Professional Growth & Support Spending Calculator

The Professional Growth & Support Spending Calculator helps school systems quantify all current spending aimed at teaching effectiveness, in order to implement a system-wide, well coordinated strategy for teacher growth. This tool is divided into two parts: Part I provides worksheets to analyze total investment, while Part II provides a system for evaluating investments based on purpose, target group, and delivery method.

In this Spending Calculator, ERS expands the more traditional definition of professional development to Professional Growth & Support in order to include any use of people, time, and money that targets improvement of teaching. This covers not only direct professional development but also time devoted to collaborative planning, salary increases for education credits, and funds that support curriculum development, teacher evaluation, and student assessment.

Professional Growth & Support Spending Calculator (PDF)

 This calculator is part of a series of publications and tools devoted to teacher Professional Growth & Support. The rest include:

• A New Vision for Teacher Professional Growth & Support: Six Steps to a More Powerful School System Strategy. This white paper draws on research, ERS experience with urban school systems, and detailed analyses of three case studies to present a new vision for building teacher effectiveness—one which moves beyond traditional “training” and is instead integrated into the essential instructional improvement activities that high-performing schools undertake.
• Professional Growth & Support System Self-Assessment: A self-assessment tool that allows a system to gauge its alignment with the principles for effective Professional Growth & Support.
• Professional Growth & Support Interactive Presentation: A narrated PowerPoint presentation that introduces the key concepts and findings around teacher Professional Growth & Support. Mid-presentation exercises encourage audience members to reflect on their system’s Professional Growth & Support investments.
• Promising Practices in Professional Growth & Support: Case Studies of Aspire Public Schools, Teach Plus, Achievement First, and Agile Mind: These case studies profile four highly successful approaches to expanding teaching effectiveness. The organizations invest in a variety of activities that are consistent with ERS’ Eight Principles of Strategic Professional Growth & Support Systems. These include investments in integrated professional growth models, instructional guidance systems, teacher leaders, and teaming around data.