highlights the tremendous opportunities for improvement in the nation's second largest school district.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
Professional Development & School Support
Project Goals:
In response to a California state initiative AB75 aimed at principal training, Jean Brown, then Director of the LAUSD Administrative Academy, used ERS to develop an innovative, action oriented approach to building leadership capacity around school budgeting. Dr. Brown sought to give principals tools to examine their own budgets and resource use and to build more effective organizations aimed at improving student performance.
Approach & Outcomes:
ERS supported this new approach to professional development by:
- Designing a training program with trainers, coaches, and materials for 1,700 principals and assistant principals at the elementary and secondary school level
- Creating three case studies that described the budget and organization of a typical LAUSD for group discussion and problem solving
- Analyzing school budgets, course schedules, organization and use of time in every LAUSD school
- Developing software tools for use by principals-in-training to evaluate their own school budgets according to principles of effective resource organization
Project Goals & Approach:
Superintendent Roy Romer and his leadership team were determined
to create a new design for middle schools that allowed more individual
attention for students and increased academic time, especially time
spent on literacy and math. ERS supported this team by:
- Analyzing middle school budgets, organization, and staffing across LAUSD
- Creating new designs for the middle school schedules that reduced teacher load dramatically and increased time in literacy
- Conducting leadership retreats to review design options and implications
School Funding Systems:
Analyzing Historical and Comparative Spending
In a project jointly supported by LAUSD leadership and the teacher’s union, ERS is examining the school system budget to determine current investment at the central and local administration level as well as the school and student level. To maximize the resources available for improving student performance, ERS is working with the LAUSD to:
- Track historical spending in LAUSD
- Analyze the LAUSD central, local, and school budgets to determine whether dollars are being used efficiently and in research-based ways
- Determine LAUSD potential over/under-investment by comparing its allocation of resources against a set of benchmark school systems previously studied by ERS
- Identify high-level opportunities that maximize available resources to improve student performance
- Share findings and opportunities with the union and district leadership team
Exploring Weighted Student Funding
Project Goals
Convinced that a weighted student budgeting system could increase
both flexibility and equity in school level resources, Ken Gotsch,
LAUSD’s Chief Financial Officer, asked ERS to test the implications
of this strategy in LAUSD. ERS:
- Led a district-wide task force on weighted student funding
- Developed a model that analyzed the financial impact of moving to a new student based formula
- Enabled school leaders to test different scenarios and better align resources to the different needs of schools and students
- Shared this work along with lessons from other districts with the district leadership team
Outcomes and Next Steps:
Weighted student funding does not by itself improve instruction. Improving instruction through student based budgeting depends upon:
- The creation of a school level accountability system
- Building principal capacity
- Organizing schools effectively and flexibly to rethink the way they use their resources.
ERS worked with LAUSD district Superintendents to describe the changes in organization that would have to happen so that a move to student based budgeting might act as a lever to improve instruction. LAUSD continues to explore this issue, equipped with the tools to support this work.
District Actions Taken
Outcomes & Next Steps :
The LA Board of Education convened a first-ever LAUSD Board/UTLA retreat to receive and disucss the analysis and recommended actions. Since the May release of the ERS final report, LAUSD has taken steps to implement the report recommendations, including:
- The creation of an Innovation Unit to develop and implement school design recommended in the report
- A "summit" of experts to review the efficacy of current English-Learner programs and service delivery
- Exploration of student weighted funding system to allocate resources to schools
- Exploration of an extension of the school day that would give sufficient time for common planning time and allow for block scheduling at the middle and secondary levels