Allan Odden

Allan Odden, Director, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses the challenge of dramatically improving student performance by improving the productivity of the educational system. He notes that schools and districts can use resource reallocation to ensure that existing resources and new funds are used for effective instructional strategies.

"I think we face a challenge and a dilemma in a sense, and that is the national education reform kind of rhetorical goal is to teach all kids the high standards, now there are going to be some kids for which that's really difficult, but let's say even if the goal is to teach 95% of students to high standards, that means doubling or tripling current of levels of education performance, and those goals are rarely accompanied by statements that we'll also double or triple money, so the implicit assumption is that we're going to dramatically improve student performance with the money we have is to improve the productivity of the system that we now have. Either districts or schools are going to have to engage in some resource reallocation practices to make sure that the money is used for the strategies that we think will work, which in many cases is different from where the money is currently used."