Databus Issue: 2005 4 10/10/2005
Resource Allocation Made Easy
Jim Hollis Author
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School budgets are often created by parceling out the total funds available for the most pressing event. This creates a culture of reaction at the expense of actual strategies to improve student achievement. What if schools based all of their spending and budgeting decisions on what would most rapidly affect student achievement? How would this affect spending habits?
The conventional wisdom states that schools have limited budget control and more limited categorical resources. It has become common place for districts to institute yearly personnel cutbacks. But, so too is the school principal at her local computer store in early May; scurrying around to spend the last of her technology carry-over budget.
The CDE requires that all schools use a Single Site Plan as evidence that within the school’s decision-making process about budgeting priorities, student achievement is first and foremost. The state of California requires a written plan that lists the school’s top three academic achievement goals and strategies that will be used to accomplish them. What the school and district must know is what their priorities are (given their students’ academic needs) and what combination of expenditures are most likely to produce the intended student achievement outcomes. Meanwhile, CDE gives little guidance for how to implement this plan once written.
In our research studying best practices around the state, we have found in school/districts that are effectively closing the achievement gap, resource allocation is determined based on student achievement and not last year’s budget. Although many educators struggle to understand the precise relationship between education spending and student performance; school budgets that are focused on achievement are more likely have school leaders conversing around educational priorities and not operational crises.
After months of targeted research with three bay area school districts, Oakland Unified, Walnut Creek and Campbell Union, we created a software data tool that helps a school strategize spending priorities while examining expenditure patterns. This is an important and vital piece of the budgeting methodology; the ability to instantly make adjustments to a budget and to keep priorities intact. Sometimes academic achievement strategies are easily discussed and difficult to manage.
The other payoff is that districts that are engaging in needs-based budgeting (as opposed to formula-based budgeting) are also using data to measure the effectiveness of their programs and identify areas for growth. According to many of the 16 schools and 14 districts studied, the implementation of the state accountability system and state-mandated tests may have served as a catalyst for change to a more datadriven approach to decision making.
The SpringwareRA was created in response to the increased challenges that principals face in improving student achievement. Designed by Gwynneth Heil, assistant superintendent for Campbell Union School District, along with our technology team at Springboard Schools, the SpringwareRA (Resource Allocation) tool helps principals face both high stakes accountability and decreasing resources. “Principals need to know how to set realistic achievement targets and meet them with less money, fewer resources and increased student needs,” explains Heil. Earlier this summer, principals and administrators from the Walnut Creek and Campbell Union used SpringwareRA to make a school plan, devise a single site plan and analyze how closely linked their final spending matched the stated priorities. SpringwareRA also provides guided instruction and a wealth of background and assistance in plan preparation including helpful links to student and district data. CDE requires the alignment of monetary resources to student achievement goals through the single site plan. The purpose of categorical monies allocated to a site is to supplement and add value, to your base program for students identified in the funding sources (i.e. English Language learners of EIA, identified low performers for Title I). The assumption is that you have identified students’ needs and are aligning the money directly to the “extra” services to improve their achievement. Now there’s a data tool that can help.
Springboard Schools is a nonprofit network of educators committed to raising student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap. We work with education organizations and their leaders at every level of the system to provide them with knowledge, skills and tools to create school systems in which good teaching is the norm in every classroom for every student.
Founded in 1995 as the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC), since that time we have worked with 325 schools in 74 school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley and beyond. Our clients include urban, suburban and rural school districts of every ethnic and socioeconomic distinction. Jim Hollis can be reached at (415) 348-5524.
