Brooke Olsen-Farrell was mapping out a 2026-27 budget last fall under the assumption that her district’s main source of funding for teacher professional development simply wouldn’t materialize.
At the time, the superintendent of Vermont’s Slate Valley Unified school district—like education leaders across the United States—was living through months of uncertainty over the fate of key federal school funds that had long been a predictable fixture in district budgets.
Just weeks before, the Trump administration had delayed releasing nearly $7 billion in education money, leaving districts wondering if they would ever receive funding Congress had already approved for them. Meanwhile, the president was pitching a budget to Congress that proposed eliminating Title II-A, the federal government’s primary source of dedicated professional development funding, and dozens of other education grant programs.
If the money never appeared, Olsen-Farrell said, “we were just going to be foregoing professional development, because, at the local level, we just don’t have the local resources to devote to that.”
The Slate Valley district uses its $200,000 share of Title II-A to pay the salaries of instructional coaches who work with the 1,100-student district’s elementary teachers.
Slate Valley’s experience illustrates how Title II’s uncertain fate over the past year-plus has played out in districts that depend on the money to pay salaries and offer teachers professional growth opportunities. It also shows how Title II has been shifting the nature of professional development over the years to deemphasize one-time conferences and workshops in favor of models like Slate Valley’s, where coaches work hands-on throughout the year with teachers to help them improve.
Ultimately, the Trump administration released the funds it was withholding last summer after a few weeks’ delay, and in early February, Congress passed a budget that maintained professional development funding at $2.2 billion for the 2026-27 school year—the same amount as the previous three years.
That meant the Slate Valley district could forge ahead with a budget with money for professional development.
The federal budget’s passage “has allowed us to issue contracts for our instructional coaches to continue through next year, which is a relief, because, otherwise, those positions were simply not going to exist,” Olsen-Farrell said.
While 2026-27 is spoken for, there’s again uncertainty about whether Title II will persist after that. The Trump administration has again proposed eliminating professional development formula grants in its latest budget proposal—along with dozens of other education programs—despite Congress’ rejection of those cuts last time around.
Title II reaches 95% of school districts
Title II grants represent the federal government’s largest investment in ensuring more students have good teachers and that teachers keep improving. The formula fund, named for the section of the Every Student Succeeds Act that authorizes it, flows to every state and reaches about 95% of school districts, which can decide to use it on a range of expenses related to teacher and principal development.
For some, it’s the only source of professional development funding, particularly in rural districts like Slate Valley.
Schools can also use it to fund recruitment efforts, particularly when many of a school’s teachers aren’t fully certified, and to boost the pay of teachers in high-need subject areas and principals in high-need schools. In some cases, schools can use the money to hire teachers to reduce class sizes. And they can often pool the money with other federal funds, such as Title I, which is meant to help disadvantaged students.
Still, districts spend the majority of their Title II funds on professional development—57% in the 2023-24 school year, according to federal data.
The image of professional development that comes to mind for many is the one-time, schoolwide workshop with an outside presenter. But Title II is written to discourage that. By law, the professional development it pays for has to be “sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused.”
Federal requirements call for a shift in the PD schools use
That requirement is what led the Slate Valley district to use the funding to hire its own instructional coaches rather than rely on outside vendors for “one-and-done” workshops, said Olsen-Farrell, the superintendent.
“We want something that is sustained over the course of the year,” she said. The instructional coaches “are some of our most skilled teachers that we are bringing out of the classroom to have a broader impact on the system.”
Those requirements in the law have been part of a gradual shift in schools over the past 25 years. Schools have moved away from isolated, standardized workshops delivered by outside experts toward the cultivation of teacher teams working together to solve actual problems and leaning on their internal expertise, said Brandon White, the superintendent of Illinois’ Harvard Community Unit school district northwest of Chicago.
“Nothing is done in isolation any longer,” White said.
In February, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance informing schools they could use Title II to support team-teaching models that foster more collaboration, as well as grow-your-own teacher-development programs, apprenticeships for teachers in training, and efforts to provide teachers common planning time.
Federal law also lets schools use the funding for ongoing professional learning for teachers so they become more adept at managing classrooms, teaching their particular subject area, intervening with students at risk of falling behind, using data to address students’ needs and tailor instruction, and incorporating different instructional techniques like experiential and project-based learning, the Education Department has previously told educators.
Today, many school districts use the Every Student Succeeds Act’s definition of professional development as their own, especially to justify spending money on the training when there’s local resistance, said Paul Fleming, the deputy CEO of Learning Forward, an organization that’s developed and periodically revised standards for professional development. ESSA largely incorporates those standards, and at least 35 states have either adopted or used them as the basis for their own, according to the organization.
“Both the definition and the funding provide very clear guidance on moving from what we call sit-and-get, one-time-only, generic [professional development] to professional learning, which is everything in the definition,” Fleming said.
To be sure, Title II—which receives less funding today than in 2010—hasn’t meant the end of professional development in the form of one-time workshops and conferences. Districts can still use those formats as long as they’re part of a comprehensive professional development plan.
Eighty-six percent of school districts that used Title II for teacher professional development reported paying for short-term professional development (three days or less) or conferences during the 2023-24 school year, according to an Education Department survey.
Half that percentage, 43%, reported supporting job-embedded or collaborative professional development.
Uncertainty over Title II’s future remains
The future remains cloudy for the federal grant program that has pushed schools toward that collaborative style of professional development.
When the Trump administration in April released its budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year—which would affect schools in 2027-28—Title II again was on the list of more than a dozen programs that would be collapsed into a block grant with fewer restrictions but also with $4.6 billion less in the aggregate.
Even if it’s likely Congress will again reject the proposed cut, school district leaders have a responsibility to budget cautiously, said Frederick Brown, Learning Forward’s president and CEO.
“They have to plan for the worst and hope for the best because they can’t necessarily assume that those dollars are coming through,” he said.
Last summer, even though the Trump administration ultimately released the Title II funds it was withholding, the delay caused districts—which had already factored the money into finalized budgets—to put off some hiring and the signing of professional development contracts, said Michael DeNapoli, the director of federal policy for the Learning Policy Institute, which focuses on using research to inform education policy.
“In my 15 years of working in education policy, I’ve never seen anything like it and I don’t think anybody else had, either,” he said. “Contracts that folks were trying to have signed and in place ahead of the school year were, in many cases, just put on hold.”
Aside from uncertainty about funding levels, White, the Illinois superintendent, also worries about the proposal to collapse Title II into a block grant.
The Trump administration has sold it as a way to give states and school districts more flexibility to use federal funding—albeit less of it—as they see fit. But that would also mean the end of dedicated funds that states and schools must use on improving teacher quality, White said.
“Can we do without them? Well, we would find a way,” he said. “But then I have to continuously fight even harder and advocate why professional learning is so important over maybe another pet project of someone in my community, or even the next superintendent, or school board members.
“When we have these dollars that are clearly earmarked and specific to these purposes, it really allows us to focus on those things that are important,” he said.
