As school districts continue to seek administrative efficiencies and cost reductions in the wake of severe budget pressures, the resources they devote to creating or expanding retirement plan consortia is increasing. Understanding how to structure a retirement plan consortium is paramount to successfully achieving the many objectives of…

This report provides a detailed description of an education program cost model designed to accept descriptions of the size and composition of resources used in a particular program and translate them into an estimate of program cost, for convenient comparison of alternatives. The model also translates ("crosswalks") the program budget…

Author gives some indications that PPBS can be a useful tool in promoting efficiency and accountability. (Author)

New York state established several types of grants to improve local educational practice, and three are examined in this report: Developer grants, Demonstrator grants, and Replicator grants. Policy evaluation performed at the level of a grants administration agency requires many types of data collection and analysis. This study compares the…

Although the public is best served by governmental agencies which have integrated the major functions of planning, managing, and budgeting, it can be asserted that the planning function is paramount. A review of the evolution of public agency administration in the U.S. reveals that until recent years the planning function has been largely…

This document details a semiautomated PPB system developed in an ESEA Title III project, Intermediate Unit Planning Study, for use in Pennsylvania (see EA 002 750). Two semiautomated versions were developed, both dependent for calculation on the use of electronic data processing equipment. This is a documentation manual for the first of these…

Project RISE (Regional In-Service Education) is an inservice center serving teachers, administrators, support staff and parents in central Connecticut. It began in 1976 with state funding, and serves 500 teachers in nine rural and small town districts. An initial needs assessment provided a basis for planning and responding to individual teachers'…

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…

Summarized are activities of the Wausau District Public Schools (Wisconsin) toward developing a model for cost efficiency analysis in special education. The model links input-output analysis and task analysis features. Introductory information includes varying impressions of cost efficiency concerns and the current status of project development.…

The objective of the study was to evaluate (1) the needs and resources available to local school districts in data processing; (2) the needs and resources available for regional data processing centers; and (3) the types of services, including programing packages, that would be offered by the regional data processing centers. The study analyzed…

Many educational administrators are skeptical of school district attempts to use the planning-programing-budgeting systems (PPBS) tool. This skepticism seems, in large part, to be the result of two factors: (1) A general lack of understanding of the concrete operational steps involved in the implementation of PPBS, and (2) a feeling that the…

Program budgeting is more than a neat method of budgeting by program; hence it requires more than just concentration on budgeting and accounting procedures. Program budgeting, basically a resource allocations system, stresses the setting of objectives, grouping activities into programs to meet the objectives, identifying the resources required by…

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…