School Beat: School Governance and Funding Across the State and in Our District

Starting at the 10,000 foot level is the news from Stanford’s Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice, which released a robust set of 23 rigorous studies regarding California’s public education finance and governance situation (http://irepp.stanford.edu/projects/cafinance.htm). These papers are collectively entitled “Getting Down to Facts: A Research Project Examining California’s School Governance and Finance Systems,” and represent hefty pieces of analysis that deserve careful reading on all of our parts.

Drawing on a deep and wide cadre of researchers from a variety of institutions, the work is organized around three primary questions:
1. What do California school finance and governance systems look like today?
2. How can we use the resources that we have more effectively to improve student outcomes?
3. To what extent are additional resources needed so that California’s students can meet the goals that we have for them?

Answers to these questions are what we have all been waiting for for so long. Anyone involved with public schools knows that the available resources making it down to the school site just aren’t adequate. But we also know that our schools and districts are hampered by restrictive categorical funding proposals, which frequently don’t support schools in needed areas, come with a variety of restrictions, and hamper down school administrators with even more time-consuming reporting requirements that are of doubtful usefulness. Further, we have not had a sense of how much we actually need to meet the standards that have been set for our children. These reports are the welcome starting points for grappling with these issues.

More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4326#more