Making Money Matter Financing America's Schools (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6 Achieving Goal 1: Promoting Higher Achievment in a Cost-Efficient Way
6 Achieving Goal 1: Promoting Higher Achievment in a Cost-Efficient Way
Pages 163-195
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 163... ...
as intertwined components necessary to achieve a given vision of overall education reform. Despite the conceptual appeal and logic of starting with a vision of overall reform and designing a finance system consistent with that vision, we structure the discussion of finance reform in line with the first approach; that is, as the options available for driving the education system in the directions embodied in our three goals: (1)
|
From page 164... ...
In general, the case for combining strategies is most compelling when policy makers are trying to work within the existing system of school governance. Some proponents of major change in the governance system (e.g., through vouchers allowing parents to choose public or private schools)
|
From page 165... ...
No single strategy or policy option is a panacea, all involve trade-offs of various types, and some of the strategies or individual options are likely to be most effective if combined with other strategies or policy options. Instead of laying out a blueprint for specific change, our aim in this chapter is to provide policy makers with information that will allow them to weigh the benefits and costs of each policy option.
|
From page 166... ...
Because the move from equity to adequacy shifts attention away from the distribution of funding levels across districts to the adequacy of funding for desired outcomes, the strategy of trying to ensure that school funding is adequate is potentially crucial to the goal of increasing achievement for all students. In the absence of adequate funding, it will be difficult for states, districts, or schools to generate high and ambitious levels of student achievement for all students.
|
From page 167... ...
Regardless of the success of adequacy as a legal strategy, it is the committee's view that adequacy of funding has a central role to play in any education reform strategy designed to increase student achievement. In particular, discussions of educational funding should include explicit considerations of what the public and policy makers want the educational system to accomplish and what kinds of educational opportunities must be provided to meet those objectives.
|
From page 168... ...
show that a different measure but still an imperfect one of teacher quality, namely teacher test scores, does emerge as an important determinant of student achievement in both Texas and Alabama. Other studies document the importance of teacher preparation.
|
From page 169... ...
Perhaps the most frequently discussed policy change involves altering teacher education and induction practices, which in the first instance is not a finance option but has finance implications for teacher training institutions, would-be teachers, and school districts. Two other policy options, raising teacher salaries and expanding professional development, fit more closely with the concept of financial investments intended to build teacher capacity.
|
From page 170... ...
As a committee on education finance, we were not able to thoroughly evaluate a strategy for enhancing teacher quality through the use of stricter accreditation requirements and higher requirements for teacher certification. However, we have two comments to make about this strategy.
|
From page 171... ...
Teacher Salaries Several arguments are frequently offered for raising teacher salaries, including the fair treatment of existing teachers, the need to keep teacher salaries in line with the salaries of other college graduates so as to attract qualified people into the teaching profession, and as a way to increase teacher quality. Of most interest to us here is the extent to which raising teacher salaries across the board is a good way to raise the quality of teachers.
|
From page 172... ...
The low salaries for entering and inexperienced teachers may well interfere with the ability of the system to attract high-quality new teachers into the profession, and those how enter may well leave before they are eligible for the higher salaries available to more experienced teachers. Thus, the salary bargaining process in which veteran teachers exert a lot of power means that money devoted to increases in teacher salaries is not being used as effectively as it could be toward the goal of increasing the capacity and quality of teachers.
|
From page 173... ...
Their rough calculations suggest that the cost of raising teacher salaries by 10 percent would slightly exceed the benefits as measured by the present value of the increases in individuals' future salaries associated with their higher educational attainment. However, the authors note that their measure of the benefits of an increase in teacher salaries probably underestimates the true benefits, since it is based on a single measure of student outcomes.
|
From page 174... ...
Traditionally, most professional development for teachers has consisted of brief district-sponsored workshops, which can be useful for training in specific skills but are of little value for learning subject matter in any depth or learning how to assess student learning in the context of teaching. These long-standing shortcomings are increasingly problematic, given the new roles for teachers suggested by findings from research on learning and in light of the fact that teachers will need more knowledge and radically different skills than they generally now have if education reform efforts are to succeed (National Research Council, l999b)
|
From page 175... ...
Thus, general professional development would seem to be a much less productive investment than a professional development program that is closely tied to other components of an overall reform effort. Importantly, however, even the studies that show positive effects of professional development programs are limited, in that they do not compare the returns of professional development programs in the form of student achievement with the costs of such programs.
|
From page 176... ...
It is designed to distinguish policies that require significant resources (either new resources or resources transferred from other purposes) , such as raising teacher salaries and investing in professional development, from those that use the financial system to change the incentives facing teachers.
|
From page 177... ...
While individual merit pay may have as-yet untapped potential, the difficulties encountered by school districts that have tried it have led to a shift in emphasis among education policy makers and researchers to group, or school-based, incentives.
|
From page 178... ...
The key questions include: How can we ensure that the knowledge and skills are the ones that are highly correlated with how effectively teachers increase student learning? Would such a package of skills vary with the types of students that teachers are serving?
|
From page 179... ...
The state or district would then provide a system of rewards and positive incentives for schools to increase student performance and would develop a set of sanctions or intervention strategies for lowperforming schools. As is emphasized below, productive intervention strategies
|
From page 180... ...
Because student test scores are so highly correlated with student background characteristics, it is essential that school-based accountability systems focus on gains in, rather than levels of, student performance. Otherwise the indicators of success would measure the background of the students rather than the contribution of the schools to student learning.
|
From page 181... ...
Faced with the pressure from that program, several school districts are now trying to shift the pressure for performance down to the student level. Some school districts, for example, are now requiring that students who do poorly on the state test go to summer school and, if they continue to fail the test, to be held back.
|
From page 182... ...
Accountability programs typically include both intervention strategies and sanctions for such schools. The experience from the various states suggests that state policy makers have more work to do in determining the best approach for dealing with the low-performing schools that are identified by the accountability systems.
|
From page 183... ...
Further suggestive evidence for this conclusion emerges from the rapid gains in North Carolina test scores that were mentioned earlier. The combination of that state's accountability system and professional development strategy appears to be having a positive impact on student achievement.
|
From page 184... ...
Such a strategy can be implemented through policies that alter the existing public school system in mostly incremental ways (for example, by giving public schools control over finance and other decisions) or through policies that effect major changes in the overall governance system (e.g., by permitting charter schools to operate outside the traditional regulatory system or giving vouchers to parents to use at either public or private schools)
|
From page 185... ...
Our more limited intent in the following sections is to rely primarily on empirical studies to determine how likely it is that strategies of this type will increase student achievement or, alternatively, will generate any given level of achievement in a more cost efficient manner. We start with the school-oriented strategies of site-based management, charter schools, and contracting with private firms.
|
From page 186... ...
, drawing on an extensive body of recent research studies, conclude that newer strategies of SBM point to a series of organizational conditions that must exist at the school level for SBM to lead to improved student achievement. In their view, there are nine key steps that must characterize SBM: center change on student learning and a rigorous instructional program; involve all teachers in decision making; allow schools to recruit and select staff; invest in training and professional development; create a professional school culture; create a comprehensive school-based information system; provide rewards and sanctions; select principals who can facilitate and manage change; and give schools control over their budget.
|
From page 187... ...
having a somewhat higher average percentage of white students in charter schools than in all public schools, whereas others (Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, and Wisconsin) had lower average percentages of white students in charter schools (U.S.
|
From page 188... ...
From the perspective of school finance, the most striking aspect is the financial disadvantage under which many charter schools operate. In many states, charter schools receive as operating expenses just the state share of operating revenues, not the combined state and local revenue that is available to the public schools.
|
From page 189... ...
Thanks in part to the growth of charter schools, however, the firm is now growing. The school year 1997-98 marked the third year of Edison's operation and at that time, the company had 25 public school partnerships serving nearly 13,000 students.
|
From page 190... ...
Charter schools may well fulfill their proponents' predictions about exerting productive impacts on the rest of the public school system sometime in the future, and indeed preliminary evidence of these impacts .
|
From page 191... ...
Similarly, a charter school is not endowed with the monopoly rights to a geographic area in the way that public schools typically are. So, in principle, the force of entry brings charter schools closer to the textbook competitive norm than other forms
|
From page 192... ...
The significant point here is that many economists believe that parental choice is likely to lead to the greatest gains in productive efficiency when there is the potential for a supply-side response in the form of the entry of new schools or the closing down of existing schools. Types and Quality of Empirical Evidence Empirical evidence on the effects of parental choice on achievement and productive efficiency comes in various forms, some of which are more reliable than others.
|
From page 193... ...
In addition to one interview study on this issue related to charter schools already cited (Rofes, 1998) , more general research on this question is provided by Caroline Hoxby, who makes use of the variation across school districts in the amount of competition they face naturally from public schools in other districts or from private schools to draw inferences about the effects of a voucher program on overall student achievement.
|
From page 194... ...
In sum, the U.S. research on parental choice, including choice that extends to private schools, is limited largely by the absence of experience on a large scale with voucher programs or with broad-based choice programs that break the link between residential location and school choice.
|
From page 195... ...
For example, a policy of investing in the capacity of existing teachers is likely to be more effective if it is combined with a change in incentives that make performance count than if it is implemented by itself. Similarly, the success of a program designed to hold schools accountable may depend on the extent to which teachers have access to the skills they need to improve the performance of their students.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.