Reallocating Resources for Higher Student Achievement
Today's education reform goals that seek to have nearly all students achieve to high academic standards require improved use of current and any new education dollars. National Assessment of Educational Progress data show that only about 25 percent of students achieve at or above proficiency; accomplishing the goal of teaching just 75 percent of students to or above proficiency requires tripling current results. But education dollars will not increase by anywhere near that amount; even the most optimistic projections of increased education revenues, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, show only a 25 percent per pupil real rise.
Thus, the only way the country can accomplish the current goal of teaching students to high standards is to improve the productivity of the education system -- to use education dollars more effectively to boost results. Since education is a service and labor-intensive activity, improving productivity by the levels needed to accomplish the student achievement goals poses a bold challenge to the education system.
In order to investigate how schools are responding to the push for higher standards under the same resource constraints, CPRE is conducting an ongoing study of how schools reallocate their resources to fund strategies that promote higher student achievement. To date, the research has focused on seven schools that have decided to employ one or more of the following strategies: 1) one-to-one tutoring, 2) class-size reduction to approximately 15, and 3) extensive professional development. Those schools are located in five different districts, two in the Northwest United States and four in the Midwest. A cross-case analysis of the first five schools was published in the Spring 2000 issue of the Journal of Education Finance (for more information about statistical measures of school finance inequity, click here).
In addition, Allan Odden and Sarah Archibald have written a book due to be published late in 2000, entitled Reallocating Resources: How to Boost Student Achievement Without Asking for More . This book draws from their recent research on resource reallocation at the school level, but also includes information from other research. It is written as a "how to" book for principals and district administrators interested in resource reallocation.
For more information on this topic, please see these two recent CPRE research publications that identify several strategies for improving education productivity. In a book by Jossey-Bass entitled Financing Schools for High Performance: Strategies for Improving the Use of Educational Resources, Allan Odden and Carolyn Busch identify several additional strategies. In Rethinking the Allocation of Teaching Resources: Some Thoughts From High Performing Schools, Karen Hawley Miles and Linda Darling Hammond show how five schools have dramatically reallocated school resources and improved student achievement.