Federal Education Budget Update

Posted on May 29, 2013 by coreeducation

New America’s education experts have deciphered the 2013 and 2014 budget actions, with a particular view to how they affect education. In the report, “Federal Education Budget Update: Fiscal Year 2013 Recap and Fiscal Year 2014 Early Analysis,” Jason Delisle and Clare McCann explore congressional budget actions over the past year and describe the effects on federal education programs.

Congress is operating within a new budgeting regime, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, that included across-the-board spending cuts mid-2013 and that, absent legislative action, imposes lower spending limits next year. Now is an opportune time to assess how federal education programs have been, and likely will be, affected by these developments.

This report includes:

An explanation of the Budget Control Act of 2011 and its implications for education programs
Details on key 2013 budget developments, including the “fiscal cliff” and sequestration
An examination of the president’s 2014 education budget request and a comparison between the president’s request and the House and Senate budget resolutions
A preliminary analysis of budget issues in 2014 and the years ahead, including student loan interest rate reform

As the fiscal year 2014 budget process advances, it is essential that education policymakers, advocates, researchers, and others understand the broader budget picture and how it may affect key education programs. This report provides a simple, comprehensive resource for such stakeholders.

Following is the conclusion to the report:

The fiscal year 2014 budget process is shaping up to be contentious and unpredictable. Although the process will not be interrupted by sequestration this year, further reduced spending caps set forth in the Budget Control Act of 2011 will likely influence both budget negotiations and the final outcome. The biggest issue before lawmakers with respect to the fiscal year 2014 appropriations process thus far is whether to follow the limits in place under the Budget Control Act or roll back those spending reductions, either completely or in part. That decision will likely be the first of many that significantly influence funding for education programs.

For more information, including the link to the full report, please visit:

http://education.newamerica.net/publications/policy/federal_education_budget_update_fiscal_year_2013_recap_and_fiscal_year_2014_earl

DREAM: The Free Cost-modeling Tool for School Districts

Posted on April 7, 2013 by coreeducation

In the current economic climate, with budget cuts a necessity and many states seeing their education budget battles going to state supreme courts, states and districts need help weathering the storm. DREAM hopes to help states and districts do just that with a “new way to explore school budgets.”

DREAM was created by Education Resource Strategies (ERS), “a non-profit organization dedicated to helping urban school systems organize talent, time and money to create great schools at scale.”

DREAM employs algorithms which make it easy for school leaders to consider changes to their budgets, and see what those changes would actually mean.

According to the DREAM website, “You can do less with less, or you can change your district’s cost model by rethinking how schools and systems are structured. DREAM allows you to adjust key cost levers in your district and instantly see how these changes impact your budget and other critical measures.”

“DREAM uses the most recent available (2009-10 data in most areas, 2008-09 financial data) NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) to generate a cost model for your district. This model is represented as a series of ‘sliders,’ each representing a key cost lever. By adjusting the sliders, you can drive changes in cost and other important measures of quality and efficiency such as time or class size.”

You can give it a try at the DREAM website: http://www.erstools.org/dream

How much does Standardized Testing actually cost?

Posted on December 13, 2012 by coreeducation

The Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution has recently released a report on the current cost of standardized testing in United States. The purpose of the study is to shed light on current costs so that there will be an accurate baseline upon which to compare new statistics once Common Core testing officially starts in 2014.

Currently, for 44 states and DC (report author Matthew Chingos was unable to procure information from Connecticut, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming), the cost is $1.7 billion, which seems at first glance to be a whopping total; however, this only amounts to .0025% of the overall cost of K-12 schooling. This total works out to $65 per students in grades 3-9, with DC registering the largest of $114 and New York, which charges local districts with the responsibility of paying for testing, registering the smallest at $7 per student.

Speculation abounds about whether Common Core testing will cost an even greater amount per student due to the increased need for technology to conduct the computer-based tests or whether it will cost less due to the fact that the tests will be uniform across states. Currently, states that have formed together to implement standardized testing have been able to keep costs down.

The report also seeks to shed light on how much of the money put into standardized testing is going to for-profit companies. Out of the $669 million in annual spending on No Child Left Behind tests for grades 3-8 and one more in high school, 6 companies receive the lion’s share, led by Pearson Education (39%), McGraw Hill (14%), and Data Recognition Corporation (13%). Currently, Kansas and North Carolina employ universities to do their standardized testing, and report author Chingos speculates that this could become a model for other states or that this may encourage other non-profit organizations to enter the testing market. However, he also pointed out the closed-off nature of the current testing market.

Finally, Chingos makes two recommendations:

States should continue to combine into consortia to help cut the cost of standardized testing. However, this may be difficult because federal funding encouraging this will stop in 2014, just before the Common Core tests will officially commence.
States should use their collective influence to urge testing agencies to increase their levels of transparency when it comes to the cost of funding standardized testing.

For more information, please visit these links:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/29/13testcosts.h32.html?tkn=VQMFc9VhW58jGTdZgTBlSc5gr1Dnpe4utLZj&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2012/11/29-cost-of-ed-assessment-chingos

Big City Districts Bail on TIF Grants

Posted on August 28, 2012 by coreeducation

Three large school districts, Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York, have bailed out of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants. The Teacher Incentive Fund’s competitive grant program aims at promoting performance-based compensation and PD for educators. Overall, the three districts forfeited $88 million.

The problem? A lack of teacher buy-in for the grants’ promises. Under the first round of TIF (in 2010), applicants were not required to get union sign off on applications. The second round that took place this year changed this rule—all applicants were required to get letters of support from their teachers’ unions.

“None of these [2010 grant terminations] is a surprise, and all could have been predicted at the time the projects were submitted,” said William Slotnik, founder and executive director of the Community Training and Assistance Center, who has worked with many TIF grantees over the past two years.

In Chicago, the main problem leading to TIF grant termination was a lack of trust and collaboration. Soon after Chicago won their TIF grant, there was a change of leadership in the teachers’ union, and with it a change in the level of support for the TIF promises. Chicago’s application had promised to tie teacher compensation directly to student test scores, known as the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). As a result of terminating the grant, Chicago’s school district had to return $21 million dollars, which they had already received under their $35 million grant.

New York City, on the other hand, had a good amount of collaboration after the grant was awarded, but these efforts broke down when the federal Education Department decreed that New York’s application did not put sufficient emphasis on student test scores to meet grant priorities. Once this news came, negotiations broke down with the teachers’ union and the school system had to pull out of the program. The City’s school district returned the $24 million they had received from their $46 million dollar grant.

Milwaukee also used a version of the TAP program, and also did not have the support of the teachers’ union. “We returned the [2010] grant because it required adoption of the TAP model, which was not a model fully embraced by our teachers, and which we ultimately found was not consistent with our vision of teacher-effectiveness efforts,” said Tony Tagliavia, a media manager for the Milwaukee district. The district returned the $1.2 million they had already collected of their $7.6 million award over the winter.

Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom

Posted on August 20, 2012 by coreeducation

Since the end of the recession three years ago, 300,000 educators have lost their jobs—7,000 in the last month alone, according to a new White House report. These startling numbers have led the Obama administration to sound the alarm on education spending cuts across the country.

In Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, the White House highlights some of the financial woes of many school systems: 292 took drastic measures, such as shortening the school week to 4 days, eliminating full-day kindergarten, and laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers to remain financially solvent.

This report is the first to comprehensively tally the cumulative effects of teacher layoffs on class size over the last few years. In his remarks about the report, President Obama reflected on how these changes have negatively impacted America’s competitive advantage: “At a time when the rest of the world is racing to out-educate America, these cuts force our kids into crowded classrooms, cancel programs for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and shorten the school week and the school year. That’s the opposite of what we should be doing as a country.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has noted that in re-writing NCLB, the administration supports “shirting away from class-sized based reduction that is not evidence-based,” and noted that high-performing school systems in Asia have larger class sizes.

Some are questioning whether the Administration’s rhetoric stems from campaign-consciousness, or whether education is coming into its own as an important social and political issue that the next administration will be willing to address.

To read Investing in Our Future, please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Investing_in_Our_Future_Report.pdf

Financial Analyses of Redesigned Teacher Roles

Posted on July 29, 2012 by coreeducation

Using financial analyses, Public Impact shows how redesigned teacher roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students free funds to pay those teachers up to 130 percent more, within current budgets.

Multi-classroom leadership can pay teachers up to about 130% more

Elementary subject specialization can pay teachers up to 43% more

Swapping teacher time with age-appropriate digital instruction can pay up to 41% more

Combining models may increase pay and teamwork

A new financial planning summary summarizes all

In some variations of each model, schools may pay all teachers more while providing new, varied roles and sustainably funded career paths.

Public Impact analyzed three of its 20+ school models developed under its Opportunity Culture initiative, calculating the savings and costs to demonstrate schools’ options to increase teachers’ pay, without increasing class sizes and within budget. When teachers reach more students, additional per-pupil funds become available to support those teachers’ work. This additional funding, minus new costs, can be used for higher pay and other priorities, according to the values, needs, and priorities of each school. Schools facing continued financial pressures can allocate a portion of savings to cover budget gaps. Other possible priorities include funding extended learning time and smaller group sizes, among others noted.

Though the pay increases and savings made possible for any specific school will depend on local factors, these briefs provide a starting point for districts, schools, and teachers to develop their own projections.

In the Multi-Classroom Leadership model, excellent teachers with leadership skills lead and develop teams of teachers and paraprofessionals to deliver learning that meets the leader’s standard of excellence to multiple classrooms of students. Public Impact’s calculations show that schools could increase teacher-leader pay between 67% and 134%.

In the Elementary Subject Specialization model, classroom subject specialists teach one or two core subjects in which they excel to two to four classes of students. Schools relieve them of other instructional and noninstructional duties, in part by providing paraprofessional support staff to supervise students during noninstructional time and complete administrative paperwork. Schools could increase teacher pay up to 43% using this model.

In a Time-Technology Swap-Rotation model, students rotate through age-appropriate portions of digital learning (as little as about an hour daily per student) to free the time of excellent teachers to teach more students and potentially to collaborate with peers. Schools could increase teacher pay up to 41% using this model.

Combining models to extend the reach of excellent teachers and promote excellence by all instructional staff may produce even greater savings to fund teacher pay increases and other priorities, while producing excellent student outcomes. Combinations also can increase time for planning, collaboration, and development.

To read the full report, please visit http://opportunityculture.org/reach/pay-teachers-more/

Stimulus Funds Saved Education Jobs, Encouraged Common Core

Posted on July 25, 2012 by coreeducation

Education stimulus funds largely met the goal of saving or creating jobs for K-12 teachers and other education personnel, according to a summary of three years of survey research by the Center on Education Policy at the George Washington University (CEP). However, ongoing state budget shortfalls have slowed state implementation of education reforms tied to the receipt of stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The CEP report, What Impact Did Education Stimulus Funds Have on States and Schools?, summarizes the effects of the ARRA on K-12 education after three years of implementation. Findings are drawn from surveys, conducted between December 2009 and February 2012, of state and local officials charged with implementing the ARRA and Education Jobs programs.

In 2010, about 70 percent of the nation’s school districts used State Fiscal Stabilization funding, the largest pot of ARRA education money, to save or create jobs for teachers and other school personnel, CEP found. In 2011, a vast majority of the states surveyed by CEP also reported that ARRA and Education Jobs funds had saved teaching jobs and other district and school-level positions in their state. In addition, the majority of districts receiving ARRA supplemental funds for the federal Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act programs reported using at least some of those funds to save or create jobs.

The report also finds that the stimulus funds had a side effect of laying the groundwork for a common reform agenda among the states. As a condition of receiving stimulus funds, states had to assure that they would take action on certain reform-related activities, including:

Making progress toward implementing rigorous standards and assessments;
Establishing and using statewide data systems to track students’ progress from preschool to college or careers;
Increasing teacher effectiveness; and
Providing support to turn around low-performing schools.

States participating in CEP’s surveys consistently indicated that they were taking action on these four reform areas, but by 2011 few states had fully implemented the reforms. Further, in states and districts facing budget cuts, progress on the four reforms has slowed.

“Given that nearly 84 percent of nation’s school districts reported funding cuts for the school year that just ended, parents and students may not see the full benefits of these reforms until local economic conditions improve,” said Alexandra Usher, CEP’s senior research assistant and co-author of the report. The report also finds that the state education agencies (SEAs) charged with guiding the implementation of ARRA reforms face funding and staffing challenges. Most SEAs report that they have enough expertise to carry out the ARRA reforms, but fewer report having enough staff to fully implement the reforms, and even fewer reported having enough financial resources. Further, while SEAs have not been immune to staff cuts, it appears that most have done so strategically, often cutting positions not related to the four reforms.

To read the full report, please visit http://www.cep-dc.org/displayDocument.cfm?DocumentID=407

Achieving More for Less in U.S. Education with a Value-Based Approach

Posted on July 17, 2012 by coreeducation

As school districts across the nation struggle with demands to do more with less, it is increasingly imperative that they adopt a “value-based” approach to budgeting and decision making for K-12 education, according to The Boston Consulting Group.

In this report entitled Achieving More for Less in U.S. Education with a Value-Based Approach, experts in BCG’s Education practice discuss an approach that has the potential to improve student outcomes in an environment of declining resources and higher demands for results. They describe a simple framework for increasing the effectiveness of budgeting and decision making in education systems around the world. Known as a “value-based approach,” the framework aims to maximize the impact of available funds, recognizing the tradeoffs inherent in spending decisions across the portfolio of current and proposed expenditures, while maintaining an unflinching focus on learning outcomes among students.

The value-based approach can work in one of two ways: by holding costs constant while improving outcomes or by freeing up funds that can be spent somewhere else. The essential “value test” that district leaders and policymakers can apply to any proposed initiative is this: “Would you be prepared to cut costs or end other programs to pay for it?”

The report lays out a number of key questions that decision makers should ask themselves in setting K-12 budgets and spending priorities. These questions include:

Does the potential gain from a new program compare favorably with alternative uses of the same funds?
Can spending differently in a particular area improve the cost-benefit equation-for example, increasing the class sizes of the most effective teachers while paying them more?
Are there areas of current spending that add limited value to students’ education-for example, in some areas of central administration? Would this spending deliver more value if it were reallocated to more promising programs?

Once initiatives that have unproven or limited impact begin, they are rarely assessed for effectiveness-and rarely canceled, according to BCG. They persist year after year regardless of their value, layering legacy costs on top of other legacy costs. Too few legislators or administrators have been willing to acknowledge the tension between cost and outcome, or to accept that spending in one area might deprive a more promising area of funds, the authors assert.

As examples of value-based tradeoffs, funds can be reallocated from paying teachers based on their seniority to measuring and recognizing differences in teachers’ effectiveness, from a one-size-fits-all teaching model to teaching models that incorporate smart technology and teacher specialization, and from legacy expenses in central offices to proven frontline interventions in schools.

The value-based approach is being advanced by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Through MET, decision makers are gaining an improved understanding of which teacher characteristics lead to improved student outcomes-and enabling these decision-makers to invest to develop those characteristics-instead of paying salary premiums for advanced degrees or experience.

To read the full report, please visit
https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/public_sector_cost_efficiency_asset_optimization_value_based_us_education/

Putting a Price Tag on the Common Core

Posted on June 10, 2012 by coreeducation

On May 30, the Fordham Institute released a new report evaluating the potential cost of implementing the Common Core, the first in a wave of such evaluations. This report addresses three key questions:

What are the short-term costs of moving to the Common Core? In other words, what will be the initial expenses (instructional materials, assessment tools, professional development, etc.)?
To what extent do costs vary based on the approaches that states take to implement the standards?
How much of what states currently spend on standards implementation could be repurposed for Common Core implementation?

The authors created three hypothetical approaches to implementing the Common Core in order to examine these questions. The models are only for the transitional phase of implementation, which they estimate to span 1 – 3 years prior to full implementation in 2014-15. The model approaches are:

Business as Usual: A “traditional” approach to implementation, which includes buying hard-copy textbooks, administering annual student assessments on paper, and delivering in-person PD to all teachers.
Bare Bones: The lowest-cost alternative, employing open-source materials, annual computer-administered assessments, and online PD via webinars and modules.
Balanced Implementation: A blend of approaches, some more effective than others, but also reducing costs. Uses a mix of instructional materials, both interim and summative assessments, and a hybrid system of PD (i.e., train-the-trainers).

The cost projections vary with the approaches that states use. By their calculations, the authors find that Balanced Implementation costs less than half as much as the traditional Business as Usual. For example, it would cost California $1.6B under Business as Usual, and only $380 million under Bare Bones.

Cumulative national estimates range from $12.1B for Business as Usual to $3B and $5.1B respectively for Bare Bones and Balanced Implementation models, respectively. The most significant source of cost reduction can come from shifting away from hard-copy textbooks and delivering more PD online. However, these estimates represent the total cost of implementing the Common Core, not the net new costs to states.

The authors also point out that, since states already invest billions annually in professional development, assessments, textbooks, and other expenses in connection with existing standards, proper forecasting of Common Core costs should “net out” the sums that states would spend anyway for activities that this implementation process will replace.

The report also takes time to discuss how the Common Core may also give states the chance to rethink not only how to implement the standards, but also their approaches to education delivery as a whole. Things for states to consider are how to make the most of multi-state collaborations that take advantage of the “common-ness” of the CCSS; capitalizing on and learning from the rise of innovative school delivery models; and implementing new instructional tools that help teachers teach the new standards. In all, the authors conclude that successful implementation of the Common Core does not have to be wildly expensive. Moreover, it could also support changes that have a permanent and positive impact on the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning.

To read the full report, please visit http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/putting-a-price-tag-on-the-common-core.html

The “New Normal”

Posted on April 24, 2012 by coreeducation

While the economy may be showing signs of life, local school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. The “new normal” of tougher budget times is here to stay for American K-12 education. So how can local officials cope?

This Fordham Institute released a policy brief earlier this month, authored by Executive VP of the Institute, Michael J. Petrilli, that provides a tool for navigating the financial challenges of the current school-funding climate, complete with clear dos and don’ts for anyone involved in or concerned with local education budgets. The “answers” provided in the brief are based on three key premises:

Solving the budget crisis shouldn’t come at the expense of children. Learning opportunities should be protected, and effectiveness and student achievement should continue to receive attention.
Nor can [the budget crisis] come from teachers’ sacrifice alone. Depressing teachers’ salaries for the long-term “isn’t a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education—or retaining the excellent teachers we have.”
Quick fixes aren’t a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity. The reforms and investments with the greatest payoff are those that maximize student outcomes at a lower cost. The most promising reforms are those that rethink the staffing model: “whom we hire, how we pay them, and what we do with their time.”

In the “what not to do column,” author Petrilli includes the following:

Shrink the workforce by laying off the newest teachers. Layoffs should be determined by teacher effectiveness, not seniority: when staff is let go based on seniority, student learning is lowered by 2 ½ to 3 months when compared to layoffs based on effectiveness.
Narrow the curriculum. This means students learn less, and are therefore not college-ready or internationally competitive.
Use furloughs to reduce costs. Adopting “Furlough Fridays,” shortening the school year, or trimming the school day will move the US in the opposite direction of other OECD countries. Furthermore, furloughs are a “terrible fiscal policy.” Total labor costs of a week’s worth of work are actually higher, due to the fact that salary and benefit structures remain untouched, but are squeezed into fewer working days.
Passing the buck to families. This widens the already wide gaps between haves and have-nots.

So, what should policymakers do?

First, they should aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. This should not be done through firing teachers and increasing class sizes; rather, roles of all instructional and support staff should be redefined to encourage productivity. Second, pay for productivity. People should be compensated fairly for being more productive and taking on more responsibilities. Among other measures, salary schedules should be more aggressive and salaries should be prioritized over expansive benefits packages. Finally, technology should be integrated thoughtfully into K-12 education via online or blended school models.

To read the full brief, please visit http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/how-school-districts-can-stretch-the-school-dollar.html

The "Core" of Education

Tag Archives: budget