Wyoming has become the first State in the nation to transform the concept of program budgeting into reality in every local school district. Such budgeting procedures, which link education costs directly to instructional programs rather than to general categories of expenditures, were introduced this year in all 60 of Wyoming's local school…

The Alabama Education Study Commission conducted a five-year project to find adequate measures of accountability for schools. The result, developed, implemented, and tested in 11 school districts in Alabama, was a Program Management and Budgeting (PMB) system combining elements of zero-base budgeting and management by objectives. PMB has the…

A 1979 Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) survey focused on reviewing the current state of fiscal planning and cost studies in Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries. The survey results indicate that, while some libraries are beginning to use cost analysis techniques to evaluate current programs, to plan for new…

The purpose of this study was to estimate the costs in both money and teachers' and administrators' time required to implement the School Planning Evaluation and Communication System (SPECS). The primary source of data was the SPECS field test site activities records maintained by the SPECS development team. Costs were calculated for each…

This primer introduces the basics of Program Management and Budgeting (PMB) in an effort to demonstrate how PMB can benefit school systems. Short quotes from previous publications on the topic are paired with cartoons designed to clarify the purposes and workings of the program. The publication begins by defining PMB as an alternative financial…

A comprehensive school planning tool is available from General Learning Corporation and the Center for the Advanced Study of Educational Administration at the University of Oregon. This School Planning, Evaluation and Communication System (SPECS) provides a deliverable system of training, implementation strategies and materials and technical…

Planning-programing-budgeting systems (PPBS) have borne few of the fruits that many claimed they would. This is partly due to the five following widely held misconceptions about PPBS: 1) that PPBS is primarily concerned with budgeting; 2) that PPBS should displace instructional goals; 3) that it is not necessary to attend to all elements of PPBS;…

Surveyed college counseling service administrators and found that budget cuts have created innovative staffing, progressive changes in focus, and a wider range of counseling activities. Suggests college counselors balance leadership with survival and be willing to make changes consistent with shifting priorities. (JAC)

The School Planning, Evaluation, and Communication System (SPECS) is an overall design for districtwide program assessment and development. It is both a way of interrelating planning and evaluation of individual programs and a way of comparing the outcomes of all district programs with the district's community-defined educational goals. Component…

The Joint University Libraries (JUL) of Nashville, Tennessee have found that as they become increasingly complex they must make optimum use of their resources. In 1972, JUL initiated a planning effort, called Comprehensive Organizational/Operational Planning (CO/OP), designed to provide information for intelligent management decisions. Policy…

This long-range system entails the development of programs in the areas of educational goals and objectives, accounting and budgeting, and curriculum design. Ongoing programs of implementation and evaluation are an important feature. (DLG)