Annotated List of CPRE Finance Center Products
This bibliography lists written products that draw from CPRE Finance Center Research and/or were authored by CPRE Finance Center researchers during funding in Years 1 through the first half of Year 4 of its current grant period (December 1990 - May 1994). Some of the products are formal deliverable; others were prepared for presentation at meetings, as background papers, as book chapters or journal articles. The products are listed by author.
Adams Jacob, Jr. 1992., School Finance Reform and Systemic School Change: Reconstituting Kentucky's Public Schools. University of Southern California, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Los Angeles, CA.
Describes the Kentucky Education Reform Act that was enacted in response to a court case finding the entire education system unconstitutional. Discusses program portion of the reform in terms of its "systemic reform" characteristics and gives a brief overview of the new school finance structure.
Adams, Jacob E., Jr. 1993. The Local Response to School Finance Reform in Kentucky. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research In Education.
Analyzes the local use of school finance reform dollars in two low wealth and two high wealth school districts. Finds the bulk of funds were spent in the instructional category. Assesses the results from he perspective of the rational, incremental and systems approaches to policymaking.
Adams, Jacob E., Jr. 1994, May (under review). Spending School Reform Dollars in Kentucky: Familiar Patterns and New Programs, But Is This Reform? Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis.
School finance reform in Kentucky provided significant new general purpose and categorical revenues to school districts. This analysis employs comparative case studies to explore the use of school reform dollars in four high and low-wealth Kentucky districts. The analysis asks: did expenditures increase? Did expenditure patterns change? What did reform dollars buy? In short, expenditures increased in all districts, spending patterns changed only incrementally, with slight percentage increases directed to instruction, and reform dollars purchased instructional materials, technology, and professional development; they compensated teachers; and they funded new, state-mandated programs. Still, non programmatic financial reporting masked whether and to what extent reform dollars supported required changes in teaching and learning.
Adams, Jacob E., Jr. Forthcoming. Implementing Program Equity: Raising the Stakes for Educational Policy and Practice. Educational Policy.
This article suggests some consequences of program equity for educational policy and practice. Consequences are described in terms of needed investments in policy and practice "the stakes" that are risked in order to achieve high minimum levels of student performance. Stakes go up for policy and practice both because program equity demands support for high minimum performance outcomes, a new and more challenging implementation standard, and because delivering these outcomes requires that implementing decisions and actions be coordinated across a fragmented educational system. Program equity implementation thus requires simultaneous top-down and bottom-up change strategies that promote goal alignment, capacity building, and direct support for change. Implementation contributions of various policy instruments and professional practices are explored. A new implementation structure "teacher networks" is proposed as a means of linking and managing top and bottom change strategies.
Ahlburg, Dennis, Michael S. McPherson, and Morton O. Schapiro. June, 1994. Predicting Higher Education Enrollment in the United States: An Evaluation of Different Modeling Approaches. Paper prepared for the CPRE Finance Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
How well have enrollment models predicted college enrollment in the United States? Can we improve on past efforts? Can attention to such factors as demographic change, college costs, unemployment rates and the like produce significant improvements in enrollment forecasts? The purpose of this paper is to assess the state of the art in model-based enrollment prediction for U. S. higher education. We review available studies, consider methodological and data-availability issues raised by the approaches reflected in the literature, and report on a study comparing the forecast performance of several alternative models.
Barnett, W. Steven. Forthcoming. Obstacles and Opportunities: Some Simple Economics of School Finance Reform. Educational Policy.
Simple economic analysis offers insights for the development of education finance policy and a shift from equity to adequacy, or, efficiency, as a rationale for finance reform. The overall economic context for reform is one of rapid growth in education expenditure in a time of declining earnings and increased economic inequality. This presents both obstacles and opportunities. It is argued that opportunities are greatest for reforms that increase funding for low-achieving students, rather than schools, based on efficiency arguments. Special education policy is examined as a possible model for such reform. Evidence regarding school resource allocation processes and production efficiency is used to evaluate the potential impacts of increased spending on education outcomes, how much funding might be required to meet various goals, and the extent to which school restructuring strategies might improve efficiency. It is argued that school finance reform policies can generate responses by families that offset at least some of their intended effects. Policies should be designed to minimize this problem. Finally, based on new research questions are raised about conventional assumptions regarding educational production and cost.
Barnett, W. Steven, Joyce Collins, and Deborah S. Jewett. 1993. The Economics of School Reform: A Preliminary Look at Three Models. Los Angeles, CA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, School of Education, University of Southern California. Draft not for citation or distribution.
The Accelerated Schools Program, Success for All, and the School Development Program represent three of the best know and most fully developed models of schoolwide reform. These models offer public schools practical approaches that might be used to achieve the substantial improvements in the education of disadvantaged minority and other at-risk children required to achieve educational excellence and equality for all. This paper briefly describes the models and reviews the published information available on each model's costs and benefits in order to identify needs for further economic evaluation. All three models have demonstrated that they are feasible and have produced some evidence that they are capable of producing improvements in the educational experiences and outcomes of schools that have not performed well in the past. Support is needed for additional research to reduce the uncertainty about how much can be achieved nationwide with these promising models and the resources required to produce the desired outcomes for at-risk students.
Barro, S.M. 1992. What Does the Education Dollar Buy?: Relationships of Staffing, Staff Characteristics, and Staff Salaries to State Per-Pupil Spending. Prepared for the Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
The question, "what does the education dollar buy?" is being addressed at multiple levels and from different perspectives in the Finance Center's integrate, multilevel study of resource use in education. This paper uses state-level data from NCES, NEA and the Census Bureau to examine relationships between various aspects of school staffing and real expenditure per pupil. Real or cost-adjusted, expenditure per pupil, estimated with the aid of a previously developed rough cost-of-education index, is shown to vary less among states than unadjusted per-pupil spending. The teacher-pupil ration, in turn, is less variable among states than real expenditure per pupil.
Barro, S. M. 1994, February. The Interstate Distribution of Federal Funds for Vocational Education. Report prepared for the National Assessment of Vocational Education, Washington, DC.
Barro, S. M. 1994, January. The Within-State Distribution of Federal Vocational Education Funds. Report prepared for the National Assessment of Vocational Education, Washington, DC.
The above reports were delivered to the National Assessment of Vocational Education. They contain complete drafts of reports on the interstate and intrastate mechanisms for distributing federal vocational funds. The reports assess both the inter-and intra-state distribution of vocational education dollars, particularly with respect to the need for vocational education and special needs students conceptually identifies alternative distribution formulas, and then assesses the alternatives in light of the goals of the federal vocational education program.
Bartels, Dennis. 1992. Productivity in Postsecondary Education: The Administrative Lattice, the Academic Ratchet, and the Special Case of the Small Private Liberal Arts College. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Much has been written in recent years about the dual problems of cost escalation and quality decline in higher education. Critics charge that students, especially undergraduates, are paying more and getting less. One explanation for the problems has been postulated by William Massy and Robert Zemsky who have coined the phrase, "the academic ratchet and the administrative lattice." In this paper, the author applies this theory for analyzing cost growth and quality decline to a particular subset of higher education: small private liberal arts colleges. He concludes the academic ratchet and administrative lattice do affect small private liberal arts colleges. He also concludes that the relative strength of an institution's finances can mitigate the effects of the ratchet and lattice.
Behrman, Jere, Michael McPherson and Morton O. Schapiro. 1992. What Governments Want: Understanding Governmental Objectives in Providing State and Local Higher Education Appropriations. Los Angeles, CA: Department of Economics, University of Southern California.
Much policy debate focuses on the proper goals for governmental funding of higher education, but there has been less research on the question of what those goals actually are. This work examines the relationship between governmental higher education funding decisions at the state and local level and observed outcomes at institutions that receive governmental support. Specifically, it examine the choices made by state and local governments in providing operating subsidies to public institutions. The results suggest that governmental preferences emphasize the productivity of the distribution of resources among public colleges and universities in terms of maximizing enrollments, without concern about the extent of equality of the distribution of resources among such institutions. At the same time there is higher weight placed on better qualified students and students who are minority group members.
Berne, Robert. Forthcoming. Program Equity For all Children: Meaningful Goal or Impossible Dream. Educational Policy.
After a decade of neglect, equity issues are once again at the core of educational policy debates. But the nature of equity in the 1990s is different from the past, especially with its inclusion of outcomes. This article explores some of these differences in two ways. First, while we know that many elements of outcome equity are feasible, there are significant implementation issues including outcome measurement, the quid pro quo between accountability for outcomes and governance, the resource implications, the need for integrated services for children, the necessary role changes for teachers and principals, and the need for parents as partners. Second, the article summarizes the recommendations of a New York State Equity Study Group that focused on the following three questions: (1) Can we develop definitions of educational outcomes and outcome equity? (2) Can we identify the alternative policies and programs that are aimed at redressing outcome inequities? (3) What actions are needed to allocate resources to support policies and programs that produce outcome equity?
Brewer, Dominic J. 1993. Principals and Student Outcomes: Evidence from U. S. High Schools. Economics of Education Review 12 (4).
This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effects of principals on public high school students'academic achievement, using the High School and Beyond database. Three findings emerge from the study: relative principal salary, teacher selection and motivation, and principal goals significantly affect student gain test scores. To some extent, these results reflect previous research which finds principals to be important for effective schooling. However, there is a need for further investigation of principal effects using other data and more complex statistical models.
Brewer, D. J. 1993. Career Paths and Quit Decisions: Evidence from Teaching. Paper prepared for the CPRE Finance Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Conventional models predict that workers consider employment opportunities and monetary rewards expected over their lifetimes when making current period decisions such as whether to quit a job. This paper tests the hypothesis that later career opportunities affect quit decisions by examining the relationship between teaching and school administration. Evidence on the extent to which administrative positions are available to teachers, and the salary premia associated with them, is presented. Both cross section logit and discrete time logit-hazard models of teacher quits, estimated using data from New York state, provide some support for the hypothesis, though the magnitudes of the estimated effects are small.
Brewer, Dominic J. 1994. School District Resource Allocation, Efficiency, and Productivity: Evidence from New York. Submitted to Journal of Labor Economics, April.
The paper uses data on 700 New York school districts (1978-1987) to estimate a cost minimizing model of school district behavior to determine the extent of substitutability between competing inputs (central administrators, building administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, and nonprofessionals). This structural approach permits the simulation of the effect of changes in particular schooling inputs on district output, without the estimation of district educational production functions. Thus this methodology bypasses the difficulties of measuring district educational "output," and also permits a test of whether district behavior is consistent with cost minimization. The major result of the paper is that school districts do not appear to be cost minimizers, i.e., they are not economically efficient. There is also some evidence that district level and building level administrators are substitutable for one another, and that large cuts in central administration would have little impact on educational output.
Carlsen, William S. and David H. Monk. 1992. Rural/Nonrural Differences Among Secondary Science Teachers: Evidence from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 20-24, San Francisco, CA.
This paper describes rural/nonrural differences in the secondary science teaching work force, using data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. Relative to their nonrural colleagues, rural teachers are less experienced, more likely to have taught subjects other than science, more likely to have majored in education, less likely to have majored in a science, and less likely to have a graduate degree. Some, but not all, of the rural/nonrural difference is attributable to state differences in teacher certification requirements. The analysis uses a 1988 national sample of 456 teachers from 93 schools, part of an ongoing longitudinal study of science and mathematics education.
Clune, William H. 1992. New Answers to Six Hard Questions from Rodriguez: Ending the Separation of School Finance and Educational Policy by Bridging the Gap Between Wrong and Remedy. Connecticut Law Review 24 (No. 3): 1-42.
Discusses 20 years of litigation history in state attempts to implement a fiscally neutral school finance structure, stressing the problems states have encountered in defining and designing policies that are fiscally neutral. Argues that fiscal neutrality has outlived its usefulness as a legal standard and develops a new standard that could be used in school finance litigation.
Clune, W. H. 1993 The Shift from Equity to Adequacy in School Finance. The World & I, 8(9), 389-405.
A shift is occurring in school finance from equity to adequacy, and from emphasis on inputs to emphasis on high minimum outcomes as the goal of both educational policy and finance. In this article, the author defines equity, adequacy, and equity plus; compares the features of equity plus with a full system of "true adequacy"; summarizes tentative evidence on costs; and discusses implications for policy.
Clune, W. H. (Ed.). In press. The Cost and Management of Program Adequacy: An Emerging Issue in Educational Policy and Finance. Educational Policy. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
This special issue of Educational Policy deals with program adequacy in education. The issue contains 18 commissioned papers from prestigious authors throughout the United States on the issue of program adequacy. All authors were sent Clune's paper, The Shift from Equity to Adequacy in School Finance as an introduction to the topic, and some responded directly to it.
Clune, William H. Forthcoming. Introduction to The Shift from Equity to Adequacy in School Finance. Educational Policy.
A shift is occurring in school finance from equity to adequacy, and from emphasis on inputs to emphasis on high minimum outcomes as the goal of both educational policy and finance. A "true adequacy" model is emerging, a system of school finance which links resources to outcomes to ensure all students receive an adequate level of education. Implementing true adequacy would require each district to adopt a set of high minimum goals, identify resources necessary for attaining those goals, and have a long-range investment plan for deploying the resources and developing the corresponding instructional program. The money needed to implement ?true adequacy? would be roughly $5000 per 0pupil. Given the number of students in high-poverty districts across the country, the total package would come to $25 billion nationwide.
Colbeck, Carol. 1993. Assessing Faculty Responses to Incentives: A Departmental Incentive Diagnostic. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
This background piece serves as a companion to Faculty Work Motivation: A Survey of Attitudes and Expectations, a departmental incentive inventory and diagnostic. The paper begins by examining the increasingly difficult task facing department chairs, deans and other academic administrators: to find ways to encourage faculty to devote more effort to teaching while working within a higher education system that rewards research. The author suggests that an appropriate balance between teaching and research will be achieved only if incentive policies are consistent at the individual, departmental, and institutional level.
Colbeck, Carol. 1993. Diagnosing the Incentive Environment of an Academic Department. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Higher education administrators are caught between calls for increased accountability and the demands for faculty autonomy. However, in order to affect any change, it is first necessary to collect systematic baseline data on the current rewards and incentives under which faculty operate and how each affects faculty behavior. In this paper, the author proposes a method for gathering such evidence which may also engage faculty in the process of strategizing for change. The author reviews previous attempts to study incentives and rewards and concludes that any attempt to change the reward structure without addressing the norms of academic culture will likely fail. Finally the author outlines the 4 essential components of an effective departmental incentive diagnostic: 1) diagnostic must address all incentives available to faculty, 2) diagnostic must address effects of incentives on each of principal faculty tasks, 3) diagnostic must address evaluation, and 4) diagnostic must address intrinsic motivation and internal standards.
Colbeck, Carol. 1993. Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Interest: The Influence of Tenure on Faculty Preference for Teaching or Research. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
This paper focuses on a study designed to test contrasting assumptions about the effects of extrinsic rewards on faculty interest in their work tasks. Some observers suggest that professors do their jobs for the sheer joy of it, while others imply that professors' interests efforts are influenced by external rewards. In general, the author finds that faculty preference for a task increases as their perception of its importance increases; professors' efforts are indeed influenced by external rewards. This is most clearly demonstrated in the case of tenure. In fact, the author argues that faculty perceptions of which tasks are rewarded in tenure process continue to influence their work tasks even after tenure has been obtained.
Colbeck, Carol. 1994. What Faculty REALLY Do: Reconceptualizing Faculty Work. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April 8, 1994.
The author suggests that the descriptors typically applied to faculty work, teaching, research, and service, actually confound the activities that faculty engage in. In her exploratory study, grounded in empirical data, she identifies a taxonomy of substance and action that more accurately describes the activities of faculty work. She then proposes to use compare these patterns with the observed work of faculty.
Consortium for Policy Research in Education. 1992. Keeping College Affordable: A Proposal from Two Economists. CPRE Policy Briefs. New Brunswick, NJ: Author.
This brief reviews the workings of the United States undergraduate education finance system. Written to stimulate discussion about higher education finance generally, the brief summarizes a proposal that would increase the role of "ability-to-pay" financing of educational costs by expanding the role of income-tested federal student aid.
Consortium for Policy Research in Education. 1992. New Fiscal Realities in Higher Education. CPRE Policy Briefs. New Brunswick, NJ: Author.
This brief analyzes the dynamics of productivity and cost containment in higher education and suggests strategies for improving campus productivity. It draws from a postsecondary finance and productivity study being conducted by William Massy and Andrea Wilger for the Finance Center of CPRE. The researchers offer three suggestions: campus leaders should reshape their institutions to focus more strongly on cost-effectiveness in relation to clear goals; governing boards should make productivity their highest priority; and state and federal governments should motivate and facilitate these efforts, eliminating bureaucratic obstacles.
Consortium for Policy Research in Education. 1993. School Finance Reform: The Role of the Courts. CPRE Finance Briefs. New Brunswick, NJ: Author.
This brief summarizes points made in an earlier Connecticut Law Review article by William H. Clune. It evaluates the status of seven fundamental problems of school finance litigation and reform; presents a three-part legal remedy; justifies the remedy as good policy; and concludes with a look ahead to the concept of ?program equity.
Consortium for Policy Research in Education. 1993. School-Based Management: Strategies for Success. CPRE Finance Briefs. New Brunswick, NJ: Author.
This brief offers a new definition of school-based management and describes strategies for decentralizing management to improve the design of SBM plans. The design strategies focus on the four components of control: power, knowledge, information, and rewards. The brief draws from a national study of school-based management being conducted by the Finance Center of CPRE and is based on a series of commissioned papers. Researchers are studying public schools, private schools and private companies that have decentralized in order to identify strategies that can improve the implementation of school-based management and enhance school productivity.
Davies, Graeme John. 1993. Restructuring in the United Kingdom. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Stanford Forum for Higher Education Futures, November 7-8, 1993, Pacific Grove, CA.
This paper outlines recent changes in higher education funding in the United Kingdom with an emphasis on the establishment of the Higher Education Funding Councils for England (HEFCE). The author describes the aims and objectives of the HEFCE and its relationship to the Department of Education and to higher education institutions. He describes in detail the assessment process used to derive the formulas for funding both teaching and research. He also discusses accountability within the new funding system.
Ehrenberg, Ronald G., Dan D. Goldhaber, and Dominic J. Brewer. 1994. Do Teachers' Race, Gender, and Ethnicity Matter: Evidence from NELS88. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 4669. Also accepted for publication in Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
This report analyzes issues relating to how a teacher's race, gender, and ethnicity influence students from both the same race, gender, and ethnicity group and students from other groups. This study used the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) and focused both on how teachers subjectively relate to and evaluate their students and on objectively how much their students learn.
Ehrenberg, Ronald G. and Dominic J. Brewer. 1994. Do School and Teacher Characteristics Matter? Evidence from High School and Beyond. Forthcoming in Economics of Education Review (13)1, 1-17. (Also ILR-Cornell Institute for Labor Market Policies Working Paper No.7 [December 1992]).
This paper uses data from the U. S. Department of Education's High School and Beyond longitudinal Study. We estimate the extent to which school characteristics (such as expenditure/pupil) and teacher characteristics (such as degree levels) influence the probability that public school students drop out of high school between their sophomore and senior years and, for those who do not drop out, whether these characteristics influence the extent to which students' scores on achievement tests increase during the two-year period. The paper allows for the possibility that school and teacher characteristics are the result of both parent and teacher choices. It also statistically controls for the fact that "gain scores" are available only for students who did not drop out.
Elmore, Richard E. Forthcoming. Thoughts on Program Equity: Productivity and Incentives for Performance in Education. Educational Policy.
William Clune's case for "adequate" standards contains the following agenda: to raise and meet higher standards for student performance through combining larger compensatory expenditures in disadvantaged schools with increased site-based governance and management within those schools. In my mind, this agenda toward adequacy illuminates a general problem which must first be surmounted: the problem of productivity in educational spending. While the objectives of substantial equity and heavy investments in compensatory treatments are important goals for public policy, I am skeptical that an infusion of money will actually result in a proportional improvement in student performance. As long as public organizations continue to operate within the traditional model of the "base budget," without developing a systematic measure of cost-benefit relations, there will be no increase in understanding how existing resources are best utilized to improve learning. The Clune proposal invokes the need for research aimed at schools which have already begun to think differently about how they manage resources and for the development of new models of how base.expenditures on such factors as staffing, professional development, and curriculum can be altered to produce drastically different relationships between resources and performance.
Ferris, James M. 1992. School-Based Decision Making: A Principal-Agent Perspective. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Winter 1992, Vol. 14, No. 4, 333-346. (Also: Working Paper, Los Angeles, CA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, School of Education, University of Southern California.)
Assesses the appropriateness of developing accountability mechanisms to monitor the effects of increased decentralization taking place in schools. The paper examines the feasibility of viewing the situation contractually, the "principal" being a school district, and the ?agent? the school site. The paper then examines the role of decentralization of authority both inside and outside the school hierarchy.
Firestone, William A., Margaret E. Goertz, Brianna Nagle, and Marcy F. Smelkinson. 1993. Where Did the $800 Million Go? The First Year of New Jersey's Quality Education Act. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA, April 12-16.
Passage of New Jersey's school finance reform law raised questions about whether it would equalize funding between rich and poor districts, whether poor districts would waste their funding increases, and whether equalization would impair richer districts. Budgetary and interview data from 11 districts of varying wealth suggest that in the first year the law only modestly increased fiscal equality. None-theless, poor districts did receive considerable new state funds. Poor districts used these new funds to improve programs and the material environment for education. Wealthier districts experienced minor cuts, and those resulted as much from residents' unwillingness to tax themselves to the level allowed by the state as from reduced state funds.
Firestone, William A., Margaret E. Goertz, Brianna Nagle, and Marcy F. Smelkinson. 1993. Where Did the $800 Million Go? The First Year of New Jersey's Quality Education Act. CEPA-NJ Newsletter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, Center for Educational Policy Analysis in New Jersey.
This newsletter summarizes the paper of the same title.
Goertz, Margaret E. 1992. The Development and Implementation of the Quality Education Act of 1990. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, Center for Educational Policy Analysis in New Jersey.
This paper documents and analyzes the development and implementation of the Quality Education Act from its inception in January 1990 through the first year of its implementation. The first section discusses the legal, fiscal, political, and educational context for school finance reform in New Jersey in 1990. The second section describes the development of the original law (QEA I) and the amended version (QEA II). The third section looks at the state's plans for implementing QEA, including activities for addressing the needs of at-risk students and for improving educational programs in the state's most distressed urban communities. The fourth section examines the statewide fiscal impact of QEA II, and the political and legal response to the new law. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions for school finance reform in New Jersey.
Goertz, Margaret E. 1992. The Rocky Road to School Finance Reform. CEPA-NJ Newsletter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, Center for Educational Policy Analysis in New Jersey.
This newsletter summarizes findings of the report, "The Development and Implementation of the Quality Education Act of 1990" by Margaret E. Goertz.
Goertz, Margaret E. 1992. School Finance Reform in New Jersey: the Saga Continues. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association, March 18-22, New Orleans, LA.
This paper briefly summarizes the Abbott v. Burke New Jersey school finance case and discusses the state's Quality Education Act legislation (originally enacted in 1990) which is still being challenged. The paper examines the impact of QEA in 1991-92 on the 30 special-needs districts targeted by the Court, and the projected impact of the law in 1992-93.
Goertz, Margaret E. Forthcoming. Program Equity and Adequacy: Issues from the Field. Educational Policy.
The latest wave of school finance litigation has raised issues of educational adequacy as well as funding equity in many states. This article explore the following philosophical, conceptual, technical and political questions that state policy makers face as they struggle to address issues of adequacy and equity simultaneously. Do traditional equity issues go away if some equality of outcomes is achieved? What ought standards of adequacy look like? How does one design a school finance system based on adequacy? Can we define the production function(s) that will yield the desired outcomes? Is the political system ready to accept the additional costs (and possible redistributive effects) of a funding system linked to educational adequacy?
Haller, Emil J. and David H. Monk. 1993. Predictors of High School Academic Course Offerings: The Role of School Size. American Education Research Journal, 30(1), 3-21.
Relationships between high school structural characteristics and curricular offerings are examined in this study using survey data from High School and Beyond. Emphasis is placed on the role played by high school size. The study's central thesis is that the effects of school size on the curriculum will vary depending on the subject area, the character of the course being offered (e.g., advanced versus remedial), and the setting in which the school is located. The influence of other structural features, most notably socioeconomic status (SES), unionization, urban location, and grade configuration, are also examined. Findings are consistent with the basic proposition that the effects of size are differentiated within high schools. The findings have implications for assessments of equality of educational opportunity as well as for the renewed debate over optimal school size.
Haller, Emil J., David H. Monk, and Lydia T. Tien. 1992. Small Schools and Higher Order Thinking Skills. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 20-24, San Francisco, CA.
Many studies show that the achievement of students in small and rural schools is as high as that of students in larger, more urban schools. By some accounts their achievement is higher. How, the authors ask, can students who are able to study only one or two years of a subject learn as much or more than students who are able to study four? The authors propose one possible explanation for this apparent anomaly: perhaps the usual measures of achievement are inappropriate for the comparisons being made. They suggest that instead of relying on standardized achievement tests, researchers might better focus on competencies that are the likely outcomes of advanced study in a curricular area.
Hanusheck, Eric A. Forthcoming. A Jaundiced View of "Adequacy" in School Finance Reform. Educational Policy.
Discussions of school finance have been seriously hampered by an inability to relate inputs to student performance. Because spending and resources are not closely related to student performance, discussions that concentrate on the distribution of educational inputs bear little relationship to the distribution of educational outputs. This fundamental problem makes definition of "adequacy" in funding and resources virtually impossible. Balanced against this, problems with our schools are very important, and active policy to improve the situation is called for. The types of policies that hold the largest hope involve different incentive schemes based on student performance. Such schemes are generally not compatible with policies involving "adequacy," or input floors.
Hauptman, Arthur M. 1993. Higher Education Finance Issues in the Early 1990s. CPRE Research Report No. RR-027. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Discusses key financing issues facing American higher education including: the federal role in postsecondary education; state financial support of higher education; colleges and university improvement efforts in the face of tight budgets; and the responsibilities of students and parents as tuition rises. The paper concludes with recommendations for how federal, state, institutional, and family roles in financing higher education might be changed to better meet the needs of today's social and economic climate.
Hertert, Linda. 1994. Equalizing Dollars Across Schools: A Study of District and School-Level Fiscal Equity in California. presented at the American Educational Finance Association annual conference, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
This study represents a first attempt to evaluate fiscal and educational resource equity at the school-level in keeping with the methodology, procedures, and conceptual framework currently used to access between-district equity. The results of the analyses suggest that in a state that has achieved the goal of most school finance litigation?the equalization of dollars between districts" fiscal inequities exist at the school-level. If the goal is to improve equity directly on behalf of children, the resulof thishis study suggest that litigation should focus on differences between schools, not between districts.
Hertert, Linda. 1994. Resource Allocation Patterns in Public Education: An Analysis of School-Level Equity in California. Paper presented at the American Educational Finance Association annual conference, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
This study considered the relationship between equity evaluated as per-pupil expenditures between districts and equity evaluated as per-pupil resources at the school-level both within districts and across districts in California. The results of the analyses suggests that in a state that has achieved a high level of fiscal equity across its districts, there are wide ranging inequities in the distribution fiscal resourcesces, teacher quality, teacher availability, and course offerings at the school-level.
Hertert, Linda. 1994. Resource Allocation Patterns at the School Level: Equity Considerations in California. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association annual conference, April 4-8, New Orleans, LA.
This study considered the relationship between equity evaluated as per-pupil expenditures between districts and equity evaluated as per-pupil resources at the school-level both within districts and across districts in California. The results of the analyses suggests that in a state that has achieved a high level of fiscal equity across its districts, there are wide ranging inequities in the distribution of fiscal resources, teacher quality, teacher availability, and course offerings at the school-level.
Hertert, Linda. 1994. The Search for Qualified Teachers: The Use of Monetary Incentives to Attract Certificated Instructional Personnel. Paper presented at the American Educational Finance Association annual conference, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
Using national data from the Teacher Demand and Supply Survey from the NCES School and Staffing data set, this analysis considers the influence of a variety of benefits and monetary incentives, while holding constant specific pupil, staff, and community variables constant, on the success of districts to hire certificated teachers. The results indicate that offering district-paid medical plans acausewayssed merit pay systems has a modest positive affect on a districts success in hiring certificated personnel. Surprisingly, starting salary is not a significant factor, and the percent of minority pupils in a district has a minimal effect. These are factors which, from the perspective of teachers' preferences, have been reported significant in other research.
Hertert, Linda. 1994. School Finance Litigation: A History of the Changing Definition of Equity. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association annual conference, April 4-8, New Orleans, LA.
This paper considers the evolution of recent school finance litigation in terms of the equity sought by plaintiffs and/or defined by the courts. The equity approach in the procession of court cases is distinguished as either children's equity, equity as equal access to a tax base, or equity as educational outcomes. The implication is that seeking legal redress to school finance inequities is not a value-neutral endeavor, involving simply the winning or losing of cases. Further, it is reasonable to anticipate based on this history that the definition of equity in school finance will continue to change.
Hertert, Linda, Carolyn Busch, and Allan Odden. 1994. School Financing Inequities Among the States: The Problem from a National Perspective, Journal of Education Finance 19:231-255.
This article quantifies the magnitude of disparity in public education among the states using data taken from the Common Core of Data complied by the National Center for Education Statistics. By assessing variations within states, regionally, and across states, this research provides the analytical basis for further considerations of possible solutions that incorporate the respective influence of both the states and the federal government. The findings support earlier less exhaustive studies which found that variations in revenues were greater among the states than within. Further, the differential capacity and effort of states to support public education is calculated using population and state budget data. The cost of equalizing the system by raising revenues to those available for the median pupil are calculated both within states, by region, and from a national perspective. It is determined that using a national approach, while the most expensive option, requires a relatively small increase of 8 percent over the revenues devoted to public education in this country. This is deemed a bargain in terms of both the effect on equity and the potential increase in education quality for the pupils of low-spending states and the relative cost of improving other major social programs.
Hess, G. Alfred, Jr. Forthcoming. Adequacy Rather Than Equity: A New Solution or a Stalking Horse. Educational Policy.
The author addresses Clune's Adequacy Model of School Finance from a practitioner's, not an academic's, perspective. He addresses six particular concerns. 1) Is adequacy a new school finance structure or is it more a federal categorical program? 2) What is the new legal basis, supplanting equal protection, on which an adequacy model is built? 3) The political realities are critical, but under-examined in this proposal that would require an increase in Federal Chapter I spending (currently about $6.3 billion) by $25 billion. 4) Can funds be focused on programs rather than eaten up in compensation increases? 5) Who controls the Adequacy Model is not adequately developed, which raises the concern that this year's philosopher king could easily become next year's malevolent dictator. 6) The interactions between various arenas of policy setting, national, state, district, and school, are not carefully enough distinguished nor weighed adequately for the shift in authority away from state and district, upward to the federal government and downward to the individual school. However, despite these cautions, the author strongly endorses the development of an adequacy model for school finance, for it has the potential to put together the policy concerns of adequate resources and program/outcome accountability that is currently sorely missing.
Heterick, Robert C. Jr. 1993. Transformational Change: How Technology Drives Change. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Stanford Forum for Higher Education Futures, November 7-8, 1993, Pacific Grove, CA.
The author examines the changing technologies available to colleges and universities. He argues that higher education must make the same sort of transformation that business has to use technology to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the quality of education. The possibility for technology to transform pedagogy are almost limitless. Higher education must embrace these changes to maintain its position in an increasingly technological society.
Johnson, Susan Moore and Katherine C. Boles. 1992. School-Based Management for Teachers: Strategies for Reform. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
This paper reviews the research on school-based management, with particular emphasis on the role of teachers in this reform. Most districts approach school-based management by delegating authority to the schools. However, the literature reviewed for this paper suggests that the approach to school-based management which is emerging in practice is a two-way relationship between the district and the schools. This model depicts the school and district as separate, though related, organizations; it recognizes a two-way exchange of knowledge, power, information and rewards; and it anticipates that there will be ongoing mutual influence between the district and the school.
Johnson, Susan Moore. 1991. Teachers, Working Contexts and Educational Productivity. Paper presented at the CPRE Education Finance Forum on Productivity, October 24, 1991, Bethesda, MD.
Suggests that the current emphasis on reforming education through increasing productivity should be reassessed. The paper discusses alternative models for teaching and learning that the author believes will put productivity in education into its proper context. The report also analyzes the difficulties of implementing and sustaining reforms, and suggests ways to study school-centered attempts to improve productivity.
Johnson, Susan Moore, and Katherine C. Boles. Forthcoming. The Role of Teachers in School Reform. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management ed. by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
SBM is examined through the lens of teacher professionalism. The authors expand our understanding of the integral nature of information, knowledge and skills to the involvement of teachers in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning. They call for an understanding of SBM as nested in a organization that permits two way influence between administration and teachers.
Kelley, Carolyn. 1994. Determining Curricula and Exam Content in the Advanced Placement Program. Education and Urban Society 26 (No. 2, February): 172-184.
This case study examines the development and implementation of curriculum and exam content in the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) program and its implications for the development of national content standards. Although the goals and context of the AP program differ from national standards in important ways, successes of the AP program that could be adapted for national standards include incorporating the professional community into the management structure, interpretive flexibility of exams, resources devoted to training, and ongoing evaluation and feedback into curriculum and exam content.
King, Jennifer. 1992. Meeting the Educational Needs of At-Risk Students: An Analysis of Three Existing Models. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Education Finance Association, March 18-22, New Orleans, LA. Published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 16(1), 1-19. (Also: Typescript, 1993, Department of Education, Cornell University.)
This paper addresses three major approaches to serving at-risk students: Levin's Accelerated Schools, Comer's "whole child? approach, and Slavin's Success for All model. The paper describes each approach, paying particular attention to what differentiates one from another. It then assesses the relative costs of each program employing a cost-effective analysis in an attempt to illustrate a policy-relevant approach to research.
King, Jennifer A. 1994. The Effects of the Transition Between Middle and High School on Student Performance in Mathematics and Science. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
This paper studies education productivity over time by focussing on how the transition from middle to high school affects the mathematics and science progress of students from different types of families and backgrounds. I explore the degree to which the impact of the transition is dependent upon the continuity between schools, the stability of social structures and the level of educational support in the home. Results are based on data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), a national panel study of public mathematics and science education.
King, Jennifer A. 1994. Meeting the Educational Needs of At-Risk Students: A Cost Analysis of Three Models, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 16,1: 1-19.
This article provides cost comparisons of three comprehensive models aimed at bringing at-risk students to grade level during their elementary school years: Robert Slavin's Success for All schools, Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools, and James Comer's School Development Program. Although the models share common goals, hey use different approaches that have implications for program costs. First part of the article examines the major concepts underlying each of these reform models. The second section uses a cost analysis to evaluate the three alternatives. The article concludes with a discussion of policy implications, focusing on the variation of program costs among implementation sites.
Kirst, Michael. 1992. Financing School Linked Services. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s, edited by Allan Odden. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Also published as a USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, 1991.)
The problems of children in the 1990s require an expansion of school finance to encompass children's finance. Most local school administrators know little about funding requirements and possibilities in fields like health, children's protective services, and juvenile justice. This new approach requires a drastic reorientation of what school finance should encompass. The paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding how to finance school-linked social services and discusses specific examples of where it is occurring.
Kirst, Michael W. Forthcoming. Equity for Children: Linking Education and Children's Services. Educational Policy.
Education equity needs to be reconceptualized and merged with the conditions of children, and a broader concept of children's services than schooling. However, differences in spending on children's programs and services are rarely analyzed, even though they are crucial determinants of child outcomes. National goals like readiness to learn provide a stimulus for this broader definition of children's finance and equity. This paper is designed to begin a discussion of an expanded definition of educational equity that includes out of school variables and services.
Kirst, Michael and Allan Odden. 1992. National Initiatives and State Education Policy. Stanford Law and Policy Review. 4: 99-112.
The paper focuses on the effects on education policy of a shift from state-initiated funding typical in the 1980's, to national funding. The authors argue that education policy initiatives arising from this change in funding sources will have major effects on states and localities across the United States by the mid 1990's mainly through increased linkages between school finance and education programs and strategies. Following trends for the past 90 years, the authors feel that dollars per pupil will continue to rise during the 1990's creating an increased need for planning so that these funds can be spent productively.
Levin, Henry M. Forthcoming. Little Things Mean A Lot. Educational Policy.
Levin views Clune's "The Shift from Equity to Adequacy" as a provocative contribution to the policy questions on educational adequacy. While in agreement with much of the overall concept, Levin identifies potential problems with a number of the details of the plan. He argues that we lack the knowledge base at present to operationalize high minimum outcomes. Also, we do not know enough about the relationship between resources and outcomes to determine the cost of achieving desired outcomes. Lastly, we have not decided what mix of outcomes we wish to achieve or how to achieve those outcomes in a consistent or systematic way.
Marsh, David. Forthcoming. Change in Schools: Lessons From the Literature. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
The author reviews a host of literature on change in schools, and extracts learnings useful in thinking about implementing SBM as a high-involvement, performance improvement strategy. His perspective is that SBM is a pathway to the improvement of schools, and that it is best implemented in conjunction with a new vision of the teaching and learning processes. He advocates planning backward from these new views.
Marsh, David and Ilene Straus. 1992. The Relationship of Site-Based Management, The Local Change Process and School Transformation: A Review of the Literature. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
This paper applies the educational change literature to the issue of school based management. It assesses change strategies for implementing decentralized management at the school site. The paper also discusses how the change process can be used to insure that the key resources needed for high involvement management at the school get decentralized to the school power over budget and personnel, professional development, school based information and rewards for teachers and administrators.
Marsh, David, and Jennifer Sevilla. 1991. Goals and Costs of Middle School Reform. USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, CREF.
Discusses the need for and costs of middle school reform, using as an example the concept outlined in the Carnegie Foundation report Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century. The paper also addresses issues such as creating an interdisciplinary curriculum, exploring innovative instructional strategies, personalizing the learning experience and creating an institutional structure that supports reform.
Massy, William. 1992. Measuring Performance: How Colleges and Universities Can Set Meaningful Goals and Be Accountable. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Accountability is increasingly necessary in U.S. higher education but this goal is often undermined by a narrow focus on maximizing prestige on the part of too many colleges and institutions. The author describes ways to improve institutional performance by providing clear goals and appropriate resources, decentralized to self-directed employee groups. He further describes how performance measurement can facilitate restructuring and concludes with a discussion of performance measures for teaching quality and bench marking.
Massy, William. 1992. Rising to the Challenge: Achieving Higher Expectations for Tomorrow's World. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Much criticism has been heaped upon higher education institutions in recent years for neglecting undergraduate education, pursuing research and prestige, and increasing costs well beyond inflation. The author describes how the "academic ratchet" works to produce the current problems. He then outlines how information technology can change the higher education paradigm, reorganizing professional work and arresting the ratchet. Impressive gains are being made in 4 areas: campus networking and connectivity, distance learning and virtual campus, the electronic library, and administrative technology. A fifth area, and perhaps the most exciting and important, teaching and learning technology, still remains "at the margin." The author concludes by calling for the adoption of modern management principles to the work of the academy. Specifically, he advocates the so-called "TQM" principles of 1) self-directed teams, 2) total commitment to the service task during the time it is being planned or performed, 3) systematic performance feedback during and after the service encounter, and 4) dedication to continuous improvement.
Massy, William F. 1993. Working Note on Doctoral Cohort Estimation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of APPAM in Washington, DC on October 29, 1993, and prepared for the Sloan Foundation.
Preliminary results from a project designed to build a simulation model to test the dynamic stability of the supply and demand functions for science and engineering doctorates. On the supply side, PhD-student intake is treated as a function of departmental teaching and research needs. Graduation and drop-out probabilities are calculated from a stochastic time-to-degree model constructed as part of this project. The demand-side model predicts new faculty hires on the basis of departmental teaching and research needs and a faculty aging model. The doctorate-granting institutional universe is divided into ten segments, with an additional three segments describing non-doctorate-granting faculty-user institutions. The project uses secondary source data supplemented by our CPRE interview results.
Massy, William F. 1994. "Building a More Entrepreneurial University." Paper presented at the University Operation and Financial Management Conference, March 25, 1994, Taiwan. Sponsored by the Ministry of Education, the Department of Higher Education, and Yuan-Ze Institute of Technology.
The authors examines the driving forces behind the increased entrepreneurialism of colleges and universities including massification, the increase of non-traditional students, and financial constraints. Argues that solution to many of the problems currently facing higher education is to build a more entrepreneurial institution without losing core academic values. He defines what it means for an institution to be entrepreneurial: responsiveness to markets and adaptive technology, and becoming more efficient and elastic. The author explores re-engineering resource allocation tracking strategic financial quantities, investing in systems, decentralizing, and assessing performance?and concludes by advocating a new social compact, a triangular space defined by the rising demand for higher education that has placed a premium on useful knowledge and vocational training, the university's own demand its intellectual autonomy be respected, and the demands that the university become more accountable in order to limit its draw on public resources.
Massy, William F. 1994. Resource Allocation Reform in Higher Education. National Association of College and University Business Officers.
The author presents a model for reforming resource allocation in response to calls for greater accountability and productivity. He advocates Value-Responsibility Budgeting (VRB), a resource allocation system which can be applied at any level in the responsibility chain, from government allocations for campuses to school allocations for academic and support service units. Using several examples, he demonstrates how VRB can improve institutional coherence and accountability to institutional leaders while maintaining the sensitivity to market forces associated with responsibility-center budgeting. The author concludes by stating the importance of budget-system reform for institutions of higher education.
Massy, William F. 1994. "Balancing Values and Market Forces: Perspectives on Resource Allocation." Paper presented at the Asia-Pacific Economic Community Educational Forum, Resource Allocation in Higher Education. Chinese Taipei, April 12-15, 1994.
This paper describes the changing circumstances of higher education, how institutions and governments are responding to those changes, and the implications of their responses for the balance between intellectual values and market forces. The author examines how market forces are making the university more responsive to societal demands, more efficient, and more entrepreneurial. He cautions, however, against the limiting case where market forces completely dominate colleges and universities. Government and institutional policy makers must find ways to give voice to societal demands?institutions must commit to reform before being forced to do so by extreme market pressures.
Massy, William and Andrea Wilger. 1991. Productivity in Postsecondary Education: A New Approach. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
The purpose of this paper is to begin to develop a conceptual framework for examining productivity in higher education and to propose an explanation for why productivity, as seen by those who pay for higher education, has declined. The authors examine public criticism of higher education and the accompanying loss of public trust. The authors argue that much of the problem results from the shift of faculty effort toward research and professional service and away from undergraduate teaching - a phenomenon dubbed the academic ratchet. A detailed plan for researching the issue is proposed.
Massy, William and Carol Colbeck. 1992. Incentives in Higher Education: A Literature Review. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
There are surprisingly few studies in the higher education literature specifically concerned with the impact of incentives on faculty attitudes or performance. In this paper, the authors review the theoretical and empirical literature on incentives, faculty motivation, and faculty compensation in higher education. Their purpose is to integrate the concepts found in the literature to develop a framework for better understanding the effects of incentives on faculty attitudes and performance. The authors review existing studies by disciplinary origin and what is known about the effectiveness of academic incentives. They also investigate the definitions of academic incentives and how incentive have been categorized in the literature.
Massy, William, Andrea Wilger and Carol Colbeck. 1992. Aiming Incentives at Academic Departments. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Colleges and universities throughout the country are confronting increased pressure to change - to reconsider their priorities and the ways in which they function. This paper focuses on academic departments and one mechanism for affecting change: incentives for faculty. The authors argue that many faculty express a willingness to change?to reconsider their priorities but are discouraged from doing so by incentive systems that heavily favor research over teaching. They offer the following as a model for changing current incentive patterns: 1) make education (especially undergraduate teaching) an exciting venture; 2) reward the department as a self-directed team; 3) employ the three quality principles of Total Quality Management; and 4) develop regular and systematic performance feedback. The authors conclude by offering an example of one such system and how it might be implemented.
Massy, William, Carol Colbeck and Andrea Wilger. 1992. Changing Academic Departments. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Colleges and universities are confronting increased pressure to reconsider their priorities and the ways in which they function due to stagnant or declining budgets. At the same time, critics insist that the quality of undergraduate education has declined and must be improved. Several authors have called for significant institutional restructuring to address financial constraints and improve undergraduate education. In this paper, the authors highlight the experiences of three academic departments at a public research institution coping with the pressure to simultaneously cut costs and increase quality. The authors conclude that significant changes have occurred at the department level. Though none of the changes individually merits the label "restructuring," taken as a whole, the changes made by the departments might indeed deserve the label ?restructuring.? The authors believe that those who call for institutional restructuring might be best served by examining department-level trends.
Massy, William and Michael Hulfactor. 1992. Optimizing Allocation Strategy. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Restructuring is a high priority for colleges and universities. The authors identify four elements that are necessary for restructuring in higher education: 1) aligning academic objectives with institutional mission and vision, 2) re-engineering administrative and support services, 3) redeploying the faculty resource, and 4) reforming resource allocation systems. They go on to describe resource allocation systems including different budgeting methods, methods for distributing the primary cost of research, and methods for distributing research overhead. The authors conclude by contrasting centralized and decentralized resource allocation systems and discussing lessons from hospital resource allocation.
Massy, William and Andrea Wilger. 1992. Three Case Studies of Downsizing in Higher Education (AGB). Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
The authors examine the role of trustees at three institutions that underwent significant cutbacks. The institutions, a public research university, a small liberal arts college, and a multi-campus state system, and their specific fiscal circumstances are detailed. Using data obtained from extensive interviews with trustees and administrators, the authors then describe trustees involvement in the downsizing and assess how effective trustees were in the process. The outlook for each institution is presented.
Massy, William F., and Andrea K. Wilger. 1992. Productivity in Postsecondary Education: A New Approach. EM>Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Winter 1992, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 361-376. (Also: CPRE Working Paper, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Chronicles some of the reasons for spiraling tuition costs at postsecondary institutions in the last decade. The paper discusses how the "cost disease," growth force, administrative "lattice" (growth in administrative staffs) and academic "ratchet" (diversion of faculty from teaching to research and scholarship) prevalent in many postsecondary institutions have contributed to rising tuition costs. The author discusses how these trends have affected the productivity of postsecondary institutions and proposes remedies to enhance productivity.
Massy, William F., and Charles Goldman. 1994. "A Stochastic Model for Time to the PhD Degree." Massy, William F., and Charles Goldman. 1994. Estimating a Markov Model of Faculty Career Transitions.
Massy, William F., and Charles Goldman. 1994. The University Teaching-Research Production Function.
Results from a project designed to build a simulation model to test the dynamic stability of the supply and demand functions for science and engineering doctorates. On the supply side, PhD-student intake is treated as a function of departmental teaching and research needs. Graduation and drop-out probabilities are calculated from a stochastic time-to-degree model constructed as part of this project. The demand-side model predicts new faculty hires on the basis of departmental teaching and research needs and a faculty aging model. The doctorate-granting institutional universe is divided into ten segments, with an additional three segments describing non-doctorate-granting faculty-user institutions. The project uses secondary source data supplemented by our CPRE interview results.
Massy, William F., Andrea K. Wilger, and Carol Colbeck. 1994. Hollow Collegiality: Implications for Teaching Quality. Change, 26(4), July/August 1994. (This paper was originally presented at the AAHE Forum in January 1994 and was subsequently revised for publication in Change magazine.)
The authors examine the organizational context of undergraduate education, identifying the key features of academic departments that actively support undergraduate teaching and those that do not. They conclude that the features that distinguish departments actively supportive of undergraduate education from the more typical departments?frequent faculty interaction, tolerance of differences, workload equity, peer evaluation, and consensus decision making reveal a pattern widely recognized in higher education: collegiality. The authors examine why collegiality has waned or "hollowed" in most departments and explore the usefulness of continuous quality improvement in reestablishing authentic collegiality.
McPherson, Michael and Morton O. Schapiro. 1992. Keeping College Affordable:Government and Educational Opportunity. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
This book examines the role of federal and state governments in subsidizing higher education and keeping college affordable for Americans of all economic and social backgrounds. The authors provide new evidence to illustrate whether America's financial resources are being used as effectively as possible in higher education investments. The authors examine the impact of student aid policies of the last twenty years on such factors as enrollment, institutional effectiveness, and educational opportunity. They question whether federal student aid has encouraged enrollment and broadened educational choices of disadvantaged students; whether institutions are now more secure and educationally more effective; and whether the distribution of higher education's benefits, and sharing of its cost, is fairer. In addition, they project likely future trends of college affordability.
McPherson, Michael and Morton O. Schapiro. 1993. Merit Aid: Students, Institutions, and Society; Who Wins? Who Loses? Los Angeles, CA: Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, School of Education, University of Southern California.
This report draws on recently available data sets to examine the rapidly growing phenomenon of non-need based aid in U. S. higher education. The authors examine the distribution of such aid among students of varying characteristics as well as among institutions of various types. Implications of merit aid for the strategic decisions of universities and for society are considered.
McPherson, Michael S., Morton O. Schapiro, and Gordon C. Winston. 1993. Paying the Piper: Productivity, Incentives, and Financing in U. S. Higher Education, University of Michigan Press.
Rising tuitions and shrinking government budgets have pushed questions about productivity and resource use in U. S. higher education to the fore. In this book we examine the many successes of U. S. higher education, identify pressing problems, and analyze potential solutions. Among the questions addressed are: On what do colleges and universities spend their money and how have their spending patterns changed over time; What does "quality" mean in the context of higher education?; What are appropriate measures of productivity?; Does increasing the amount of federal financial aid encourage colleges to raise their tuitions?; What is the effect of financial aid on student choice? The book aims to demonstrate that the application of basic economic principles and a combination of both descriptive and econometric analyses can illuminate important issues in higher education.
McPherson, Michael S., and Morton O. Schapiro. 1993. The Search for Morality in Financial Aid, Academe, (November-December) pp. 23-25.
The popular conception among admissions counselors, parents, and other concerned observers of the college scene is that schools are all too willing to sacrifice ethics in their admissions-financial aid behavior. The assumption seems to be that the wonderful days of "need-blind" admissions are passing before us, replaced by some other policy that is found lacking on moral grounds. But the "good old days" were themselves never so pure, and the efforts of financial aid officers to make ethical choices in a rapidly changing competitive environment remain important. The supposed model of moral action, "need-blind" admissions, left a good deal to be desired in practice. Still, its counterparts, "gapping," ?admit-deny,? and ?need-aware second review, seem worse. If all out commitments to marketing and financial success overwhelm colleges' adherence to principle in the financial aid arena, the American people will have been given one more reason to lose their respect for higher education.
McPherson, Michael S., and Morton O. Schapiro. 1994. Governing the University in a Litigious Age, New York State Bar Journal, May/June, pp. 18-21.
Few consequential decisions are taken in universities today without at least one eye on the risk of provoking a lawsuit from an aggrieved party. The positive and negative aspects of this new reality are considered. On the positive side, this may lead institutions to use increased care in designing and following procedures and in describing their attributes. On the negative side, an avoid-lawsuits-at-all-costs mentality may interfere with the exercise of honest critical judgement, the core of many aspects of academic work. Fortunately, the courts have often shown considerable deference toward the autonomy of academic decision making, as long as schools are able to demonstrate that they have taken reasonable care, observe principles of fundamental fairness and allow parties to decisions ample opportunities to have their case heard.
McPherson, Michael and Morton O. Schapiro. Forthcoming. Buying Students: The Merit Aid Wars in U. S. Higher Education (the likely publisher is University of Michigan Press).
Relying on both newly available quantitative data and extensive knowledge of the operation of individual colleges and universities, the authors report on the increasingly important role of non-needbased aid in U. S. higher education. The authors report on what types of students benefit from merit aid and on what types of institutions are big players in the merit game. Trends in the awarding of merit aid are also considered. The book considers the strategic implications for individual schools of getting into the merit wars, the educational and financial implications for individual students, and the overall social implications of the increasing use of merit aid.
Mohrman, Susan Albers. 1992. High Involvement Management: An Overview of Practice in the Private Sector. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
This paper provides an overview of practice in the private sector in the arena of transitions from hierarchical models of organization to high involvement models that emphasize the movement of power, information, knowledge and skills, and rewards downward and throughout the organization. In the private sector, this transition is being motivated by competitive performance pressures tare requiringiring the organization to raise its performance standards without an attendant increase in resources. The transition is systemic: impact on performance depends on the extent to which the different design features of the organization are modified. Various design approaches are Described.
Mohrman, Susan Albers. 1992. Large-Scale Organizational Change Processes: The Transition to High Involvement Management. Los Angeles, CA: the Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
Summarizes the key concepts and findings from the organizational change literature in the private sector. Major emphases are on the change process as it relates to implementing decentralized Management in large organizations. Developed as a background paper for designing the change process for implementing school based management in education.
Mohrman, S. A. 1993. School-Based Management and School Reform: Comparison to Private Sector Renewal. Paper presented at the an Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) conference, October 28-30, Washington, DC. and AERA, New Orleans.
This paper describes the similarities and differences between private sector organizations and schools redesigning themselves to address the challenges they are facing in their changing environments. The assumption is that by empirically deriving the similarities and differences, it will be possible to discover what conclusions from the private sector experience may be relevant in education, and where the context of education demands unique approaches.
Mohrman, Susan Albers. Forthcoming. High Involvement Management in the Private Sector. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
The high-involvement model stems from the work of Edward E. Lawler and his colleagues, and stresses creating the capability for meaningful involvement in the organization and a stake in its performance. This chapter highlights and explains the elements of the high-involvement model, namely, power, information, knowledge, and rewards, within the private sector. Furthermore, the model's applicability to the public sector schools is considered.
Mohrman, Susan Albers. Forthcoming. Making the Transition to High Performance Management. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter addresses the change process required for creating high performance. Mohrman presents change frameworks that are useful for conceptualizing and guiding the large-scale transition to high involvement. Three frameworks are presented. One looks at the stage dynamics of such changes. A second provides a roadmap for understanding the redesign process that is entailed in the high-involvement transition. The third examines the contextual issues of change.
Mohrman, Susan Albers, Edward Lawler III, and Allan M. Mohrman Jr. 1991. Applying Employee Involvement in Schools. Educational Evaluation and Analysis, Winter 1992, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp.347-360.
Analyzes three approaches to employee involvement that have distinctively different management and organizational implications: parallel suggestion involvement; job involvement; and high involvement. The major difference between these models is the extent to which the following features are moved to the lowest level: power; knowledge; information; and rewards. As each model of employee involvement is discussed, its applicability to school settings is analyzed.
Mohrman, A. M., and S. A. Mohrman, and A. R. Odden. 1994, April. Aligning Teacher Compensation with Systemic School Reform: Skill-based Pay and Group-based Performance Awards. Submitted to Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis.
This paper addresses the teacher compensation aspect of school restructuring. It first argues that organization and compensation should be linked; the compensation structure should seek to reinforce the goals, values, management strategy and norms of the organization. The paper argues that systemic reform posits new education system directions: results oriented, deep and fundamental changes in curriculum, decentralized organization and management, and hoped for new and higher student performance. These new directions require a change from current teacher compensation systems that are more appropriate for the current, more bureaucratic education system. Drawing on strategies used successfully in non-school organizations, the paper argues that a skill-based compensation system, with a small portion of group based performance awards could be more appropriate for a systemically reformed school system. The bulk of the paper identifies how such a new teacher compensation structure can be designed?the different types of skill blocks, how tenure and board certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards could be incorporated, and ways a performance award could be designed.
Mohrman, Susan Albers, and Priscilla Wohlstetter. Forthcoming. Understanding and Managing the Change Process. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter presents an integration of the points made in two of the chapters in the form of implications for understanding and managing the change process. It advocates breaking out of the mold that School-Based Management transfers power primarily by setting up a governance council. Because SBM is part of a systemic change, many opportunities for involvement should be created. It advocates a rethinking of the appropriate role for different stakeholders in the transition, and that the transition be viewed not as the installation of a council and a new way of governing, but as the redesign of the organization for high involvement and high performance.
Monk, David H. 1991. Education Productivity Research: An Update and Assessment of its Role in Education Finance Reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Winter 1992, Vol. 14, pp.307-332. (Also: CPRE Working Paper, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Proposes an alternative method of analyzing education production functions. Also discusses the need to evaluate the role of policy issues surrounding the production of education.
Monk, David H. 1992. Microeconomics of School Production. In International Encyclopedia of Education, Economics of Education Section. (Oxford: Pergamon Press.)
There is an emerging line of research that involves the application of microeconomic principles to the study of educational production; this review provides an assessment of the progress that was made during the 1980s and early 1990s. The review is organized topically and deals explicitly with interdependence of substitutable inputs, diminishing marginal returns of inputs, the microeconomics of grouping, the microeconomics of cooperation, and the microeconomics of teacher deployment and development. The emphasis throughout the review is on efficiency and insights that are being gained into how to improve the productivity of educational systems.
Monk, David H. 1992. Resource Allocation in Schools and School Systems. In International Encyclopedia of Education, Economics of Education Section. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
An exploration of recent research dealing with equity in the allocation of educational resources at micro levels within educational systems. Explicit attention is paid to intra-district allocations of resources, the behavioral responses of recipients of grants-in-aid, the roles being played by new sources of revenue in public schooling systems (with particular emphasis on the roles being played by revenues from the private sector), and inequalities in curricular offerings within secondary schools. The review includes international as well as U. S. studies.
Monk, David H. 1993. Productivity Issues in Education Finance: The Connection Between Research and Policy. Proceedings of the 1993 National Tax Association Annual Conference.
Contemporary trends in educational finance are reviewed in this paper that was presented at Tax Association's annual conference. The author draws attention to two lines of research that deal with educational productivity: a) a deductive approach where efforts are made to estimate the properties of what economists call the education production function, and b) a more inductive approach where efforts are made to identify the features of schools that are known to be unusually effective (or unusually ineffective. The current debate over the relative merits of performance v. opportunity to learn standards is assessed in light of the current state of these two lines of research inteducational productivityity.
Monk, David H. 1993. A Reply to Mr. Hodas, Education Policy Analysis Archives. 1,12.
The author responds to a critique of the education production function formulation that was published in an earlier issue of Education Policy Analysis Archives by Steven Hodas. Emphasis is placed on the potential for information about the education production function to be useful to decision makers at many different levels of educational systems.
Monk, David H. 1994. The Costs of Systemic Reform: A Summary Report, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April 4-8, 1994.
Comprehensive performance assessment is an important part of systemic reform initiatives, and the implications for the costs of education are considered in this article. Conceptual issues as well as preliminary empirical estimates are provided. The cost estimates are based on the model of performance assessment that is being developed by the New Standards Project. Costs for three prototypical states (large, mid-size, and small) are projected. This paper provides a summary for the more detailed report on the costs of systemic reform that the author completed in 1993.
Monk, David H. 1994. Instructional Alignments in Secondary Schools: Results from a Production Function Research Program and Implications for Policy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 4-8, New Orleans, LA.
An overview of an on-going research at Cornell University into three types of instructional alignment is reported in this paper. The first type of alignment concerns the impact on pupil performance of alignments between teachers' content areas of preparation and their actual teaching assignments. Second, the focus shifts to the analysis of the alignment between teachers with different types and levels of content preparation and different types of students and subject assignments. These analyses concern the degree to which certain types of students are more or less likely to have contact with well prepared teachers. The third type of alignment deals with the effects of institutional transitions on pupil performance. The specific focus is on the effects of the transition from middle to high school on pupil performance in mathematics and science. The evidence suggests that these three types of alignment are related to pupil performance. The paper includes discussion of implications for public policy.
Monk, David H. 1994. Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement, Economics of Education Review 13,2, 1-21.
Data drawn from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth are the basis of this inquiry into the effects of mathematics and science subject matter preparation of secondary school teachers on pupil performance gains in these subjects. Results suggest that measures of how much a student's teacher knows about what he or she is teaching has a positive effect on pupils' learning gains. The evidence also suggests that the effects of subject matter preparation diminish with time and vary across types of students. Explicit attention is paid to policy implications for teacher education, recruitment, and retention.
Monk, David H. Forthcoming. Policy Challenges Surrounding the Shift Toward Outcome-Oriented School Finance Equity Standards, Educational Policy.
This article examines the implications of progress toward understanding more about the transformation of resources into educational outcomes for thinking about equity standards in educational finance. A distinction is drawn between two types of progress that is being made: (1) gains in understanding the ingredients of effective schooling; and (2) gains in reaching consensus about the purpose of schooling and the ability to measure educational outcomes along multiple dimensions. The article draws attention to the potential for these developments to point in contradictory directions for thinking about equity standards and proposes steps that can be taken to resolve the difficulties. The proposed next steps involve generating a new class of performance indicators that combine elements of opportunity to learn and performance standards and the conduct of collaborative studies wherein the focus is on the discovery of site-specific solutions.
Monk, D. H. In press. Conceptualizing the Costs of Large-scale Pupil Performance Assessment. In R. Mitchell (Ed.), Implementing Performance Assessment: Promises, Problems, Challenges. Washington, DC: Pelavin Associates.
This paper provides an overview of conceptual issues that need to be resolved before a cost analysis of performance assessment reforms can take place. Explicit attention is paid to the distinction between costs and expenditures, the identification of foregone benefits, the treatment of ambiguous costs, differences that can exist in the imposition of costs, the choice of the unit of analysis, and the implications associated with widely observed economic phenomena such as diminishing marginal rates of productivity. Implications for policymakers are stressed throughout the paper.
Monk, David H. 1994. In press. Incorporating Outcome Equity Standards into Extant Systems of Educational Finance. In New Conceptions of Equity in Educational Finance edited by Robert Berne and Lawrence Picus. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
This article provides an overview of how different states have attempted to move their education aid formulae from an emphasis on input and toward an emphasis on outcome-oriented equity entitlements. The author reaches the conclusion that existing efforts are not well conceptualized and have developed in an ad hoc fashion. The article provides a conceptual framework that identifies key dimensions along which outcome-oriented entitlements can vary: a) the degree of specificity, b) the level of enforcement, and c) the locus of intervention. The article concludes with an assessment of implications for policy and stresses the merit of recognizing a broad class of indicators that incorporate elements of both inputs and educational outcomes.
Monk, David H. In press. Policy Challenges Surrounding the Shift Toward Outcome-Oriented School Finance Equity Standards, Educational Policy.
The implications of progress toward understanding more about the transformation of resources into educational outcomes for thinking about equity standards in educational finance are examined in this article. A distinction is drawn between two types of progress that is being made: (1) gains in understanding the ingredients of effective schooling; and (2) gains in reaching consensus about the purpose of schooling and the ability to measure educational outcomes along multiple dimensions. The article draws attention to the potential for these developments to point in contradictory directions for thinking about equity standards and proposes steps that can be taken to resolve the difficulties. The proposed next steps involve generating a new class of performance indicators that combine elements of opportunity to learn and performance standards and the conduct of collaborative studies wherein the focus is on the discovery of site-specific solutions.
Monk, David H. In press. Resource Allocation in Schools and School Systems.? Paper prepared for the Educational Administration Section of the International Encyclopedia of Education, Oxford: Pergamon Press.
This case study design is aimed at tracing resource flows within schools and school districts. The purpose of the cases studies is to complement resource allocation data collected at a more aggregated level. Because the term "resource" is construed broadly to include all types of potentially productive inputs in educational contexts, criteria for deciding what to examine within the case studies are provided. The design also addresses the multiple dimensions of resource allocation processes within educational settings: (1) the origins of the resources; (2) the disposition of the resources: and (3) the utilization of the resources. The appendices include an annotated listing of sought data items, district level and school level interview protocols, a teacher survey, and a list of district level documents that will be sought.
Monk, David H. In press. Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement. Economics of Education Review.
Data drawn from the Longitudinal Survey of American Youth are the basis of this inquiry into the effects of mathematics and science subject matter preparation of secondary school teachers on pupil performance gains in these subjects. Results suggest that measures of how much a student's teacher knows about what he or she is teaching has a positive effect on pupils' learning gains. The evidence also suggests that the effects of subject matter preparation diminish with time and vary across types of students. Explicit attention is paid to policy implications for teacher education, recruitment, and retention.
Monk, David H. and Emil J. Haller 1993. Predictors of High School Academic Course Offerings: The Role of School Size.American Educational Research Journal, 30, 1 (Spring): 3-21.
Relationships between high school structural characteristics and curricular offerings are examined in this study using survey data from High School and Beyond. Emphasis is placed on the role played by high school size. The study's central thesis is that the effects of school size on the curriculum will vary depending on subject area, the character of the course being offered (e.g., advanced v. remedial), and the setting in which the school is located. The influence of other structural features are also examined. Findings are consistent with the basic proposition that the effects of size are differentiated within high schools. The findings have implications for assessments of equality of educational opportunity as well as for the renewed debate over optimal high school size.
This study builds on previous inquiries into the effects of secondary teachers' subject matter preparation on pupil performance gains. Previous research has focused on the effects of students' immediate or proximate teacher. Here the focus is on the collective effects of previous teachers as well as the faculty within the school as a whole. Findings suggest that teachers in mathematics has bearing on pupil performance. Specifically, the mean level of preparation for the set of previous teachers has a positive effect, while measures of variability in subject matter preparation across the previous teachers have negative effects. The study also considers other predictors of pupil performance and examines the effects of school structural features on the distribution of teachers across teaching assignments.
Monk, David H. and Jennifer A. King. 1993. Cost Analysis as a Tool for Education Reform. In The Reform of Education. edited by S. L. Jacobson and R. Berne, 131-152. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
This paper begins with a comparison of contemporary applications of cost analysis within education and those in related areas of public policy. We use the results of these comparisons to generate a series of trial explanations for the differences across the fields that exist. We next draw on these propositions to help interpret several recent attempts to apply cost analysis to the evaluation of contemporary reforms in education: (1) the reform of education for at-risk students (King, 1993), and (2) the reform of pupil assessment practices (Monk, 1993). We reach the general conclusion that while isolated numerical estimates of costs are of interest and can be generated by cost analyses, these are perhaps the least valuable and most problematic of the contributions cost analysis can make to ongoing reform efforts. In particular, we develop the thesis that a good cost analysis can provide the reformer with insight into the origins and implications of costs that need to be dealt with if the reform is to enjoy success in the field. We contend that this more conceptually oriented type of cost analysis is promising and ought to be pursued more seriously as part of the growing interest in the fiscal dimensions of reform.
Monk, David H., and Jennifer A. King 1994. The Distribution of Mathematics and Science Teachers Across and Within Secondary Schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
This paper examines how teaching resources are distributed across and within schools with regard to levels of teacher preparation. Two attributes of teacher preparation are of particular interest. First, we study the distribution of the mean level of subject-specific content preparation at both the school and student levels of analysis. Second, we are interested in the degree to which a teacher's assignments are aligned with teacher preparation. Analyses are based on data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), a panel survey of public school mathematics and science education.
Monk, David H., and Jennifer King. 1994. Multi-Level Teacher Resource Effects on Pupil Performance in Secondary Mathematics and Science: The Role of Teacher Subject Matter Preparation. In Contemporary Policy Issues: Choices and Consequences in Education edited by Ronald G. Ehrenberg. Ithaca, New York: ILR Press.
Data drawn from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth were used to explore the school level effects of secondary mathematics and science teachers' subject matter preparation on the performance gains of their pupils. The focus of the study is on disentangling the effects of an individual teacher's content preparation from the effects of the content preparation of a student's set of previous teachers. An effort was also made to estimate the collective effect of content preparation embodied in a school's faculty considered collectively. Results suggest that the effects of students' past teachers' preparation levels accumulate over time. In contrast, school level effects of teachers with whom a student did not have direct contact were minimal.
Monk, David H., and Brian O. Brent. In press. Financing Teacher Education and Professional Development. In Handbook of Research on Teacher Education edited by John Sikula. New York: MacMillan.
The reform of teacher education and professional development is an important element of most modern reform efforts, and yet little known about the fiscal and cost implications. In this review of the literature bearing on the topic, the authors explore both equity and productivity issues. They pay explicit attention to equity in the allocation of resources for teacher education across as well as within institutions of higher education. They also report what is currently known about the commitment of resources to teacher education from a variety of sources, including the Federal government. The article closes with an assessment of current research dealing with the impact of teacher education on the subsequent learning gains of pupils.
Monk, David H., and James A. Kadamus. In press. The Reform of School District Organizational Structure: New York's Experimental Use of a Collaborative Study Process. In Organizational Influences on Educational Productivity edited by William J. Fowler, Benjamin Levin, and Herbert Walberg. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
This paper explores connections between a complex and controversial area of educational research and the development and implementation of related educational policy. The focus is on research and policy pertaining to school district organizational structure. The authors advocate infusing elements of collaborative study into reform efforts when the underlying research base is as internally divided as they show is the case for district organizational structure. They report a contemporary effort of this sort in New York State. The early results of the New York experiment are encouraging but final conclusions are premature.
Monk, David H. and Christopher Roellke 1994. The Origin, Disposition and Utilization of Resources Within New York State Public School Systems. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Education Finance Association, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
In this paper, the authors establish the importance of supplementing macro-level analyses with more micro-level examinations of how resources are allocated within schooling systems. The authors recognize three broad dimensions along which resource allocation phenomena can be characterized. Specifically, they distinguish among the origination, disposition, and utilization of resources. This discussion leads to a report on the New York State empirical analyses. The authors begin at a comparatively macro-level and work toward more micro phenomena. In addition to tracking resource flows by object (salaries, benefits, etc.) and function (instruction, administration, transportation), the authors analyze how staffing patterns vary across school districts. District level comparisons are made which are based on: expenditures per pupil, district size, district wealth, percentage of students in poverty, and percentage of minority pupils.
Monk, David H. and Christopher Roellke. In press. Emerging Indicators for Modern Entitlement Based School Finance Systems. In Kenneth Wong (ed.) Advances in Educational Policy Vol. 1. JAI Press.
This chapter examines the potential for measures of educational outcomes to serve as the basis of state aid systems for education. The authors report on past difficulties associated with efforts to link measures of performance with funding, and consider the prospects of the emerging new generation of more sophisticated performance based measures of pupil capabilities. They also examine the prospects offered by indicators that measure the production of educational opportunities for students, and conclude that in the short run these measures offer the most promise. The authors also argue that regardless of the indicators that are used, accountability systems in education need to be flexible and based on mutual respect for the sometimes competing local and State interests. The authors provide an example of such an approach which places considerable emphasis on open inquiry and discussion between the State and its constituent units. The chapter concludes with a description of an on-going attempt to implement this approach in New York State.
Murnane, Richard J. Forthcoming.
The third part of William Clune's proposed strategy for reforming the role of the states in supporting elementary and secondary education is the development of performance-oriented policies that focus resources on improving student achievement. This paper discusses questions central to the design of such policies. The questions concern four areas: curricular goals, assessment strategies, professional development for teachers, and treatment of learning disabled students.
Nakib, Yasser, and Lawrence O. Picus. 1994. Allocation and Use of K-12 Education Funds: A Summary of "What Dollars Buy"' in Florida. Presented to the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association, March 17-19, Nashville, TN.
This paper summarizes the findings of the Finance Center's analysis of resource allocation patterns at the district and school level in Florida in 1991-92. It shows that instruction accounts for an average of 64.5 percent of total expenditures in Florida, and that over 93 percent of total expenditures in Florida schools are made at the school site level.
Odden, Allan. 1991. "California School Finance for the 1990s." In John Kirlin and Donald Winkler, Ed. California Policy Choices, Sacramento, CA: University of Southern California, School of Public Administration.
Provides an overview of funding for California's public schools from 1971 to 1991. Compares California to several other states on key finance variables. Discusses California's program and finance policies with respect to school-based management, new forms of teacher compensation, public school choice, and systemic reform.
Odden, Allan and Lori Kim. 1991. Finance Reform Topples Old Structures, Resurges in New Directions. The School Administrator,
8(48), 8-12.
Discusses the changing contours of school finance through the 1970s and 1980s and outlines school issues for the 1990s. Some of the key issues discussed include: linkages between basic school finance structure and state/national education goals; site-based management and budgeting; accountability systems; school choice; teacher compensation; programs complementary to education
Odden, Allan. 1994. The Shift Toward Outcomes: The Evolution of Education Policy in Minnesota. New Brunswick, NJ: Consortium for Policy Research in Education. Appendix to Ten Years of State Education Reform, 1983-1993: Overview with Four Case Studies.
This paper discusses the changes in education policy and school finance over the past decade. The major theme is that Minnesota had a relatively high performing education system in the 1990s, and rather than enacting reforms that intensified traditional practice, struck out in new directions that included several public school choice initiatives, and culminated in the 1990s with draft requirements to require certain levels of student performance for graduation rather than just taking a set of specified courses.
Odden, Allan. 1992. Towards the 21st Century: School Finance. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s edited by Allan Odden, 322-343. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter argues that several initiatives?school based implementation, site based management and budgeting, public school choice, charter schools and school designs from the New American Schools Development Corporation portend a possible shift to directly financing schools rather than districts over the current decade.
Odden, Allan. 1992. Discovering Educational Productivity: An Organizational Approach. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
14(4), 303-306.
Provides an overview to several CPRE articles on productivity in K-12 public education. The articles conclude that the most promising route to enhanced productivity or at least higher organizational outcomes is through organizational changes that include decentralized management to the school site.
Odden, Allan. 1993. Alternative Concepts of Equity in School Finance: Possibilities for Missouri. Prepared for the Missouri Legislative Task Force on Education Finance.
Outlines the various definitions of equity in school finance. Generally uses the equity framework developed by Robert Berne and Leanna Stiefel but suggests that over the 1990s there should be a shift towards assessing equity in terms of student outcomes and curriculum and instruction resources provided in schools. Odden, Allan. 1993. Analysis of Simulations for February 11, 1993 Meeting. Prepared for the Missouri Legislative Task Force on Education Finance.
Assesses the costs and equity impacts of simulated alternatives for structuring the Missouri education finance structure. Also comments on political feasibility.
Odden, Allan. 1993. Decentralized Management and School Finance. Theory Into Practice, forthcoming.
The paper first makes the point that while education revenues per pupil, after adjusting for inflation, have increased substantially in the past three decades, student achievement has remained flat, thus raising a productivity issues for education. Drawing upon private sector research, it suggests moving to a decentralized form of management called high involvement, and identifies the implications for changes in school finance structures.
Odden, Allan. 1993. Minnesota School Finance: Traditional Retrofit or Future Pacesetter? Prepared for the Minnesota Department of Education.
Provides a two decade assessment of the Minnesota education finance structure. Argues that while Minnesota school finance was a pacesetter in implementing changes in the 1970s, today it is quite traditional and at odds with the new directions in education programs enacted in the state recommends several changes for redesigning the finance system to connect it to the school and outcome-orientation of Minnesota's program initiatives.
Odden, Allan. 1993. The Equity of the Missouri School Finance Structure. Prepared for the Missouri Legislative Task Force on Education Finance.
Empirically assesses the degree of equity in the Missouri education finance system under the different definitions of equity?uses different objects, different principles and different statistics. Concludes that the system needs to be improved along several dimensions.
Odden, Allan. 1993. School Finance Reform In Kentucky, New Jersey and Texas. Journal of Education Finance, 18(4).
Discusses the nature and characteristics of the school finance reforms enacted in Kentucky, New Jersey and Texas in the wake of court decisions finding their old systems unconstitutional. Concludes that while making substantial change, the new structures represent improvements in traditional approaches to finance but fail to strike out in new directions, even though specifically encouraged to do so in Kentucky. Discusses several new directions that could have been taken.
Odden, Allan. 1993. The Local Response to School Finance Reform: Findings from Kentucky, New Jersey and Texas. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research In Education.
Summarizes three CPRE state case studies of how local districts used new school finance reform dollars. Finds that low wealth districts tended to use them for many inputs and "pent up" needs new buildings, refurbishing old buildings and adding science laboratories, purchasing a wide variety of instructional materials, adding preschool programs, and expanding social services for at-risk students. Concludes that improving student learning tended not to be a key driver of the use of new money and makes suggestions for how better learning could be more influential in the future.
Odden, Allan. 1993. Redesigning School Finance in an Era of National Goals and Systemic Reform. Paper prepared for the National Alliance of Business and Education Commission of the States.
Makes the case that education suffers from a productivity problem?continually rising real revenues per pupil with flat student performance. Suggests that a high involvement approach to management decentralizing power over budget and personnel, enhancing professional development, creating a site-based information system, and restructuring teacher and administrator rewards and compensation?is a fruitful route to enhancing the outcomes of educational organizations. Identifies the finance structure changes such an approach would take, including new roles for the federal government in education financing.
Odden, Allan. 1992. Broadening Impact Aid's View of School Finance Equalization. Journal of Education Finance, 18(1), 63-88.
In light of major changes in school finance equalization formulas that have occurred across the states, this paper analyzes the conditions attached to the Federal Impact Aid law, focusing specifically on the following tests the Department of Education should use: equalization definitions, statistical tests and standards. The paper defines these terms and makes suggestions for their best implementation in light of variable objects and objectives.
Odden, Allan (Ed.). 1992. Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This book addresses emerging issues in school finance including alternative teacher compensation systems, incentives, school-based management, choice, interstate disparities, financing school-linked social services, and school-based finance systems.
Odden, Allan. 1992. School Finance in the 1990s. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s, edited by Allan Odden. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Also Phi Delta Kappan 73, (No. 6, February): 455-461).
Discusses the changing contours of school finance through the 1970s and 1980s and outlines school Issues for the 1990s. Some of the key issues discussed include: linkages between basic school finance structure and state/national education goals; site-based management and budgeting; accountability systems; school choice; teacher compensation; programs complementary to education.
Odden, A. July, 1993. Testimony for the Subcommittee on Education, Arts and Humanities Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.
This paper discusses the nature of school finance change in an era of national education goals and systemic education reform policy. It suggests that the major implications for school finance reform are at the state and local level. However, given national education goals, it also suggests there are rationales for federal involvement in school finance, particularly focusing on fiscal disparities across the states, and incentive programs to encourage states to make more progress in reducing intra-state fiscal disparities. It also suggests that the most vigorous federal role could be on structuring and funding programs to meet National Education Goal #1 of having all students come to school ready to learn; such programs would include pre and post-natal health programs for low income youngsters, an early childhood education program including full funding of the Head Start Program, and advances in allowing schools to provide coordinated social services at single locations on or near schools. It also reinforces a federal role in helping states and the educational professional community develop content standards, performance standards, and opportunity to learn standards.
Odden, A. October 5, 1993. Thoughts for Retooling Wisconsin School Finance. Paper prepared and distributed to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards at their annual meeting in Madison, WI.
This paper provides an overview of the structure of the Wisconsin school finance system. By providing access to a tax base at the 93rd percentile up to a relatively high level of spending, the paper concludes that the base school finance formula is quite adequate. It makes two types of suggestions for improving the Wisconsin program. In the short term, it suggests adding a state program to support the education of all low income children to high levels, suggesting an extra $12,000 for each low income child. For the long term, in order to link the finance structure to a program structure, such as systemic reform, designed to produce higher performing schools, it suggests the following: focus the finance structure on the school as the unit to be financed, devolve budget and personnel authority to the school, include a school-based fiscal accounting structure, set aside 2-4 percent of revenues for ongoing professional development, and restructure teacher compensation towards a knowledge and skills based pay system.
Odden, Allan. 1994. Including School Finance in Systemic Reform Strategies: A Commentary. CPRE Finance Brief. New Brunswick: Rutgers University, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
This issue of CPRE Finance Briefs takes a look at the school finance issue and proposes that education funding be tied more closely to systemic reform initiatives. It first describes past trends in school finance and current challenges to traditional education funding sources. Policy implications of these changes are presented, followed by a discussion of possible components of a finance system based on systemic reform.
Odden, A. 1994, April. Costs of Measuring and Providing Opportunity to Learn: Preliminary Thoughts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.
This paper addresses the issues of defining, measuring and implementing opportunity to learn, with a focus on the costs of both gathering measures of and implementing opportunity to learn standards. The first section provides an historical framework within which opportunity to learn standards can be better understood as an historical phenomenon, defines opportunity to learn from work that has already been conducted, and identifies several variables that could used to represent opportunity to learn. Two principles guided the selection of variables: parsimony and a research connection to student achievement. Three categories of variables are suggested: fiscal, educational processes, and teacher quality. For each category, several specific measures are then also suggested. Section two discusses the costs of obtaining the proposed measures. The last section makes some preliminary comments on the costs of implementing opportunity to learn.
Odden, Allan, and Sharon Conley. 1991. Restructuring Teacher Compensation Systems to Foster Collegiality and Help Accomplish National Education Goals. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s,
edited by Allan Odden, 41-96. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (Also: USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.)
Reviews research on private sector and school attempts to align compensation systems with organizational goals. Discusses whether and how teacher collegiality and expertise can be enhanced in order to help meet national education goals. Discusses shifting the basis of teacher compensation from education and experience to knowledge and sills. Topics addressed also include teacher recruitment, beginning pay, fringe benefits and pensions.
Odden, Allan and Lori Kim. 1992. National Goals and Interstate Disparities: A New Federal Role in School Finance. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s, edited by Allan Odden, 260-297. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Also: USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.)
Examines whether the existence of national education goals implies a new federal role in school finance. The paper assesses the general implications of nationwide education goals in a country that currently has 50 different education systems. It also addresses possible effects on: fiscal capacity and effort, education spending, and measures of educational outcomes. Disparities across the states and the ramifications in providing general education aid are also discussed.
Odden, Allan and Nancy Kotowski. 1991. A New School Finance for Public School Choice. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s, edited by Allan Odden,225-259. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Also: USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.)
Addresses financial issues involved in public school choice such as how to effect revenue transfers for students moving between school districts. The paper outlines differences between current and past choice plans and describes current state approaches to choice, including finance mechanisms.
Odden, Allan, and William Massy (with assistance from Steve Barro, Arthur Hauptman, David Monk, Lawrence Picus, and Morton Schapiro). 1992. Education Funding for Schools and Universities: Improving Productivity and Equity. Summary of CPRE Finance Center Research. University of Southern California, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Los Angeles, CA.
Drawing on CPRE Finance Center research, the report discusses education productivity and equity at both K-12 and postsecondary education levels, and suggests strategies to improve both. The first section of the paper discusses education funding and funding increases during the past four decades. The second section describes how education dollars are spent, identifies the reasons for increases in the cost of education, and makes some observations about productivity. Section three suggests ways to improve educational outcomes and productivity. The paper concludes with a discussion of equity issues at the K-12 and postsecondary levels.
Odden, A., and E. Odden. 1994, April. Applying the High Involvement Framework to Local Management of Schools in Victoria, Australia.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.
This paper presents the results from using the high involvement framework to assess school based management in Victoria, Australia. Section one provides general background on the Victorian state school system, and its history of decentralized management and curriculum change. Section two describes the high involvement framework in more detail, and suggests how it can be applied to education. Section three describes the study's methodology, including sample and data collected. The fourth section presents the findings, and section five discusses the findings and their implications for education both in Victoria, Australia and the United States. The findings suggest that the Victorian schools researched had many of the key elements included in the high involvement framework, and had changed the curriculum program to one focused on creating thinking and problem solving expertise in the content areas. The sample would be rated high on change in management and organization and high on curriculum change as well. The findings, thus, support the tenets of the high involvement framework, i.e., if power, knowledge, information and rewards are decentralized, change can be produced.
Odden, Allan with the assistance of Eleanor Odden. 1994. In Press. Education Leadership for America's Schools. New York: McGraw Hill.
This 13 chapter book represents a new approach to a textbook for an introductory course in educational administration, leadership or policy. It begins with the need for educational reform and posits the national goals of teaching all students to high standards as the driving objective for schools in the 1990s. It then reviews the social and educational conditions of children, summarizes new understandings of how students learn advanced cognitive expertise in the content areas, and identifies the curriculum, assessment and teaching implications. It also includes chapters on school restructuring and new types of education leadership. It then ends with chapters on the large scale educational change process, new local, state and federal policies, and finance and legal implications.
Odden, Allan and Priscilla Wohlstetter. 1992. The Role of Agenda Setting in the Politics of School Finance: 1970-1990. Educational Policy. 6(4), 355-376.
Using Cobb and Elder's theory of agenda setting in the public policy arena, this article assesses the politics and impacts of school finance during the 1970s and 1980s, an intense period of education policy reform. Cobb and Elder identify four "triggering mechanisms" that catapult issues to the formal policy agenda: unanticipated events, technological changes, ecological changes and biases in the distribution of resources. The article describes the historical impact of the various triggering mechanisms and policy initiators on education finance policy and assesses their effects. The array of policy initiators has continually expanded during the past 20 years, from educators to governors, legislators, the courts and the business community. As a result, their is a wide range of new school finance policies, whose complexity is partially caused by the various triggering mechanisms and motivations of the policy initiators.
Ogawa, Rodney, and Paula White. 1992. School-Based Management in Public Schools. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California..
This paper uses the high involvement framework for decentralizing management to assess the degree to which typical education school based management programs (SBM) decentralize the following four resources: power over budget and personnel, knowledge, information and rewards. The paper finds that most education SBM attempts focus mainly on decentralizing power, with little focus on decentralizing knowledge, information or rewards.
Ogawa, Rodney, and Paula A. White. Forthcoming. School-Based Management: An Overview. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter presents an overview of SBM research to date, and comments on the areas where SBM has failed to be implemented in a manner consistent with a full-blown high involvement model. SBM implementations have assumed many forms, but attention has been concentrated largely on power, without a balanced focus on knowledge and skills, information, and rewards.
Orfield, Gary. Forthcoming. Asking the Right Question. Educational Policy.
The decade of the 1980s were period of intense educational reform, with emphasis on equalized funding, higher standards, and testing. Inadequate results from these reforms have prompted educators to reach deeper into the mechanisms that produce educational inequality, focusing on the goals of "program equity" and "program adequacy." However, this strategy contains the misconception that educational equality may be achieved solely by focusing on what goes on within schools. Output goals for schools must be tied to explicit programs and standards to create a level playing field by raising up the schools serving the poor and knocking down barriers that stratify educational opportunity by race and class.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1991. Cadillacs or Chevrolets: The Effect of State Control on School Finance In California. Paper presented at the American Education Finance Association annual meeting, March 13-16, Williamsburg, VA.
Chronicles some of the causes for the decline in real spending per student in California and analyzes the effect of these declines on the California school finance system. The paper contains legal and fiscal case studies and describes regulations that have affected revenues available to the California School system.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1991. Incentive Funding Programs and School District Response: California and Senate Bill 813. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 13 (No. 3 Fall): 269-288.
In 1983, the California legislature enacted a series of incentive programs intended, in part, to encourage local school districts to devote more resources toward instructional expenditures. Analysis of district response to those incentives shows they were more effective in directing spending toward direct instruction than were general or categorical grants. However, it appears that as the incentive funds were rolled into general aid revenues, district spending patterns began to revert to the same distribution of expenditures observed prior to enactment of the incentives.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1991. Using Incentives to Stimulate Improved School Performance: An Assessment of Alternative Approaches. In Rethinking School Finance: An Agenda for the 1990s, edited by Allan Odden. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (Also: USC Center for Research on Education Finance (CREF) Policy Brief. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.)
Explores current attempts at improving the efficiency of school funding which focus on using incentives rather than mandates and sanctions to meet reform goals. It examines two basic types of incentives: intergovernmental grants and state financed incentives. The paper also discusses trends in shifting decision-making from the state to the local level.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1992. An Update on California School Finance 1992-93: What does the Future Hold? Journal of Education Finance,
18 (Fall 1992), 142-162.
The paper seeks to put into context the current state of school finance in California by laying out the following issues in four sections: a discussion of current fiscal issues in California school finance; a perspective on the future of educational finance in California; a section intertwining issues discussed in the first two sections; and conclusions and policy recommendations on the allocation and distribution of public resources to education in California.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1993. The Allocation and Use of Educational Resources: District Level Evidence from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Unpublished manuscript.
This paper provides the first analysis of the allocation and use of educational resources at the school district level. Relying on data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and the U.S. Census Bureau, the impact of various district characteristics on school district spending, teacher/pupil ratios and teacher salaries are estimated. The findings indicate that districts spend roughly 60 percent of their resources on instruction, and that as revenues increase, greater efforts are devoted to reducing class size than to increasing teacher salaries.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1993. The Allocation and Use of Educational Resources: School Level Evidence from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.
This paper describes school level allocations of educational resources in a nationally representative sample of over 6,000 school districts across the United States. Among the major findings of this study are that class sizes tend to be smaller in secondary and middle schools than in elementary schools, and schools in rural communities tend to have smaller classes than do their counterparts in larger cities and suburban areas. Moreover, although class size tends to diminish as expenditures per pupil increase, this trend is not as strong as was found in earlier work analyzing district level variables, indicating some school effects do exist. Finally, teacher characteristics: education and experience, did not seem to vary systematically with any of the variables analyzed in this work.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1993. California School Finance 1993-94: Schools on Shaky Ground. Proceedings of the Fiscal Issues, Policy, and Education Finance Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association, 1993. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University.
Presented originally as a paper at the 1993 AERA conference, this paper offers an analysis of California school finance for the 1993-94 fiscal year.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1993. Estimating the Costs of Increased Learning Time. Prepared for the National Commission on Time and Learning.
Prepared for the National Commission on Time and Learning, this paper estimate the cost of increasing the length of the school day and school year. It estimates that it would cost between $113.2 and 136.0 million for each hour the school day is extended, and between $869 million and $1.07 billion for each day the school year is extended.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1993. The Local Impact of School Finance Reform in Texas. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research In Education.
The school finance reforms implemented in Texas in response to the Edgewood court rulings have had a differential impact on school districts. This paper describes how four Texas districts, two wealth and two poor, have responded to the changes in the school finance system and the state?s efforts to reform educational programs. The new school finance structure has shifted funds from wealthy to poor districts. As districts strive to implement programmatic reforms, the previously wealthy districts are hamstrung by reduced funding or the need to raise more funds from local sources, while the poor districts have the funds to establish programs to meet the reform goals, but lack the institutional capacity due to years of low funding.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1994. The $300 Billion Question: How Do Public Elementary and Secondary Schools Spend Their Money? Presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association, April 4-8, New Orleans, LA.
This paper provides an overview of all the findings of the "What Dollars Buy" research conducted by the Finance Center. It summarizes the findings from the Schools and Staffing Survey at the district, school, and teacher level, as well as providing a description of findings in California, New York and Florida.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1994. The Allocation and Use of Educational Resources: District Level Findings from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Submitted to Economics of Education Review.
This article summarizes the findings of the Finance Center?s analysis of the District Level Surveys from the 1987-88 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). Its primary finding is that despite considerable differences in the level of spending per pupil across the nation, school districts spend on average 60 percent of their resources on direct instruction.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1994. A Computer Simulation for Teaching School Finance. Journal of Policy Analysis & Management. 13(2): 376-390
This article, prepared for the Curriculum and Case Notes section of the Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, describes the operation and use of a school finance simulation program developed to accompany Odden and Picus' school finance textbook, School Finance: A Policy Perspective (McGraw Hill, 1992). The article describes how the simulation works, how it is used in school finance courses taught by the author, and how similar simulation models would be useful in a public finance courses generally.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1994. A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing the Costs of Alternative Assessment. Prepared for the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.
This paper presents a conceptual framework for estimating the expenditures and economic costs of developing and implementing an alternative assessment program in both a state and its constituent school districts. The paper establishes a three dimensional matrix for the identification of costs and expenditures. The first dimension deals with the expenditure and cost components of an assessment program, the second with the kinds of costs or expenditures that would be incurred and the third with the level or locus of expenditures and costs. This framework will be used to develop estimates of the costs of assessment programs in four states during 1994 and 1995.
Picus, Lawrence O. 1994. Paying the Piper and Calling the Tune: California School Finance, 1994-95. Presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association, April 4-8, New Orleans, LA.
This paper, presented at the annual roundtable sponsored by the AERA Fiscal Issues, Policy and Education Finance Special Interest Group provides an analysis of California school finance for 1994-95. Based on testimony presented at the California Education Summit in February, 1994, it concludes that if the schools are to make the kinds of changes called for by reformers, it will be necessary to spend more for schools in California. This additional spending may well call for additional taxes. The paper presents a recommendation for changing some portions of Proposition 13 to find those revenues.
Picus, Lawrence O. Forthcoming. Achieving Program Equity: Are Markets the Answer. Educational Policy.
This article suggests that one approach for meeting Clune's goals of program adequacy is to rely more heavily on market structures in school districts. Specifically, it is proposed that barriers for teacher transfers among schools within school districts be eliminated to allow more freedom for teachers to find schools with educational missions and goals that more closely approximate their own vision of the educational process. It also suggests the teacher compensation be driven more on the basis of what teachers know and are able to do rather than on the basis of experience and training. In addition, a proposal for market based technical assistance to schools is proposed. This proposal would require schools to devote a fixed percentage of their resources to professional development and to select technical assistance from a range of offerings both public and private. Providers with offerings that did not improve student performance would be replaced and eventually go out of business. Finally, the cost estimates provided in Clune?s article on program equity are reviewed and analyzed.
Picus, Lawrence O. In press. Determinants of School District Spending Patterns. National Tax Journal: Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the National Tax Association.
This article provides a summary of the results as of November 1993 of the Finance Center of CPRE's Integrated Multi-Level Resource Use Study. It describes the data bases analyzed, and offers a description of the types of analyses undertaken and the findings from that research.
Picus, Lawrence O. and Minaz Bhimani. 1993. Estimating the Impact of District Characteristics on Pupil/Teacher Ratios. Journal of the American Statistical Association. Proceedings of the annual conference of the American Statistical Association, San Francisco, CA. August, 1993.
This paper summarizes an analysis of the teacher responses from the Schools and Staffing Survey. The research found that self-reported class size is considerably higher that the pupil/teacher ratio calculated through any of the national data sources currently available, including the district and school level SASS analyses. Moreover, this analysis found that as district expenditures increased, the difference between the self-reported class size and the estimated pupil/teacher ratio declined.
Picus, Lawrence O. and Linda Hertert. 1992. Three Strikes and You're Out: School Finance after Edgewood III. Journal of Education Finance, Vol. 18:3, 366-389.
This paper discusses the current status of Texas school finance, delving into the reasons that state's supreme court has found the school finance system unconstitutional three times. Among the reasons cited are four constraints that have helped define the shape of school finance in Texas: limitations of the state's tax structure; constitutional provisions restricting the legislature's ability to implement traditional school finance remedies; rulings by the state's highest court on the constitutionality of the school financing system; and local politics that make any "take from the rich" scheme difficult to sell to voters in high wealth districts.
Picus, Lawrence O. and Linda Hertert. 1993. A School Finance Dilemma for Texas: Achieving Equity in a Time of Fiscal Constraint.
Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research In Education. Working Paper 33.
The results of this traditional school finance equity study show that the school finance system established by the State of Texas in response to the State Supreme Court Rulings in Edgewood v. Meno is one of the most equitable in the nation. It argues that the problem facing the state is not how to improve the general equity of the system, but rather how to fully fund the system that has been established, and in the absence of adequate funding, how to most equitably distribute the funds that are available.
Picus, Lawrence O. and Y. Nakib. 1993. The Allocation and Use of Educational Resources at the District Level in Florida. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of CPRE, Working Paper Number 38.
This paper analyzes school district level spending patterns across the state of Florida, looking at spending disparities among districts within six program areas, K-3, 4-8 and 9-12 regular education, vocational education, education programs for at risk students and programs for exceptional children. The research reported in this paper found relatively small disparities across the state?s 67 districts.
Picus, Lawrence O., and Laurence Toenjes. 1994. Texas School Finance: Assessing the Impact of Multiple Reforms. Journal of Texas Public Education. 2(1).
This analysis of school finance equity in Texas provides a detailed analysis of the changes that have taken place in the Texas school finance formula in recent years, and provides estimates of the equity of the distribution of educational revenues in each of the five years from 1988-89 to 1992-93. It shows that despite State Supreme Court rulings invalidating each option passed by the Legislature, the state has made substantial progress toward improving the equity of its school funding structure, and today has one of the most equitable distribution formulas in the nation.
Pogrow, Stanley. Forthcoming. A Skeptical Perspective on the Adequacy Conception. Educational Policy.
While this article is sympathetic to the philosophic goal of developing a conception of adequacy, it is skeptical as to whether it is feasible in the near future for anything but the very earliest primary grade levels (K-2). The problem is that the reform ideas suggested as the basis for delivering adequate instruction are really a grab bag of untested, non-operationalized ideas. Indeed, little substantive process has been made in designing effective large-scale learning environments for educationally disadvantaged students over the past 30 years. Experience from the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) project, a successful large-scale interventions for educationally disadvantaged students, is used to indicate just how difficult it is to develop actual, effective large-scale learning environments. This experience is also used to indicate why it is unlikely that the kinds of interventions that have the potential to consistently deliver adequate education will emerge in the next decade despite the brave reform rhetoric. At the same time, a focus on adequacy is important for focusing peoples attention on the need for more powerful learning environments.
Porter, Andrew C. Forthcoming. National Equity and School Autonomy. Educational Policy.
Porter supports Clune's focus on outputs, rather than inputs and procedures. However, he feels that national and state standard setting and systemic reform would lead to more school improvement and education equity than would the one-school-at-a-time approach. The focus on outcomes leaves much room for local discretion in curriculum, regardless of the level at which the outcomes are specified. Porter proposes holding schools accountable for student achievement against national achievement standards. He agrees with Clune that schools not meeting the standards need to be given technical assistance, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding needed resources. Porter further proposes high standards?excellence?rather than minimums. He acknowledges that excellence with equity might require uniformly excellent education available to all students' at a much higher price than that for true adequacy.
Powell, Arthur. 1993. Student Incentives and Academic Standards: Independent Schools as a Coherent System. In Designing Coherent Policy, edited by Susan H. Fuhrman, 141-179. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter discusses the system of independent schools and elite colleges guided by the College Board's common student standards and examination system that existed prior to World War II. The ambitious standards were expected of all students in these schools, who were diverse in ability though not in social class. After the war, democratizing influences led to college selection based on talent, not preparation, and the system of common standards collapsed. An exception is the Advanced Placement Program, a systemic approach but only for the most able students.
Powell, Arthur. 1992. Site Autonomy and Independent Schools: Sustaining Adult Community. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
This paper discusses the degree of autonomy in the prestigious private schools in America. It identifies the degree to which such schools have authority over power, knowledge, information and rewards. One point made is that both the school head and faculty feel empowered; both see that their strategic interests are served by working well together to implement a cohesive school mission.
Richards, Craig E. and Tian Ming Scheu. 1992. The South Carolina School Incentive Reward Program: A Policy Analysis. Economics of Education Review. 11(1), 71-86.
South Carolina has been experimenting with a school incentive system since 1984. This article analyses trends in student achievement and student and teacher attendance?outcomes rewarded by the program. It also compares performance and gain score outcomes, evaluates the banding system and examines the distributional consequences of alternative incentive designs. The authors find modest improvements in student achievement and no significant improvements in attendance patterns for students or teachers. Grouping schools into SES bands to compete for incentive awards has important distributional and policy implications. Most importantly, using school gain scores and SES bands together effectively eliminates the impact of SES on the distribution of incentive rewards.
Richards, Craig E., Paula Melville, and Daniel Fishbein.1993. Cooperative Performance Incentives in Education: A Literature Review. In Reforming Education: The Emerging Systemic Approach edited by S. L. Jacobson and R. Berne, 28-42. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.
Examines the practice of providing cooperative performance incentives (CPI) to schools rather than to individuals in light of the economic and social-psychological foundations for incentives and the research literature on group incentives in business and education. The author provides an example of group incentives used in schools, and discusses policy implications for the use of CPIs in education.
Robertson, P. J., and K. L. Briggs. 1993. Managing Change Through School-based Management. Paper presented at the annual Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) conference, October 28-30, Washington, DC and AERA, New Orleans, LA.
Data from 22 case studies of schools in four North American school districts are examined to assess the process and outcomes of reform through school-based management (SBM). The analysis is guided by a theoretical model that describes the process through which SBM can lead to school improvement. This model suggests that the formal change in governance reflected in a shift to SBM must first generate improvements in the decision-making process utilized at the school. Better decision making will enable schools to implement needed strategic and operational changes, and these together will help build an effective school culture. An improved culture, along with the strategic and operational reforms implemented at the school, will lead to changes in the behavior of staff members, which is necessary for there to be improvement in various outcomes that serve as indicators of school quality. The analysis of the case studies indicates that schools in our sample most frequently exhibited positive changes in two areas, namely, decision making processes and school culture. Strategic and operational change were less likely to undergo positive change, as were individual behavior and school quality.
Rossmiller, Richard A. Forthcoming. Equity or Adequacy in School Finance. Educational Policy.
Definitions of "equal educational opportunity" have evolved over the past 200 years' from access to schooling, to equal spending per pupil, to variable spending per pupil depending upon their individual educational needs. Existing arrangements for financing public K-12 education generally employ state subventions to narrow the disparities in funding that result from heavy reliance on local property taxes as the primary source of public school revenue. Although the quest for equity in school funding has dominated legal and political actions in recent years, in this article I argue that adequacy of school funding deserves far greater attention than it has thus far received; that single-minded pursuit of equity may lead to equality of funding at a level inadequate to provide the programs and services children need if they are to complete successfully in adult life.
Slavin, Robert E. Forthcoming. Statewide Finance Reform: Ensuring Educational Adequacy for High Poverty Schools. Educational Policy.
Statewide finance reform can offer a one-time opportunity for major overhaul of instructional and non-instructional services throughout a state's schools. Any funding remedy should address two kinds of issues. First, base funding for low income schools should be improved to provide an adequate infrastructure for education. Second, investments should be made in programs and practices intended to directly assist schools in increasing student performance toward the level needed in the 21st Century. This article describes a mechanism by which states might use new monies to disseminate effective programs and practices among schools, to evaluate results, and to build capacity within the state to support and disseminate effective programs and practices.
Swain, John A. 1993. The Quest for Quality at Xerox. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Stanford Forum for Higher Education Futures, November 7-8, 1993, Pacific Grove, CA.
This paper traces the importance of customer focus on the rebirth of Xerox Corporation. The profound importance of ?customer obsession? is examined, with an emphasis on how?particularly through services?a resulting sustainable competitive advantage is created and maintained.
Wilger, Andrea. 1991. Productivity in Higher Education: A Literature Review. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
The literature on productivity in higher education is voluminous. Issues relating to postsecondary productivity have garnered attention from researchers in a variety of disciplines. The author organizes the existing literature by categorizing and analyzing the conceptual frameworks applied to the study of productivity. Section 1, Productivity: Definitions and Problems, outlines the major issues involved in the study of productivity in higher education. Section II examines economic-based studies of productivity and Section III examines non-economic-based studies of productivity.
Wilger, Andrea. 1991. Academic Departments: A Literature Review. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
The academic department is still the basic unit of colleges and universities. It is considered, among other things, the primary institutional decision-making unit, the fundamental unit of teaching and learning, the organizational embodiment of the academic discipline, and the unit that binds the faculty to the institution. The literature on academic departments, while not plentiful, does help to focus attention on several critical issues. Studies of academic departments are divided into four broad conceptual categories: the importance of academic departments, the organizational and administrative structure of academic departments, the academic department as it contributes to or affects the functioning of the institution, and problems with and alternatives to the academic department.
Wilger, Andrea K., William F. Massy, and Carol Colbeck. 1993. Departmental Features that Constrain or Enable Effective Teaching.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, November 5, 1993, Pittsburgh, PA.
This paper identifies key features of those academic departments that actively support undergraduate education as well as key features of those departments that do not. Departments that do not actively support teaching are characterized by faculty isolation, fragmented patterns of communication brought about by faculty autonomy, specialization, civility, generational splits, and personal politics. This is further exacerbated by constrained resources which cause competition among faculty for funding and creates pressures on faculty time. Departments that do not actively support undergraduate education also are characterized by inappropriate evaluation and reward systems including an overemphasis on research, differential salaries, and superficial assessment of teaching. Conversely, the authors identify characteristics of departments that support effective undergraduate education including: frequent interaction, a tolerance of differences, generational and workload equity, peer evaluation of teaching, and balanced incentives.
Wilger, Andrea K. and William F. Massy. 1993. Prospects for Restructuring: A Sample of the Faculty Climate. Policy Perspectives,
5(1), September 1993.
This article examines the faculty climate in academic departments in order to determine the likelihood for success of restructuring. In general, the authors conclude the outlook for restructuring is bleak. Faculty in most departments are fafictionalizednd isolated. Communication, particularly over teaching and learning, is poor. Faculty devote most of their time to research and publication in order to gain tenure, promotion, salary increases, and prestige. Generational and political splits further divide faculty and prevent the establishment of the dialogue necessary to bring about change. The authors conclude by offering suggestions for departmental and institutional "roround tablesto bring faculty together in order to discuss restructuring.
Wilger, Andrea K., and William F. Massy. 1994, February. Organizing Academic Departments for Effective Teaching. Draft Policy Brief prepared for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education Finance Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The authors examine the organizational context of undergraduate education, identifying conditions within academic departments that hinder faculty's ability to work together on issues of teaching and learning. These conditions include: isolation, specialization, civility, generational splits, personal politics, constrained resources, inappropriate reward and evaluation systems, differential salaries, and current methods of evaluating teaching. In addition, the authors identify departmental processes that foster faculty interaction including: dissemination of research findings, tenure and promotion decisions, and course assignments. They conclude by examining the use of continuous quality management in academic departments as a way to mitigate the conditions that hinder faculty's ability to work together.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla and Roxanne Smyer. 1992. Decentralization Strategies: A Review of the Effective Schools Literature. Los Angeles, CA: The Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Southern California.
This paper examines the research on effective schools to identify strategies for decentralizing management to individual school sites. It was found that effective schools give people at the school site control over resources in four areas?information, knowledge (staff development), power, and rewards or the compensation system. While decentralization strategies in effective schools spanned all four areas, effective schools tended to give most attention to: 1) empowering a strong central leader to guide the school; and 2) sharing information with various constituencies (parents, teachers, students) to keep them informed about student performance and school activities. Various decentralization strategies used by effective schools are discussed, with particular emphasis on how to improve the design and implementation of school-based management plans.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla and Allan Odden. 1992. Rethinking School-Based Management Policy and Research. Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Nov. 1992) p. 529-549.
Reviews existing literature on site-based management, highlighting themes and consistent patterns and discussing some of the policy and research problems. The paper discusses new directions for site-based management and identifies areas of knowledge deficiency. A policy and research strategy is proposed that would produce high levels of student achievement in thinking and problem solving.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla and Lesley Anderson. April 1992. What Can U.S. Charter Schools Learn from England's Grant-Maintained Schools? Phi Delta Kappan. (Also: CPRE Working Paper, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.)
In light of the proposed establishment of a new generation of American schools - charter schools - the authors discuss England's experience with charter schools (known in England as grant-maintained schools) over the past three years. The paper begins with an overview of the charter school concept and how charter schools work in practice. The authors provide specific lessons for policy makers and practitioners about strategies for success and about some of the challenges that face charter schools in the 1990s.
Reports a study of school-based management systems where budgetary allocations were made at the school site. The study examined programs, each at different states of implementation, in five school districts (Chicago, Dade County [Florida], Detroit, Edmonton [Canada] and Los Angeles) and four states (California, Florida, Kentucky and England). It discusses different approaches to school-based budgeting and maintaining fiscal accountability.
Wohlstetter, P. Forthcoming. School-Based Management: Promise and Process. Draft Finance Brief prepared for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education Finance Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This finance brief presents findings to practitioners and policymakers regarding the implementation of school-based management (SBM). It examines how power, information, knowledge and rewards are elements for creating a high performing school under SBM. It includes an overview of the process of change, how to manage the change process, policy implications for school districts and states, and characteristics of actively restructuring schools.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla, and Roxanne Smyer. Forthcoming. Models of High Performance Schools. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Several approaches are examined which improve school performance: Effective Schools, School Development Program, Accelerated Schools and Essential Schools. The authors investigate the extent to which the underlying organizational requirements for educational improvement that are addressed by these models are consistent with the high involvement organizational framework. They find validation in these models for high involvement as a useful organizing framework for thinking about the design issues faced by schools.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla. Forthcoming. Education by Charter. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter examines the most extreme of the decentralization approaches in schools-the charter school phenomenon. This chapter cannot help but raise the issue of school site capacity, for many levels of influence and support are removed from the context in which charter schools operate. They are empowered to make fundamental changes constrained only by the contract developed by the school and approved by the funding agency.
Wohlstetter, Priscilla, and Mohrman, Susan Albers. Forthcoming. Establishing the Conditions for High Performance. In Designing High Performance Schools: Strategies for School-Based Management
edited by S. A. Mohrman, and P. Wohlstetter, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter integrates the first six chapters of the book by using the private sector approaches as a springboard for generating a number of guidelines for enhancing the effectiveness of SBM as an integral part of organizational performance improvement. The conclusion is that SBM as an organizational change has been narrowly understood, narrowly applied and has led to involvement by too few in a constrained domain. The lack of evidence to date that SBM has led to performance improvements may reflect the partial implementation of an organizational design for involving stakeholders in improving performance.
Wohlstetter, P., and L. Anderson. 1994. What Can U. S. Charter Schools Learn from England's Grant-Maintained Schools? Phi Delta Kappan 75 (No. 6, February): 486-491.
The authors examine the early experiences of grant-maintained schools in England and consider some of the challenges that face self-governing schools in both the U.S. and England during the 1990s.
Wohlstetter, P., R. Smyer, and S. Mohrman. 1993. New Boundaries for School-based Management: The High Involvement Model. Paper presented at the annual Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) conference, October 28-30, Washington, DC and AERA, New Orleans, LA. Forthcoming in Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis.
A major challenge facing reformers who are demanding high levels of performance from the educational system is to enable schools to make changes in the way they deliver services to create high performance. This article examines the utility of school-based management (SBM) as a means for generating school improvement and applies a model of high involvement management, developed in the private sector, to determine what makes SBM work and under what conditions. Emerging from the analysis is the importance of expanding the definition of SBM to include aspects of organizational redesign beyond the traditional boundaries of shared power in order to create the capacity within schools to develop high performance.
Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, Ann Johnson and Nancy Hart. 1991. Analysis of Curriculum Database for Variables Relevant to Departmental Productivity. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, Center for Research in Education Finance, Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
An increased attention paid to the issue of cost in higher education has shifted from a focus on what students and parents are paying, to what institutions are spending. These increasing costs are caused mainly by two things: administrative growth and faculty specialization. This paper examines the latter issue, data from the Curriculum Assessment Service, a joint project conducted by the Association of American Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research on Higher Education, were used to identify a set of departments for CPRE's Productivity in Postsecondary Education Project. The departments identified serve as a framework for the project's field research.
Zigler, Edward F., and Matia Finn Stevenson. Forthcoming. Schools' Role in the Provision of Support Services for Children and Families: A Critical Aspect of Program Equity. Educational Policy.
Attempts to redefine equal educational opportunities not only in terms of spending, but also in terms of student performance, are important, but if all students are to achieve a certain level of academic achievement, we must broaden our understanding of how children learn and what influences their capacity to learn and ensure that financial resources are provided for child and family support services that begin at birth. This article reviews the research which forms the basis for this recommendation and describes the School of the 21st Century as an approach to optimize the growth and development of children and their ability to profit from academic instruction.
