Via video conference from our Watertown office, Karen presented to the group of nine students key overall findings regarding how resources are typically used and how they can be reallocated to improve student performance. The presentation, followed by a question and answer session, hit several key points from The Strategic School, co-authored by Karen and Director Stephen Frank , and a text used for the course. Karen explained the four ways in which high-performing schools shift the industrial-age school paradigm to become strategic schools.

Highlights from the question and answer session:

What kind of pushback or feedback have you received when proposing these changes to the way education has been structured for so long?
Really, it's using the data that allows these conversations to occur. It's hard to argue against that. I like to say, “It's not politics, it's just math.” Another one I like is, “The data made me do it.”

You mentioned Charlotte-Mecklenburg in your presentation, and we've looked very closely at what they've done. What's allowed them to be where they are now?
They've really been focused on the data for so long. This isn't a quick process, it takes years. They also leverage their teaching and leadership expertise very well.

Below is Karen's presentation to the class.

Posted by Alyssa Fry

As Boston Public Schools wraps up its first year of weighted student funding (WSF) and looks to apply lessons learned to improve its funding formula in year two, the Boston City Council met on Monday to better understand the issues surrounding WSF both in the context of Boston and nationally. They invited ERS Director Jonathan Travers to join the discussion.

After a brief background from Jonathan on the main decision points a district faces in establishing funding WSF system, the City Council members asked questions about the implications of Boston’s particular formula. The discussion raised some interesting issues including:

• How do small schools fare under WSF? Boston has a significant number of small schools – some are the result of space constraints while others are due to under-enrollment. Although BPS instituted a foundation weight in its WSF system to try to ensure the viability of small schools, there was concern that these small schools were still struggling with their smaller budgets and were under tremendous pressure to expand or attract a needier student population to increase funding levels.

• What is the impact of WSF on student outcomes? In the first year of WSF, the schools that experienced a large drop in funding – because they were previously “highly-funded” relative to other schools that served similar populations – were given a “soft landing” which limited their “loss amount” to mitigate drastic cuts. However, as this transitional funding goes away in the next few years, there is concern that these previously “highly-funded” schools will lose the academic gains they have made.

ERS appreciated being included in the discussions with the Boston City Council and Boston Public Schools. These kinds of public discussions with a diverse group of stakeholders are critical in ensuring that WSF is implemented well across the district. The BPS CFO, John McDonough, and his team should be applauded for taking such a thoughtful and reflective approach as they continue to improve the district’s school funding system.

For more information, see the article on WSF in VUE magazine, the Fair Student Funding Summit conference proceedings, and our Weighted Student Funding Overview, which Jonathan presented at the meeting:

Posted by Laura Schick

Recognizing teaching quality as a crucial lever in improving student performance, the commission will examine ways in which New York can improve teacher recruitment, evaluation, incentives systems, and performance. The group will look at issues endemic in high-risk rural and urban communities and target family engagement and more effective use of technology. Also key to the commission’s work will be analysis of state and district funding patterns to schools and programs to better understand current successes as well as the barriers to improvement. “There are a lot of opportunities for New York and other states to restructure policies, legislation, and funding for better student outcomes even during these tough economic times,” said Karen Hawley Miles. “We look forward to sharing our work around teaching, school funding, and turnaround with the NY Education Reform Commission and learning from this group of experts. We're excited to collaborate in creating school systems that make the most of taxpayer dollars.”

Tight state budgets and low student achievement are pushing states from California to Florida to look closely at their roles in educational funding and reform. Education Resource Strategies’ current work at the state level includes a partnership with the state of Georgia and the non-profit organization Educate Texas. Also, in 2011, ERS and EducationCounsel co-published Restructuring Resources for High Performing Schools: A Primer for State Policymakers urging states to use this moment of combined reform and financial pressure to set the right policies and conditions for change at the local level.

Posted by Anna Sommers

“Our break-out session showcased the work that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) has done to help principals make strategic decisions about teacher placement and ERS work with CMS informing their resource decisions. Specifically, we looked at how CMS created transparency into questions of teacher assignment:

How are our most effective and novice teachers distributed across schools?

How are our most effective and novice teachers distributed within schools?

But as the expression goes…knowing is half the battle. So we also covered what I see as the big so what: What do district and school leaders need to do to maximize the value of the teachers they’ve got at the district and school level? We shared what we’ve learned about districts that have been successful in attracting top talent to their neediest schools as part of a school turnaround strategy. We also talked about the specific within-school assignment decisions that school leaders make and what that means for (a) the type of data that needs to be brought to bear for principals and (b) the team configurations and broader school designs that strategic teacher assignment enable and require.

Click here for session description and background materials.

Congrats and thanks to Jon Fullerton, Sarah Glover and all the folks at SDP for a great conference!

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

A total of ten children filled ERS' largest conference room for egg painting and decorating. There was also an egg hunt, and the kiddos even got to dig in the dirt to help plant the deck garden -- another ERS first. The children helped mix soil then transplanted a variety of vegetables and herbs, including lettuce, a tomato plant, basil, thyme and mint.

In a few months, much of the vegetables and herbs will need to be harvested, and we could sure use those tiny hands to help again. Summer Celebration, anyone?

Posted by Alyssa Fry

As with any turnaround effort, the initiative needs to be sustainable and part of a district-wide strategy once Federal Innovation Grants are no longer available. But one thing we’re learning in our work with districts is that it’s crucial to distinguish between the short-term resources needed to exit turnaround verses longer-term resources needed to meet the demands of students so they catch up and succeed. While some of the dollars in this initiative are going toward short-term interventions to help build capacity and stabilize the culture, we may find that the highest need students simply need additional types of resources. AIR’s role in monitoring and evaluating this partnership should not only keep it on track and provide an understanding of what’s working so others can replicate it, but the research can also help identify what additional resources are fundamental and must be maintained. With this knowledge, hopefully the community can help provide the support needed to preserve the gains made once the funding runs out.

For more on ERS’s thinking on turnaround in the district context see the first of our series of briefs.

For more publications and tools on turnaround, see our Resources for Turnaround page.

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

With the right mix of trade-offs and investments, Boston Public Schools (BPS) is poised to hold on to recent turnaround gains in its lowest performing schools and avoid the common plight that James Vaznis describes in his story, “After gains, Hub schools seek to avert slip when funds run out.”

What places Boston in a promising position is its short-term investment in building long-term skills and expertise of teachers and leaders. Seventeen of the $26 million of federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds is going toward training, creating stronger teaching teams, and improving instructional approaches that should last even if coaching is phased out. However, securing investment in critical and ongoing needs like school readiness, social-emotional support and extended time may be more problematic as SIG funds disappear.

Going forward, gathering data on the most effective interventions and areas of diminishing returns will be essential. Such information will allow BPS to make informed trade-offs and redirect funds from ineffective programs to those with the most promising gains. Given the importance of sustaining the improvements for the children in these schools, highlighting successes will generate momentum and community support for continued funding needed to secure long-term success.

Karen Hawley Miles
President and Executive Director
Education Resource Strategies, Inc.
Watertown, MA

See the orginal Globe story at http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-02/metro/31270862_1_city-year-school-improvement-grant-program-boston-teachers-union

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

We've just published the first in our series of briefs as follow-up to our summit Turnaround at Scale, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This first brief provides an overview of the steps we've seen that are central to district success in school turnaround. It also gives an enlightening picture of the significant difference in approaches and causes for these differences. Future briefs will go deeper into some of the promising practices and common challenges and responses, so stay tuned.

Download the Brief

Learn about the Summit

School Boards Play Hold'em

Our latest interactive tool that helps rethink financial tradeoffs is yielding great results with school district boards. The latest, Cleveland Metropolitan School District Board used it to help address a 10% budget gap. The district's CFO John Scanlan touted the game's ability to get board members thinking critically about tough decisions.

Read the article

Hold'em That Counts

Participants in the Educate Texas Leadership Forum had surely never played this version of Hold'em before. Through playing School Budget Hold'em and having group discussions, leaders from some of the biggest districts in Texas were able to envision ways to think and act more strategically when it comes to tough budget decisions - and many realized that outcomes aren't always just about the luck of the draw.

Read the Blog

Posted by Alyssa Fry

We have just completed the first brief in a new series we are writing on the lessons and ideas generated from those powerful conversations. This first brief reviews the five critical compo­nents of a complete district strategy for sustain­able turnaround at scale. Future briefs will dig deeper into areas such as human capital, using data, and more.

Thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for supporting the work. The brief was written by Karen Miles, Kristen Ferris and Barbara Christianson.

We hope you find this new series useful.

Click here to view Turnaround Brief #1.

Posted by Alyssa Fry

A recent school board retreat and ERS’ new game School Budget Hold’em are helping the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) turn a 10% gap in the budget into an opportunity to do more with less. Rather than resign itself to deep and debilitating cuts, the CMSD leadership team is actively investigating alternatives with Hold’em, an interactive exploration of the thoughtful trade-offs school leaders have to make in these challenging budget times. The game is becoming a valuable learning tool for school boards from Illinois to Virginia and Georgia, changing the way districts are thinking about dollars and resources. With an emphasis on both investment and savings opportunities, Hold’em is keeping the door open to sustainable school improvement during tough fiscal times.“Hold’em helped our board see how we could invest in critical educational areas while still making reductions,” summarized CMSD Chief Financial Officer John Scanlan, who organized the recent session in Cleveland. The Board of Education Chair Denise Link said that the board members were encouraged to think outside of the box when it comes to linking programs to finances. "This budgeting exercise brought some life to what can often be a rather dry discussion," she said.

A More Strategic Approach to the Budget Process
The current financial pressure and backdrop of looming deadlines prevent most district and school leaders from thinking long-term about best practices and improved outcomes. They look for the most expedient cuts, hoping to make minor adjustments to the previous year's budget, preserve existing positions, and perhaps purchase some new materials. There is little opportunity to combine budgeting with school planning.
Introduced to School Budget Hold’em at a meeting of the Aspen Institutes network of urban district CFOs, Scanlan saw the exercise as a way to create a more holistic and strategy-driven approach to budgeting in CMSD. “Rather than jump to specific dollar solutions, the game allowed us to discuss strategic resource decisions as part of our support for a new academic strategic plan,” he said.

Understanding the Tough Trade-offs
Hold’em simulated for the CMSD school board the difficult decisions required during the planning and budgeting process. Setting a budget reduction target of 10%, they selected from a deck of over 50 investment and savings cards, trying to find card combinations that promoted teaching and learning within their declining budget. Each card includes the percentage increase or decrease to the bottom line, explanations, cautions, and related investments so players can see the rationale, controversy, inter-relationships, and impact of the various card choices. Scanlan said that the game really showed the board how much things cost and the savings that some items delivered. “We used it to help the board become aware of the difficult trades the staff struggles with as we build our budgets in light of the significant shortfalls we are facing," he explained.

Building a Common Agenda
School Budget Hold’em has the potential to unite the thinking and efforts of school boards and leaders, who often come to the table with conflicting positions and priorities. Scanlan said the CMSD board realized that spending money meant cutting it from somewhere else, and that they need to be on the same page about programming decisions and clear about priorities. "We had the teams brief one another to see what other board members felt to be important," he said. "We then created a summary of their results to share as a group to look for common areas when we build our budget.” In addition to Cleveland, Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, a small district near Grand Rapids, Michigan, has planned to use the game to help with the budget process during these tough times, as have Georgia's Hall County School District and Treutlen School District. Hold'em was also well-received in Texas at a recent forum, winning over leaders from some of the state's biggest districts, including Houston, Dallas and Austin.

Hold’em is a welcome addition to a district’s arsenal because a united school board, administration, and community are essential to safeguarding the needs of a diverse student population and investing in a sustainable vision for the future.

Posted by Anna Sommers

The goal of the event was summarized in the opening comments by Irvin Scott, Deputy Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's US Programs Education Initiative: "It's a dream of revitalizing and elevating the profession of teaching so that America's brightest, most caring, and most skillful practitioners learn and grow together while teaching those children who need them the most."

These districts are off and running!

For more on restructuring the teaching job to increase effectiveness, see The Teaching Job, a resource guide tailored just for your district.

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

School Budget Hold'em

The Center for Reinventing Public Education

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

Implications of MetLife’s new Teacher Survey

I would like to address two major findings in the survey. I think these particular findings provide more than an opportunity, these findings create an urgency and a mandate for changing the way we think about the teaching profession and education overall.

The two findings are:

1. 29% of teachers surveyed are likely to leave the teaching profession in the next five years to go into another profession.
2. 43% of teachers are pessimistic that the level of student achievement will increase in the next five years. Reading that finding took my breath away. I think this is the major takeaway of the report.

Let’s start with the finding that teachers are likely to leave the profession. To understand the opportunity within this finding, we need to dig a bit below the surface. We need to understand who is leaving and why.

• With respect to the question of who, the survey does not address what we really need to know: Are the teachers who intend to leave the ones we want to keep? In other words, are they our highest performers? If a large portion of this 29% are highly effective then we have reason to be very concerned, especially if these teachers are in hard-to-staff areas such as science and math.
• Even when we understand the who, we still need to understand the why in order to shape a proper response: Why are teachers leaving for another profession? The survey offers some clues here. It says that 65% of teachers believe their salaries are not fair and that teachers with low satisfaction are generally unhappy with professional development opportunities and their professional community.

The economy is offering critical opportunities to address the “why” indicated in the survey through attracting and retaining highly effective teachers. This will require overhauling the compensation and career pathway structure for teachers in at least three different ways.

1. Teacher compensation must be competitive with other professions to attract and retain the top college graduates. So the bottom line is that salaries are not fair for some and may need to be raised, but salaries are not unfair for all and should not be raised across the board.
2. Teacher compensation must differentiate for skills, knowledge and challenge of position. Science and math teachers and those with technical training have more lucrative opportunities outside of teaching, yet all teachers are paid the same regardless of the complexity or challenges of the position.
3. The compensation structure must recognize differences in performance. Excellent teachers are currently paid the same as average and poor performers.
4. Teachers’ roles and responsibilities must allow for professional growth. Currently there are few opportunities for teachers to take on additional responsibilities that don’t take them out of the classroom.

So where is the opportunity to do this in an economic downturn? It’s in reallocating resources and looking to current investments that don’t contribute to student achievement. In the compensation system itself there are plenty of opportunities to reinvest. A large portion (in some districts, up to 30%) of teacher salaries are invested in experience, which does not have a strong correlation to student achievement, and 10-20% is invested in master’s degrees and other education achievement, which also does not have a strong correlation.

Now let’s turn to the finding that 43% of teachers are pessimistic that the level of student achievement will increase in the next five years. The report seems to tie this finding – this pessimism – to budget cuts. I am not so sure that this is completely the case but let’s address it.

Budget cuts and layoffs can be demoralizing in any profession or business. It is important to understand the decision behind the cut, and that requires transparency and communication. Remember, the decision to make a specific cut is made in order to “save” something. Understanding the tradeoffs districts make can take help turn pessimism into a clear picture of reality.

But I think another contributor to the pessimism is the understanding that the system is broken. We have a system that is focused equally on inputs and outcomes. What if we focused mainly on outcomes (with accountability) and provided flexibility around inputs? The lack of flexibility has resulted in a one-teacher-one-classroom model continuing to be the status quo despite evidence indicating we need to evolve. This change in perspective will require all stakeholders (the state, unions, etc.) to understand how they contribute to the status quo and rethink the way they operate.

To view the entire survey and previous ones in the American Teacher series, click here.

Posted by Regis Shields

Hall County’s Lanier Charter Career Academy hosted us for two days where students in the hospitality and culinary arts programs provided fantastic catering. Our session kicked off with Fulton County Superintendent Dr. Robert Avossa sharing his previous experience with ERS in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District. “ERS will not have all the answers, but what they will have is data, and the kind of data ERS will provide can help us in so many ways.” The rest of the first day was spent introducing ourselves to our partners, getting to know more about the districts, and talking about where their strengths and opportunities for improvement lie.

On the second day we broke out into groups and played Hold’em, which allowed the districts, together with the Georgia DOE, to think about ways they could protect their priorities while still meeting budgetary cuts. At the end of the session two districts had concrete plans to play Hold’em with their school board. We can’t wait to hear more about it.

With the help of Race to the Top Funding, the Georgia partnership will include working individually with each district to perform resource analysis as well as with the state to:

• build a greater understanding and create an action plan around correcting areas where state practice, policies or legislations may currently hamper effective resource use
• provide individual districts with guidance related to their resources for dramatically improved student performance by sharing successes and conducting similar reviews in the future
• rethink the data collected at the state level to reinforce transformational resource use and make it easier to conduct similar resource allocation reviews

Thanks to everyone who participated! We are looking forward to working with you over the next two years. And a special thanks goes to Hall County for hosting us at Lanier Charter Career Academy and for the invitation to see Tinker the Teenage T-Rex at DaVinci Academy!

The ERS team members on the Georgia project are:

Don Hovey, Stephen Frank, Samantha Hurwitz, Laura Schick, Robert Daigneau, Joseph Trawick-Smith

Posted by Laura Schick

On Monday Karen and Betty worked with a group of superintendents and district leaders from some of the largest districts in Texas (including Houston, Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi) to discuss key priorities for restructuring in tough times. One of the key takeaways cited by participants was the realization that it’s not just about making budget cuts - 60% of attendees reported anticipated budget reductions of 6-10% this year – it’s about making the strategic cuts that will help the district move forward towards a new vision.

The next day ERS introduced School Budget Hold‘em during a breakout session at the conference. The session attracted a wide range of education stakeholders including district leaders, school board members, state department leaders, state representatives, education advocates, and members of the media. “We did some serious collaboration around rethinking priorities,” said a state senator who worked closely with a district leader.

Participants spent roughly 45 minutes playing an abbreviated version of the game. They enjoyed themselves so much that they didn’t want to stop when time was called! During the debrief participants cited that using the language of tradeoffs was really powerful because it changed the discussion to be about the investments that need to be made (and hence the cuts that are needed to enable it) as opposed to just about making cuts. A few people also mentioned how the format of the game really allowed people of all backgrounds and experiences to thoughtfully participate in the conversation. “There’s so much we can do when we think outside the box,” said one participant.

Posted by Betty Hsu

ERS continues to develop our suite of tools for large urban districts. The new initiatives support smart long-range budgeting, including distributing School Budget Hold’em and a “new generation” of tools around teacher compensation and spending on professional growth. The work is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We are also grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Noyce Foundation for their continuing support allowing us to respond effectively to the growing demands for our work.

New ERS Leadership and Staff

ERS welcomes newly appointed board member Peter Gorman, Senior Vice President of News Corp’s new Education Division and former Superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Gorman joins our extraordinary board of directors including Uri Treisman, Professor of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, Marcia Blenko, Partner, Bain & Company, Ellen Guiney, Executive Director, Boston Plan for Excellence and Willis Hawley, recent Dean of the School of Education Professor Emeritus of Education & Public Affairs, University of Maryland.

We also have brought on new talented team members: DAVID BLOOM, Robert Daigneau, Cory Edmonds, Zlati Shishkova, and Joe Trawick-Smith are streamlining the coding and analysis of client data. Genevieve Quist Green will help with our research and district partnerships and Kira DeVaul joins our administrative team. 

New District Partners and State-level Work

In 2011 ERS worked closely with Duval County, Syracuse, Baltimore and Prince Georges County. More recently we have added Denver, Washington DC, Newark, and the state of Georgia to our growing number of partners. Our partnership with Georgia represents the first time we’re approaching our work from the state perspective and we are eager to see the implications and potential for impact. In Denver, we recently presented finding to the board. 

“The time is now,” states ERS President and Executive Director Karen Hawley Miles. “It is through the evolving work of our teams in partnership with districts and with the consistent support of our funders, advisors, and collaborators that we are trying to seize this moment to support district leaders in making the tough choices that could lead to a time of transformation and accelerating student performance in our nation’s schools.”

Posted by Justin Burniske

• Are you passionate about education reform?
• Are you a rigorous analytic thinker?
• Do you have a strong quantitative background?
• Do you have a track record of accomplishment?

ERS looking for people to join our team. We are a small organization with a strong professional learning community. We place teamwork, initiative, flexibility, and desire to grow at a premium. Our mission is to work with large urban public school systems to organize time, talent, and money to create great schools at scale.

Please get in touch if you think you could contribute to our work. We are currently seeking passionate and motivated candidates for the following positions based in Watertown, Massachusetts:

Principal Associate

The ideal ERS Principal Associate has strong and proven analytic skills, strategic consulting experience, project management skills, and a passion for improving urban education.
Principal Associate Job Description

Associate

The ideal ERS Associate has strong and proven analytical skills, including proficiency in supporting tools such as Excel and SQL, enjoys the interpretation of information and data and thinks strategically. Associates are expected to execute and communicate well defined analyses with moderate supervision and collaborate with their teams in the development of client presentations and reports. ERS’ inclusive and collaborative approach ensures that Associates have the unique opportunity to participate in meetings with Superintendents and other district leaders.
Associate Job Description

Business Analyst/ Accountant

The ideal ERS business analyst/accountant has strong accounting or data management experience in a complex tracking environment (small organizations, $5-10M, non-profits, professional services, or manufacturing). This is a newly created position to meet increasing demand, and requires an understanding of cost accounting principles and the ability to balance initiative and follow through in a team based work environment.
Business Analyst/ Accountant Job Description

Contact: For any questions or additional information regarding the hiring process, please contact Julie Derderian:

Posted by Justin Burniske

Posted by Justin Burniske

Our discussion explored the vision for what the future might hold, and raised interesting questions about how we get there. We reflected on the potential of NGL models based on our knowledge of our district partners, our experiences as classroom teachers, our concerns as parents, and our own K-12 educational upbringing. We discussed the barriers such as district capacity for change, state policies, and union contracts. There was consensus that NGL expansion will ultimately require system-level policy, practice, and structure change, including adjustments to seat time requirements and resource use flexibility.

The discussion about NGL and innovative school design reinforced the important work ERS is doing to help support systems in organizing talent, time, and money to create great schools at scale. There are only a handful of schools currently implementing NGL models. The concepts are very much in experimentation, however if the pilots can prove results with the same investment, NGL has potential to take off.

ERS staff gathers each month to discuss our work and current issues in education. At ERS we see conversations like these—with each other and with our partners—key to building knowledge and ultimately impacting the educational experience for all children.

Posted by Julie Derderian

• Restructure one-size fits all job structure and compensation
• Optimize existing time to meet student and teacher needs and extend where necessary
• Rethink standardized class size model to target individual attention
• Shift special education spending toward early intervention and targeted individual attention

The panel continued with a discussion about the actionable steps legislators can take to steer education finance systems to be more output-driven as well as to encourage districts to be more innovative and creative. They also discussed the role that digital learning and technology can play in reform efforts and the impact of the federal stimulus. Highlights from this discussion include:

• With federal stimulus funds going away, states are facing a funding cliff, emphasizing the need for fundamental change now.
• Legislators should work to break down barriers and remove restrictions (e.g., categorical funding restrictions, class size mandates) so districts can optimize resource allocations.
• A lively debate around standardized testing – Mr. Hochberg suggested that states should examine the costs associated with standardized testing and consider whether or not every student should be tested every year.  Others disagreed with this approach citing the inability of districts to implement compensation systems that would seek to tie teacher pay to performance.
• Technology can and will play a larger role in education service delivery.  Most districts have a hard time freeing up operating expenses to invest in technology so it will be important for states to provide support.  However, districts must be willing to take some of the costs out of the system (e.g., more digital learning may mean fewer teachers) to realize the additional efficiencies that come with improved technology.

Posted by Keri Munkwitz

At Education Resource Strategies (ERS), our work with urban school districts targets how to allocate and organize resources in ways that lead to excellence for all students and schools, equitably and efficiently. The Department of Education (DOE) report shines a light on the critical need to insure resource equity. It also highlights the need to improve data and the understanding of the reasons for spending differences as well as the strategies for addressing the differences- which do not always include equalizing spending. Those responding to the report should understand that:

1. Tracking of school-level spending is typically bad. Most districts don’t do a good job tracking spending to the school level—-so a key next step is to do this more consistently. We find that districts range from reporting 40% of spending to the school level to around 80%, making it hard to be sure whether DOE calculations reflect reality. When districts do take care to allocate all of the resources down to each school, many will find that they DO spend more in high poverty schools because they track coaches and some itinerant staff that work in high poverty schools as central spending. (Other districts will find that they keep magnet school and advanced program spending like International Baccalaureate centrally which would typically add dollars to lower poverty schools and thus exacerbate inequity).
2. School size has the biggest influence on inequity. Even if they do track spending, the largest driver of differences in general education spending across schools is usually not teacher salaries but school size (by a large factor). In some districts, the high poverty schools are the smallest and most under-enrolled leading to significantly higher costs and in other districts the reverse is true. The point is this driver is unrelated to opportunities to learn.
3. Teacher salaries are the second biggest influence. The second biggest driver is usually teacher salary. But, since teacher salary levels don’t currently link to teacher effectiveness, a straight equalization of dollars- even with a 10% leeway- isn’t necessarily the right policy solution. Instead, extra support for novice teachers might be a short term solution and revamping teacher compensation certainly is the long term answer.

Strict mandates on expenditure levels without regard to the reasons for them, will not improve equity and excellence, but improved transparency in financial and human resource reporting and problem solving around the reasons for the differences in spending will.

To learn more about school funding systems and how to better calculate spending in a district see the ERS guide, School Funding Systems: Equity, Transparency, Flexibility.

Also, as a quick response to Checker Finn’s point on weighted student funding, ERS has a series of resources that evolved from a summit that brought together districts that have moved to this system. Weighted Student Funding systems do indeed usually result in Federal dollars being more equitably distributed. In addition, districts and state funding is more flexibly allocated which further improves efforts to meet student needs. See Annenberg Institutes for School Reform’s Special issue of VUE, as well as our summit report.

Visit the National Journal to read other experts’ commentaries.

Posted by Karen Hawley Miles

State Roles to Influence District Policy:

1. Barrier Breaker - The State removes internal regulations and rules that constrain district flexibility and/or force investment misalignments
2. Capacity Builder - The State builds the capacity of districts to improve teaching effectiveness thru PD, tools, access to data, models of best practice
3. Service Broker - The State identifies providers of services that meet high standards and structures access and networks
4. Incentive Provider - The State establishes structures, including innovation grants, that encourage certain behaviors or practices
5. Influencer - The State works with other stakeholders (unions, legislature) to increase understanding of barriers to improving teaching effectiveness
6. Mandate Maker - The State mandates certain practices, processes or investments that have a compelling State priority.  This option should be a last resort.

Posted by David Bloom

Other authors in the issue include Michael Rebell, Allan Odden, Anthony Rolle, James Guthrie, Chris Gabrieli, Doug Johnson and Nathan Levenson.

Posted by Justin Burniske

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman

“We know how much districts are struggling, but they simply can’t decide that their only option is to do less with less,” says Karen Hawley Miles, Executive Director of ERS. “School Budget Hold’em is about being clear about the system vision, the spending patterns, practices and structures that need to change and then determining priorities for investing in reform and making difficult trade-offs to get there. ”

School Budget Hold ‘em evolved out of ERS’s experience working with large urban districts around the country. The goal was to create an engaging, interactive way for administrators to think differently about how they allocate resources. The budget impacts associated with various “card” choices are estimates based on real districts—specific district circumstances may vary.

ERS has seen firsthand how district and school leaders often deal with the budget process. They make minor adjustments to the previous year’s budget, hoping to preserve existing positions and perhaps purchase some new materials. They often separate budgeting from school planning. These routine efforts are typically made against the backdrop of looming deadlines, with little time spent reflecting on or rethinking current practice to improve outcomes.

“The game shows a way out of feeling like our hands are tied,” says ERS Managing Director Karen Baroody. “Players learn to consider options they might usually overlook or realize the value of choices that typically seem too difficult. Given that cuts are inevitable, districts can take this time to cut deeper in some areas in order to invest in areas that are crucial for significant improvement. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way.”

The game is both online and a physical card game ERS has been using with districts around the country. “I love the game!” reported an early test-user. “I think this site can make a major contribution to K-12 districts as we struggle with decreasing revenue streams and increased expectations for performance.”

To play School Budget Hold’em go to Holdem.ERStools.org.

But before you start, watch the following video to get a quick introduction to how the tool works.

Posted by Allison Daskal Hausman