|
Clearinghouse on Educational Policy and Management
|
| College of Education · University of Oregon |
|
Trends and Issues: School Finance
The growing demands for accountability, the shift to school-level equity analysis, and the limitations of state education data systems underscore the need "to create new, detailed, and comprehensive school-level data systems" (Busch and Odden 1997). Constructing these new databases will be a costly yet beneficial endeavor that cannot succeed unless complex issues such as relevance, accessibility, comparability, capacity, and reliability are resolved (Busch). States' Pioneering EffortsAlthough many school districts currently track financial operations at the school level, few states require uniform accounting measures, making across-district comparisons very difficult (Picus 1996). Florida, with twenty years’ experience, has a school-level data-collection system that furnishes the state with financial, student, and staff data via online, onsite computer terminals (Picus). In Hawaii, sophisticated software allows the state auditor to track classroom resources (teacher salaries, benefits, teaching materials, and computers) and compare expenditure variations between regular schools and those serving "seriously challenged" students (Cooper and others 2001). In New Jersey, state-provided software helps districts publish, for every school, annual report cards that integrate enrollment, personnel, financial, and assessment data (Cooper and others). The reports provide information on teacher-student ratios, district per-pupil expenditures, staff expenditures, and state standardized test scores. In contrast, New York City schools’ accountability systems enjoy "little compatibility and integration of financial information." Texas has a dual fiscal reporting and accountability system, the Academic Excellence Indicator, to provide information on teachers, student demographics and performance, and expenditures for each of 6,000 separate campuses. Ohio, which made school-level data collection mandatory in 1994-95, tracks expenses via individually assigned school codes. Using Bruce Cooper and colleagues’ model (1994), user-friendly Expenditure Flow Model data are aggregated to district and state levels and divided into instruction, pupil support, staff support, administration, and operations support functions; these, in turn, are divided into central-office and school-site expenditures (Picus). Both Texas and Ohio recently made use of data-collection systems to evaluate the progress of public schools statewide. In Texas, additional resources directed to needy students were found to be insufficient to raise performance levels (Clark 1999). New Ohio Institute’s spring 2000 report concluded that Ohio had failed to align available resources behind its ambitious goals for higher student achievement (Christie 2000). School Evaluation ServicesTo aid states with developing accessible and comparable school-level data, Standard & Poor’s has introduced a research-based, comprehensive analytical framework called School Evaluation Services, or SES (Cox and others 2000). This framework "assembles and clarifies an extensive amount of data, analyzes academic and financial trends, and offers an impartial view of the comparative performance of all the school districts within a state." The service can be customized to focus on one district or site, and it addresses six broad data categories: expenditures; student outcomes; return on resources; finances, taxes, and debt; learning environment; and demographics. Michigan and Pennsylvania are the first states to contract for SES services. Benefits and Limitations of School-Level DataPicus’s (1997) ongoing study of school-level data collection in four states (California, Minnesota, Florida, and Texas) explores whether such systems offer researchers and practitioners a boundless opportunity or a bottomless pit. The most significant gleaning: It is as hard to analyze data as it is to obtain them. States set up systems in response to legislative requirements, not researchers’ needs. This situation might be remedied by setting up a licensing system similar to that used by the National Center for Education Statistics (Picus 1997). Researchers’ patience and willingness to develop strong personal relationships with data-production staff are essential. One limitation of using school-level data in research is the difficulty of comparing data across states (Picus 1997). Some researchers believe equity and effectiveness would be better served if a national system of student-level resource measures could be developed (Berne 1995, Consortium 1995, Biddle 1997). Hertert (1995), addressing national equity concerns, sees the Common Core of Data (CCD), jointly developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Census Bureau, as a good first step for measuring interstate disparities. According to Tom Snyder of NCES (June 15, 2001 e-mail), the Common Core of Data "is an administrative records survey including enrollment, teacher, staff, graduate, and dropout material aggregated at the school, district, and state levels" that now incorporates the Census F33 survey of local government finances. The CCD survey, accomplished through arrangements with state education agencies, comprises a reliable source of standardized, comparable data for the nation’s public schools. In sum, school-level data systems are no magic bullet for measuring or maximizing available resources. They do have great potential to enhance understanding of the relationship between financial resources and student outcomes and to provide a richer, more indepth picture of schools’ expenditure patterns (Picus 1997). New technologies and procedures borrowed from industry will gradually transform public-school accounting systems and increase the feasibility of achieving these goals (see final section).
|
