Implications for District, State, and Federal Policymakers
This booklet has described many of the possibilities for how schools can use current resources to fund more effective educational strategies. While these new educational strategies may not enable them to teach all of their children to state and district standards, these schools have at least begun to use the resources they have in a concentrated attempt to raise student achievement. To continue on this path, and certainly to reach the achievement goals that have been set for all students, schools need the following kinds of support from district, state, and federal policymakers.
District leaders could:
- Help structure the data analysis process at the school and help each school use the results of that analysis to find or construct a new and more effective set of educational strategies that fits the needs of its students and the capabilities of its staff.
- Work with unions to try to build more flexibility into the teacher contract to better enable schools to make changes that will result in higher levels of achievement.
- Provide schools with lump-sum budgets and encourage them to "zero base" their budget by realigning their new budget to the cost elements of their new educational strategy.
- Assist schools in the resource reallocation process by helping them understand the cost needs of their new educational strategies.
- Reallocate district resources to produce a professional development "pot" of money that could equal up to 3 percent of the overall operating budget and which would be used for the intensive professional development required for both program restructuring and resource reallocation. This strategy would help schools afford the costs of such dramatic changes to their educational programs.
Help structure the data analysis process at the school and help each school use the results of that analysis to find or construct a new and more effective set of educational strategies that fits the needs of its students and the capabilities of its staff.
State leaders and education policymakers could:
- Create initiatives like the federal Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program and federal Title I schoolwide regulations that encourage schools to create schoolwide, integrated strategies that include the state's content and performance standards for all students.
- Develop a framework within which districts would design needs-based funding formulas to provide lump-sum budgets to schools. Further, they could develop a Web-and school-based fiscal accounting system by which both the district and state could monitor schools and schools could track site expenditures (Goertz & Odden, 1999).
- Create a student performance-and school-based accountability system providing both rewards and sanctions. This strategy would help ensure that program restructuring and resource reallocation is conducted in the pursuit of core state education goals.
- Require districts and schools together to create a funding pool that could total up to 3 percent of the operating budget for the type of intensive, ongoing professional development that is required for effective school restructuring and resource reallocation.
Federal leaders and education policymakers could:
- Retain current regulations for using Title I dollars for schoolwide programs, but train both state and local officials, particularly the auditors, to shift their emphasis from fiscal tracking to the key programmatic elements of effective schoolwide strategies.
- Continue the current Ed-Flex program, which encourages schools to pool dollars from several different categorical programs and use them for more effective, schoolwide educational strategies.
- Continue and expand the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program, which provides grant money to schools to enable them to adopt and implement integrated, schoolwide strategies that include a core curriculum and common performance standards for all students. This program includes students with disabilities, students from poverty backgrounds, and students struggling to learn English.
- Enhance accountability programs that focus on student performance results, as the goal of comprehensive school reform and resource reallocation is to improve student academic performance.
