From: Lori Lambertson (loril@exploratorium.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 05 2004 - 13:13:14 PDT
Message-Id: <p05010403bd88aa8fc079@[192.168.111.235]> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:13:14 -0700 From: Lori Lambertson <loril@exploratorium.edu> Subject: how you may be able to access NCLB funds for conferences
Hello Pinhole Friends,
Earlier this fall, I did some research on how teachers might be able
to get funding to attend various professional development activities
(e.g. conferences). You may or may not already be familiar with the
NCLB Title II, Part A funds. If your district is receiving these
funds, and if they haven't already decided how to spend the funds,
you may be able to use the money to pay for your professional
development.
I received a lot of this information from Phil La Fontaine, a TI
alumnus, who is now working with at the Math and Science Leadership
Office at the California Dept. of Education.
I am not an expert, but I hope this information is helpful.
Cheers,
Lori
NCLB Update, and How YOU Can Be More Proactive Regarding How the
Title II, Part A Funds Are Used
The No Child Left Behind Act requires all teachers to be "highly
qualified" in their fields and has altered the manner in which
teachers may take advantage of professional development opportunities
to increase their knowledge and skills. NCLB monies can be used to
fund your participation in local and state conferences. Funds are
available under NCLB, Title II, Part A. Activities in your personal
professional development plan may be funded through Title II, Part A
monies if your district is already receiving these funds, and if the
activities you wish to attend are already on your district's list of
"high quality professional development activities".
Currently, top priority for disbursement of these funds is reserved
for teachers who are not yet HOUSSE (high, objective, uniform state
standard of evaluation) certified, or those who are not NCLB
compliant (e.g. fully and properly credentialed, as well as able to
demonstrate content knowledge.) For more information about HOUSSE
and/or NCLB compliance, go to
http://www.cde.ca.gov/nclb/sr/tq/index.asp#teachreq
and/or
http://www.cta.org/CaliforniaEducator/v8i2/Action_3.htm
If you are a teacher who is not yet HOUSSE or NCLB certified, you
should make it a priority to take advantage of this information. If
you are already meet HOUSSE requirements or if you are certified as
being NCLB compliant, you can still utilize Title II, Part A funds,
as NCLB also stipulates that ALL teachers should participate in high
quality professional development.
Before embarking on developing your personal plan, do these two things:
1) call your district to find out if they are receiving Title II,
Part A funding.
2) identify an area of your teaching that you would like to address.
This should be something that would increase student achievement or
an area that you would like to strengthen. This area of concern
needs to be based upon some type of evidence (e.g. your class
assessments - not necessarily state test data). For example, if you
have noticed that your students continue to struggle with algebraic
thinking, you may want to develop your personal professional
development plan around strengthening this area. Your plan needs to
address the need you have identified, and it should be evidenced by
some type of student assessment. Another example may be that you
would like to learn to assess your students in multiple ways and in
your plan, you would like to investigate different assessment
strategies.
The plan can be generated by you, as an individual teacher, or by a
group of teachers at the same school who wish to address a topic
together. This plan needs to show an intensive, long term and high
quality series of activities to help address what you have identified
as your area of focus and how it is going to benefit your students.
Our two state math and science organizations, the California
Mathematics Council and the California Science Teachers' Association,
have more information about developing plans to attend their
conferences. These web sites may give you some ideas for developing
professional development plans:
http://www.cmc-math.org/ASILNCLB
http://www.cascience.org/PDTemplate.pdf
Once you have developed your plan, it needs to be presented to your
principal, who, in turn, will send it to your district. If the
activities on your plan are already on your district's list of
approved "high quality professional development activities", you may
be able to receive funding. These plans can also be developed by an
entire school, or by an entire district. However, since action can
be taken by individual teachers, we encourage you to make the needs
of your students known, and get the professional development you want
in order to help your students.
Some districts are still developing their lists of "high quality
professional development activities". You may be able to make
recommendations to your district about activities that you think
should be on their lists. As specified by NCLB Title IX, the
activities that you recommend should encompass as many of the
following criteria as possible.
o improve and increase teachers' knowledge of the academic subjects
the teachers teach, and enable teachers to become highly qualified;
o are an integral part of broad school or district wide educational
improvement plans:
o give teachers, principals, and administrators the knowledge and
skills to provide students with the opportunity to meet challenging
state academic content standards and student achievement standards;
o improve classroom management skills;
o are high quality, sustained, intensive, and classroom-focused in
order to have a positive and lasting impact on classroom instruction
and the teacher's performance in the classroom; and
o are not 1-day or short-term workshop or conferences;
o advance teacher understanding of effective instructional strategies that are
base on scientifically based research and
strategies for improving student academic achievement or
substantially increasing the knowledge and teaching skills of
teachers; and
o are aligned with state academic content standards;
o are developed with the participation of teachers and administrators.
o are designed to give teachers of limited English proficient
children the knowledge and skills to provide instruction and support
to those children;
o provide training for teachers and principals in the use of
technology to improve teaching and learning in the curricula and core
academic subjects in which the teachers teach;
o are regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher
effectiveness and improved student academic achievement;
o provide instruction in methods of teaching children with special needs;
o include instruction in ways that teachers, principals, pupil
services personnel and school administrators may work more
effectively with parents.
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