K-12 education resources are often allocated non-strategically, with schools spending time and money on activities that have little relationship to student outcomes. Most of these decisions take place within districts, rooted in the processes of setting schedules, staffing levels, and assignments, and creating final budgets. Local Education…

Schools and districts across the country are being subjected to some of the fiercest budget cuts in recent history, even as principals are held increasingly accountable for significantly improving student achievement, particularly in schools labeled "persistently low-achieving." For the 5,000 lowest-performing schools, there is the…

There's a lot of work happening all over the country to "turnaround" schools. Federal stimulus programs, including Title 1 Improvement Grants and Race to the Top, have caused many states and school systems to focus on how to address schools trapped in a cycle of failure and "turn them around." On the school level, there are…

The Elementary Staffing Study was conducted to develop a formula for determining the allocation of personnel positions and services for individual elementary school campuses in the Austin Independent School District. The 1981-82 study was meant to identify factors to be considered in personnel assignment, to "weight" each factor, and to…

Longitudinal study of how school districts allocated resources, focusing on expenditures and staffing, during a 6-year period in the 1990s, a period that saw the implementation of state standards and accountability initiatives. Finds, for example, that school districts did not appear to spend more on instruction, but did hire more instructional…

This volume is the final in a 4-part series of monographs comprising a broad investigation of teacher collective action in local school districts. It presents the results of investigations of the shortrun and probable longrun impact of negotiating activity between school boards and teacher organizations in 22 selected school districts across the…

This State of Mississippi annual evaluation report on programs, projects, services, and activities funded in whole or in part under Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I is organized into 10 parts. Part 1 is an "Introduction." Part 2 specifies the "Number of School Districts and Participants.""Total Allocation and…

This School Personnel Utilization battery is designed to help evaluate school staffing models (see TM 001 210). The battery itself contains three instruments. A Components Analysis instrument was devised to study the question of comprehensiveness. The second instrument, a Constraints Checklist, was developed to determine the extent to which the…

This paper discusses a technique for evaluating the comprehensiveness, feasibility and viability of project models. The developed technique is based on the assumption that a school staffing model is an organizational pattern demonstrating certain specific characteristics. A method for describing these characteristics has also been developed as a…

A consequence of the trend for paraprofessional employment in the schools is that the traditional teaching division of labor in schools in being substantially changed to provide teachers with work assistance and opportunities to specialize more effectively in instructional tasks. The two central questions posed in this study ask if the new…

The purpose of this study is to collect, analyze, and report on statistics and program information relative to selected aspects of the overall budget and program of selected large city school systems. Furthermore, the intent is to isolate areas of variation in what is seemingly common operation and by means of adjustment, whether it be in the form…

In this paper, a companion piece to "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools" (ED544382), the authors analyze small high school spending in three urban districts--Baltimore City, Boston, and Chicago--to understand whether it is higher than in larger schools; if it is, why it is different; and the policy…