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The Work of CSMP Teacher Leaders: A Summary of Key Findings From a Statewide Survey

5) Which schools and districts do teacher leaders serve?

When we designed this study, we envisioned that it would enable us to develop a district-by-district accounting of which teachers and students in California are benefiting from CSMP teacher leadership. However, we know that we did not receive surveys from every active teacher leader, nor can we confidently estimate what percentage of all active teacher leaders they comprise. Moreover, the teacher leaders included in the survey sample may well be more active overall than other teacher leaders at their sites who were not surveyed or who did not return the surveys. So our data is limited. At the same time it does allow us to report with confidence that at least a certain number of teacher leaders are active in particular counties and districts in the state. And it suggests that teacher leadership extends the CSMPs’ influence broadly, and occasionally deeply, into the state’s schools and districts.

• Nearly 75 percent of the teacher leaders named specific counties, districts and/or schools they worked with in the previous 12 months.
• The sample of teacher leaders reported they worked most intensively in 499 of California's 1,057 districts. About 87 percent of the state’s teachers and 90 percent of California's students are located in those districts the teacher leaders work in.

Collectively, the teachers in the survey sample worked as teacher leaders in:

• 55 counties (95 percent of the state’s 58 counties);
• 499 school districts (47 percent of California’s 1,057 districts in 1994 - 95); and
• 1,219 schools (16 percent of the 7,818 public K-12 schools).

As one might expect, more teacher leaders engage in leadership activities at the school and district level than at a county level.

• Seventy-one percent worked as leaders at a school level (e.g. schools sent teams to a series that the teacher leader helped plan and present, or the teacher leader is a formal or informal coach at a school).
• Seventy percent worked as leaders at a district level (e.g. the teacher leader presented inservices or gave workshops in these districts).
• Fifty-four percent worked in leadership roles at a county level (e.g. many of the attendees at a summer institute the teacher leader co-taught came from a particular county).

(The table on the following pages reports the number of teacher leaders in our sample who work with colleagues formally or informally in each county. They may be working with individual schools, at a district level and/or at a county level.)

Service to Counties by CSMP Teacher Leaders

When we analyzed the data to determine to what extent teacher leaders are working only in their local settings and to what extent they are "reaching out" to other schools, districts and counties we found that over half are working with schools other than their own. At the same time they are not just "outside experts;" most work with teachers in their own schools as well.

Overall, three-fourths of the teacher leaders who work in a leadership capacity at a school level do so at their own school (706 teacher leaders, or 75 percent of those who work in schools). The same percentage work in their own district (682, or 74 percent of those working at the district level). Of those who exert leadership at a county level, even more work in their own county (595, or 84 percent of those working at the county level).

Through their teacher leaders, the CSMPs have a presence in all of the state’s large highest-needs districts. (Please see table below on pages 24-25: Service to Large Underserved California Districts by CSMP Teacher Leaders.)

Service to Large Underserved California Districts by CSMP Teacher Leaders

If a teacher leader works at a district level, she or he most likely works with at least one of these high-needs districts. Seventy percent of all teacher leaders worked at the district level in the previous 12 months; during the same time period, 66 percent of all teacher leaders worked in at least one of the highest-needs districts.

It should also be noted that in addition to the large districts that we identified, there are certainly other smaller districts in the state (i.e. with fewer than 10,000 students) that are also high-need due to geographic isolation or percentage of students at risk. Although we did not conduct a formal analysis of these small districts, we observed that CSMP teacher leader presence often appears to be related to the close proximity of a site. At the same time, sites that have no large high-needs districts in their service region often actively reach out to small districts that have high proportions of at-risk students.

As noted early in this report, our survey sample includes about one in every two hundred teachers in the state.

• In most counties there are one or two active CSMP-affiliated teacher leaders. There tends to be a higher ratio of teacher leaders to teachers in the most lightly populated counties (e.g. 16 teacher leaders supporting the 153 teachers in Trinity county).

Teacher leaders carry out the majority of their leadership activities in the districts in which most of the state’s students and teachers are located.

• Los Angeles is the "most served" district, with 116 teacher leaders. The ten districts served by the largest number of teacher leaders include seven high-needs districts, and two others in the service areas of Projects located at UC Davis and Chico USD.

The Ten Districts Which are Served by the Most CSMP Teacher Leaders

• About 87 percent of the state’s teachers and 90 percent of its students are located in the 499 districts where the teacher leaders in our sample work the most intensively. The districts in which they are not active tend to be quite small.
• Between one and 116 teacher leaders are active in each of these 499 districts. Two teacher leaders work in some leadership capacity in the "typical" district, which has 193 teachers. They work at schools and/or at the district level, and may have ties to more than one school.

Level of Service to All California Districts

One criticism of the CSMPs, especially in years past, was that they attracted and served a disproportionate number of teachers from suburban school systems. Our study findings do not support this criticism. As we have seen, most teacher leaders consider their own schools to be important venues for their leadership. And as noted earlier in the report, the 850 public schools where they teach appear to be representative of the state’s schools overall in terms of community location and student ethnicity.

Also, sites have different beliefs and strategies in terms of working with individuals and with teams. We wondered to what extent teacher leaders are lone CSMP leaders at their schools and to what extent they have CSMP colleagues "next door." Generally, only one teacher leader from each school responded to the survey, but there are exceptions.

• The majority of the 935 individual schools that teacher leaders say they work with most were served by only one teacher leader. However, up to five or six teacher leaders taught and provided leadership at a few schools.
• Thirty-eight percent of the teacher leaders have one or more CSMP teacher leaders as colleagues at their schools. Twenty-six percent have a single CSMP-affiliated colleague, nine percent have two colleagues and three percent are in the fortunate position of having three to five other CSMP teacher leaders at their school.
• When there are several teacher leaders at a school, more often than not they represent at least two different Projects. (At 104 of the 178 schools where there is more than one teacher leader, at least two different Projects are represented.)

In general, teacher leaders rank CSMP sites as their best resource in terms of support for their teacher leadership activities. Most teacher leaders report that their CSMP sites provide more effective support than other resources that support their leadership efforts.

• Sixty-seven percent of the survey respondents report that CSMP sites are more effective in supporting their leadership efforts than the leaders' own schools and districts.
• Eighty-one percent say that CSMP sites are more effective than other professional development providers in supporting teacher leadership.

More specifically, they rank their sites quite positively in terms of the opportunities and support they provide for site-sponsored leadership activities.

• Seventy-five to 85 percent say that the sites provide enough support for them to feel successful in the specific leadership roles that they play at the site. Only a very few — less than five percent — judge the sites deficient in their support for teacher leadership.

⁶ Assuming that the Site Directors' estimates of their "teacher leadership pool" are accurate, the whole group of CSMP teacher leaders represented in this report is probably on the order of four percent of the state's teaching force.

⁷ Regional sites estimated that 44,352 individual teachers participated in 1994-95. Projects at the statewide level reported that they served 3,301 teachers. There is probably some small overlap between the two counts.

⁸ In 1995-96, there were 9,069 teacher leaders at regional sites. Comparable information is not available for the statewide Project activities.

⁹ Site Directors ordered a total of 3,052 surveys; this number represents just over one-half of the number of teacher leaders that Site Directors reported on the annual survey as being active at their sites. We do not know how many were actually distributed.

¹⁰ CSMP sites are expected to grow and mature in terms of the kinds of activities they sponsor and opportunities that they offer teacher leaders. Developing sites sponsor a summer institute and a few follow-up programs; expanding sites offer additional activities throughout the year and cover the region geographically; and mature sites provide extensive year-round services and have active teacher leadership in a range of activities.

¹¹ On the annual survey, Site Directors estimate the number of individuals served and teachers leaders affiliated with their sites.

¹² Site Directors ordered a total of 3,052 surveys; this number represents just over one-half of the number of teacher leaders that Site Directors reported on the annual survey as being active at their sites. We do not know how many were actually distributed.

¹³ Eight percent of the teacher leaders who returned surveys did not indicate which site sent the survey to them.

¹⁴ Figures for California are drawn from California Basic Educational Data system (CBED) data for the same period (1994 - 95).

¹⁵ For the teacher leadership sample, "other" includes teachers who teach at other grade configurations (e.g. K-8); for the CBED comparison group "other" includes vocational, special education and other teachers.

¹⁶ Source: CBED designations.

¹⁷ This is admittedly a "best guess." We found the median number of students taught by responding teachers at the K-5 level (32 students on average), middle school level (145 students), high school (133 students), and in other teaching settings (97 students). From this figure, we calculate that they collectively teach up to 133,000 students (two percent of all California students). If we presume that CSMP-affiliated teacher leaders may cluster at certain schools, and estimate therefore that perhaps a third of these students actually have two CSMP-affiliated teachers, then we can infer that these teacher leaders reach about one and a half percent of California students.

¹⁸ These percentages are weighted to account for the number of students taught by each teacher. They are based on the responses of teachers who reported both the number of students they personally teach and the composition of those students.

¹⁹ Our data on this topic is limited; of the 480 teachers who were involved with other Projects, 304 indicated which Project they attended.

²⁰ This finding agrees with the results of our earlier study of teacher leadership. See June 1997 Inverness Research Associates report: "The Nature of Teacher Leadership: Lessons Learned from the CSMPs."

²¹ These figures are admittedly rough estimates because of "overlap" in teacher leaders' service to individual teachers. We have tried to err on the low side in our calculations. We first calculated that there could be as many as 146,488 teachers in the state with whom CSMP teacher leaders work. We arrived at that figure by multiplying the average number of teachers that each teacher leader works with by the total number of teacher leaders who responded to this question. However, we know that in many cases more than one teacher leader works with a teacher in a site activity or inservice. Therefore, we calculated a range that estimated the total number of teachers "reached" under two different assumptions: 1) if teachers were each counted by four different teacher leaders (for a low estimate of 35,000 teachers), and 2) if teachers were each counted by two teacher leaders (for a high estimate of 70,000). It should be noted that we have not tested the accuracy of our assumptions about the estimated "overlap" in service to individual teachers.

²² "Highest-needs" districts include: 1) the 25 largest districts in the state, and 2) districts with more than 10,000 students that also meet at least two of the following criteria: among the 25 districts with the largest percentage of ELL/LEP students, students of color, and/or dropouts. Using these criteria, we identified 44 districts for special attention in this survey and in our annual site survey.