TCO Checklist:
Professional Development

How Much Should Be Budgeted?

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The budget item that arguably is most critical to a school district's ability to achieve its technology goals is staff development. If teachers and other staff members do not understand how to use new technologies and incorporate them into the classroom, a district's technological investment will not achieve its desired results.

To underscore this point, the U.S. Department of Education has recommended that school districts set aside 30 percent of their technology budgets for staff training and development. Today many state departments of education require that districts devote between 20 and 30 percent of their state technology grant money to staff development.

In a 1995 school technology guide, the Massachusetts Software Council pointed out that many businesses match every dollar they spend on computer hardware or software with another dollar for training. While it acknowledged that that figure was probably too ambitious for most school districts, it recommended that at least one-fourth of a school's technology budget be set aside for that purpose.

One of the largest components of the cost of staff development is substitute teachers, so that the teaching staff can be trained during their regular work hours. In a well-publicized model of school-technology costs, McKinsey & Co. assumed that a district planning to network all of its classrooms would have to hire substitute teachers at a cost of $100 a day, as well as the equivalent of 1.5 full-time staff members to conduct training, and cover the cost of training materials.

Another model, developed by Integrated Technology Education Group, LLC for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, calls for a minimum of five days of training per year per teacher and two days per year per administrator, as well as an additional six days per year of informal peer-to-peer training. The model adopts 30 percent of the budget for staff training as the goal to which districts should aspire, but considers 15 percent to be the minimum acceptable.

A 1996 RAND study of eight pioneering high-tech schools found that the cost of staff development ranged from $15 to $35 per student per year, with most schools spending about $25. As a share of their technology budgets, the percentages ranged from 22 percent to 5.5 percent, with the average among them pegged at about 10 percent.

Smart Valley, a recently concluded initiative by Silicon Valley companies to network schools and other community institutions in that area, approached the issue another way. It recommended in a school networking guide that "an average starting point" should be to allocate approximately $1,500 per year for each person requiring training.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Education, in a four-year technology plan, assumed that the typical school with 700 students and 33 staff members would spend $2,000 per staff member for staff support, materials and mileage and $35 an hour for trainers (with a projected 2,000 hours required per school).

Inadequate staff training will lead to under-utilization of computers-and a loss of return on a school district's investment in technology. A survey of technology directors conducted by the Milken Exchange found that on average, 5.9 percent of their district's computers were not being used. The second most important reason why, cited by 50 percent of overall respondents, was that "teachers are not trained to use them."

CEO Forum Report on Staff Development

In its second major report on the status of educational technology in U.S. schools, the CEO Forum provides an overview of efforts to prepare teachers to use technology and principles for successful professional development in the area of technology. The report, "Professional Development: A Link to Better Learning" can be accessed at www.ceoforum.org.