

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) has made it possible to develop comprehensive profiles of the nation's public and private schools and teachers and principals and to study issues of teacher supply and demand. The planned switch to a 5-year cycle of data collection provides a good time to re-examine the survey's design. This paper focuses on…

In early January 2003, "Education Week" released a new report on the status of teaching in the United States and concluded that many states are taking steps to recruit and retain skilled teachers, but few efforts focus on the schools where these teachers are needed most. Drawing upon a large national database, "Quality Counts…