Making Money Matter Financing America's Schools (1999) / Chapter Skim
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5 Improving the Productivity of Schools
5 Improving the Productivity of Schools
Pages 134-162
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From page 134... ...
Likewise, the fate of efforts to align school finance systems with efforts to accomplish key education goals raising achievement levels for all students and breaking the nexus between student background characteristics and student performance hinges on the ability to make finance decisions that lead to improved productivity of schools. While interest in obtaining education as inexpensively as possible has long been a concern of those who finance schools, it took a back seat following World 134
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From page 135... ...
The various theories do not generate consistent strategies for action. In addition, empirical studies seeking to determine the best ways to direct resources to improve school performance have often not produced consistent findings.
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From page 136... ...
are often valued for the quality of the experience itself. For example, many people would argue that an important aspect of school performance is the kind of environment children experience during their many years of enforced school attendance.
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From page 137... ...
Likewise, the multiplicity of process and outcome objectives of education must be reflected in any evaluation of whether American schools are accomplishing what the nation demands of them. For the purposes of this report, nevertheless, we deliberately adopt a narrower focus for productivity analysis, one in keeping with our charge: What do we know about how to improve school performance in terms of improving the academic achievement of students?
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From page 138... ...
UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY Scholars from a number of disciplines have conducted studies aimed at understanding how educational resources are linked to the academic achievement
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From page 139... ...
The large and unwieldy research base seems to provide at least three alternative lenses for viewing the important relationship between educational resources and academic achievement. The first two, input-output studies and studies of effective educational practices, while differing significantly in method, both "rest on the notion that there is an imitable 'technology' of education, in that it is presumed that if one system or school or class can do something within certain effects, so can others" (Murnane and Nelson, 1984:356~.
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From page 140... ...
In addition, extensive information on school facilities was also collected. Coleman and his colleagues utilized the most sophisticated statistical techniques available to look at the effects of school resources on student achievement while taking account of differences in the background characteristics of students and other likely influences on educational outcomes.
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From page 141... ...
. The most significant of the education experiments for this discussion of productivity involves a Tennessee study of the effects of class size on student achievement in the early grades, discussed below.
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From page 142... ...
Like Hanushek, he found no conclusive evidence in the literature that these resources systematically contribute to higher student achievement. For a quarter of a century after Coleman, the dominant view of scholars in the input-output tradition was skepticism about the possibility of finding reliable relationships that could guide policy makers in their decisions about how to allocate resources and organize schools in ways that would lead to improved student academic outcomes.
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From page 143... ...
may not easily translate into specific policies for improving the connection between resource use and results. This dilemma can be seen in considering the implications of recent research suggesting that factors relating to teachers (especially teacher quality and class size)
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From page 144... ...
, pupil-teacher ratios are an imperfect proxy for class size. Since reducing class size is an expensive policy option, it is useful to know as accurately as possible if smaller class sizes matter; therefore research measuring class size directly, as Ferguson and Ladd and the Tennessee class size experiment do, is an important advance.
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From page 145... ...
, the Tennessee results have spurred efforts around the country to reduce class sizes, especially in the early grades. While not necessarily disputing the Tennessee findings, however, scholars have questioned whether reducing class sizes is the more effective use of resources.
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From page 146... ...
The authors thus implicitly question the current weight being given in policy circles to class size reduction. They also point out a series of questions about class sizes that are highly relevant for policy purposes but about which there is as yet little or no knowledge.3 Using a comprehensive, longitudinal database and statistical mixed-model methodology developed to support the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, Sanders and his colleagues also found that teacher effects were the dominant factors affecting student achievement gains.
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From page 147... ...
While the effective practice approach yields the benefit of intensive observation of a small sample, it has traditionally foregone the larger sample benefits of the less fine-grained production function approach. Increasingly, though, scholars are drawing on insights from qualitative studies as well as developments in statistics (such as hierarchical linear modeling, which can help disentangle individual from organizational or group effects)
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From page 148... ...
, on whether teacher development specifically linked to standards-based reform improved student achievement in California; Lee and Smith's 1997 analysis of what high school size works best and for whom, using hierarchical linear modeling and data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study; and sryk and Driscollts 1988 use of the High School and Beyond longitudinal study to explore issues related to schools as learning communities. 5The key literature they cite as the sources for these strategies includes sarzelay (1992)
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From page 149... ...
Most previous attempts to reform education have not really had much effect on teaching and learning (Elmore and McLaughlin, 1988; Tyack and Cuban, 1995~. School reforms thus appear to be a constant in American education, but the intensity and visibility of reform efforts tends to come in cycles, the latest of which was spurred by the raft of critical reports that emerged in the early 1980s.
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From page 150... ...
CSRD provides financial incentives for schools, particularly Title I schools, to implement school reform programs based on reliable research and effective practice and including an emphasis on basic academics and parental involvement. The Northwest Regional Education Laboratory made an initial listing of 26 whole-school reform models and 18 skill- and content-based reform models for schools to consider in developing proposals for CSRD funding, while emphasizing that the list was not comprehensive and was not meant to limit the array of reform ideas being considered by schools, districts, and states.
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From page 151... ...
, how schools would be staffed (how many teachers, how many specialized personnel) , what kind and how much professional development would be provided, and so forth.
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From page 152... ...
More recent research (Odden and Busch, 1998; see Chapter 6) suggests that older strategies of SBM lacked the necessary organizational conditions for it to lead to improved student achievement.
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From page 153... ...
Research developments in the cognitive sciences are challenging prior understandings how humans learn and suggest that ideas about effective educational practice may undergo substantial revision as scholars and practitioners learn how to bring the insights of research into the classroom (National Research Council, 1999~. Lens 3: The Institutional Perspective While school-based reform efforts and changes in district practices aimed at building school capacity show promise of improving school performance, it remains an open question whether they will be implemented or sustained in any
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From page 154... ...
Opinion is divided on whether systemic reform can be accomplished by deliberate policy action within the current institutional framework or whether parents and students should be allowed to opt out of the public school system as it is currently structured because there is something inherent in that structure that "systematically creates and nurtures the kinds of schools that no one really wants" (Chubb and Moe, 1990:25~. Those who argue that improvements in educational productivity require close attention to institutional influences do not disagree with the second-wave reformers about the importance of focusing on teaching and learning at the school level and giving individual schools the autonomy to adopt effective practices and adapt them to their local contexts.
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From page 155... ...
Observers disagree on whether reforms powerful enough to overcome the shortcomings of direct democratic control can be instituted within the current system of publicly controlled schools or whether control must be taken out of the hands of bureaucrats and political partisans via the creation of an education marketplace. This debate reflects the cardinal economic choice societies face when deciding how to allocate scarce goods and services: whether to use the market or government as the predominant regulator (Wolf, 1993: 1~.
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From page 156... ...
actions to complement school and district restructuring by creating a more coherent environment within which successful schools can thrive and by creating external pressure for change when it does not emerge spontaneously. The linchpin in the system is the development of content standards expressing shared understandings about what students need to know and be able to do, with which other elements of the educational system (school curricula, assessments, teacher education and professional development, and accountability)
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From page 157... ...
the school level, in keeping with the tradition of local control of education and consistent with both economic and "good practice" research, which suggests that those closest to the "production site" are in the best position to make efficient and effective decisions about meeting the needs of students in specific classrooms and schools. The standards-based systemic strategy has dominated state education reform efforts for a decade and has become remarkably pervasive.
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From page 158... ...
Skeptics about the possibilities of improving educational performance within the existing institutional environment question how significantly institutional arrangements can be changed so long as direct democratic control of schools exists. They argue that real school improvement cannot happen under anything like the current arrangements (e.g., Chubb and Moe, 1990; Hill et al., 1997~.
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From page 159... ...
Bureaucratization can whittle away discretion and autonomy at the school level (Chubb and Moe, 1990; Hill et al., 1997; Brandl, 1998~. Policy makers increasingly act to reduce the discretion permitted at the school level.
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From page 160... ...
New funds, e.g., from tax levy increases, are spoken for before they arrive, usually to fund deferred maintenance or roll back increases in average class size. Even the supposedly flexible categories of funds, such as staff development, are committed in advance to separate categorical programs or to programs selected by central office administrators" (Hill et al., 1997:29~.
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From page 161... ...
The past 25 years worth of insights have generated a host of ideas about how to use school finance to improve school performance. Input-output research has heightened interest in policies affecting key variables that appear linked to student achievement, such as teacher quality and class size.
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From page 162... ...
In other words, the search for answers to improving school performance and student achievement will never yield just one value that is, solutions that will work for all schools and students in all times and places. In the face of this indeterminacy, there are no simple answers about how to use school finance to make schools better.
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