Funding Structures and State Capacity for School Improvement under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Case Studies of Five States

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210005
Author(s):  
Hailey Karcher ◽  
David S. Knight
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Title I ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Improvement Strategies ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Every Student Succeeds Act

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal government allocates 7% of Title I funds, about $1 billion per year, for school improvement. States have substantial autonomy in allocating these funds, including which schools are identified for federal school improvement, what improvement strategies are used, and whether external intermediaries are involved. A growing area of research explores the private, often for-profit school improvement industry, but few studies track the finance and policy structures that funnel public funds to external K–12 intermediaries. In this study, we draw on document analysis and interview data to explore school improvement practices and finance policies in five case study states. We find that states use varied methods for identifying schools for improvement, and also vary in the extent to which they provide local autonomy to school districts. Some states, such as Texas and Tennessee, incentivize schools to adopt particular strategies or encourage partnering with an external intermediary. Texas provides a list of vetted external intermediaries they expect districts to work with (and support financially). Other states, such as California and New York, provide more state-led school improvement strategies through regional offices and give districts greater local autonomy. Findings point to possible benefits of local autonomy, while highlighting potential challenges associated with unregulated market-based reforms in education.

scholarly journals Capacity-Building for Sustainability

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Clark Shah-Nelson ◽  
Ellen A. Mayo ◽  
Patience Ebuwei
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Organizational Sustainability ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Systematic Review Process

An American K-12 cooperative educational services provider (“The Agency”) has an issue: partner school districts are saving money by building internal capacity for professional development, rather than fully utilizing expertise from the Agency. The aim of this evidence-based case study is to inform the Agency on capacity-building for innovation. The researchers performed three separate rapid evidence assessments, followed by a standard systematic review process to synthesize findings across 31 studies. Key findings identified from the research include (1) organizational capacity and program evaluation lead to organizational sustainability, (2) agency leadership should guide strategic organizational change in order to establish a shared vision for evaluation and feedback, and (3) organizations benefit from practicing continuous and ongoing learning through feedback loops. The findings of this study may be generalizable to other similar educational service providers or non-profits looking to strengthen organizational capacity and partnerships.

scholarly journals Can States Take Over and Turn Around School Districts? Evidence From Lawrence, Massachusetts

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth E. Schueler ◽  
Joshua S. Goodman ◽  
David J. Deming
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Group Instruction ◽  
School Students ◽  
State Takeover ◽  
Achievement Gains ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Every Student Succeeds Act

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to identify and turn around struggling schools, with federal school improvement money required to fund evidence-based policies. Most research on turnarounds has focused on individual schools, whereas studies of district-wide turnarounds have come from relatively exceptional settings and interventions. We study a district-wide turnaround of a type that may become more common under ESSA, an accountability-driven state takeover of Massachusetts’s Lawrence Public Schools (LPS). A differences-in-differences framework comparing LPS to demographically similar districts not subject to state takeover shows that the turnaround’s first 2 years produced sizable achievement gains in math and modest gains in reading. We also find no evidence that the turnaround resulted in slippage on nontest score outcomes and suggestive evidence of positive effects on grade progression among high school students. Intensive small-group instruction over vacation breaks may have led to particularly large achievement gains for participating students.

Who Receives Federal Title I Assistance? Examination of Program Funding by School Poverty Rate in New York State

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H. Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Title I ◽  
New York State ◽  
Poverty Rate ◽  
Distributional Pattern ◽  
York State ◽  
Elementary And Secondary Education ◽  
School Poverty

The distributional pattern of federal funding allocated through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title I program was examined for all public schools in New York State. Although Title I is a major vehicle for serving the needs of poor children and redressing educational inequity, the present findings suggest that poorer school districts may be ill-served by the present law in several ways: (1) The federal Title I program is widely distributed across New York State to 98% of school districts and to nearly 80% of all public schools; (2) regardless of the poverty rate for any given school district (including the most affluent districts), a clear majority of schools receive Title 1 funding; (3) some of the poorest districts may be unable to use Title I to serve many of their educationally disadvantaged children when an individual school’s poverty rate falls below the intradistrict average. Implications for children in poverty are discussed with reference to the most recent reauthorization of Title I (Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994).

scholarly journals Relations between accountability and improvement strategies in New York City’s Children First Networks

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Kelly McMahon
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Report Cards ◽  
Support Providers ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Improvement Strategies ◽  
School Report Cards ◽  
Children First

Federal school accountability policies like No Child Left Behind were based on a logic that measuring school performance and making the results public through tools like school report cards would incentivize educators to create strategies for improving school quality. Yet, most schools needed more than incentives to be able to design improvement strategies that would lead to all students becoming proficient in standard subjects like math and ELA. As a result, states and school districts implemented an infrastructure of supports. To date, there is little research that considers how support providers use accountability tools to diagnose problems and design targeted improvement strategies. Without better knowledge of how schools and providers commit to particular improvement strategies, it is difficult to determine whether we need better school report cards or strategies, or both to improve school quality. This study aims to address this gap by examining how four Children First Networks in New York City used accountability metrics to develop targeted improvement strategies, which led to distinctly different improvement strategies. The article closes with implications for policy.

A $19-Billion Blind Spot: State Pension Spending

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-223
Author(s):  
Robert M. Costrell ◽  
Collin Hitt ◽  
James V. Shuls
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Title I ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Pension Plans ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
State Spending ◽  
Pension Costs ◽  
State Subsidies ◽  
State Pension ◽  
K 12

In this brief, we examine an important but obscure form of state spending on K–12 education—state subsidies of school district pension costs. In 2018, this exceeded $19 billion across 23 states. To put that amount into perspective, 2018 federal spending on Title I programs was $15.8 billion. This revenue stream is often ignored in analyses of state aid for K–12 and its distribution across districts. Until recently, accounting standards did not require pension plans to report these implicit subsidies to the school districts, so they did not typically know the size of their subsidy. In some important cases, it was missing from state totals for education aid. In the first comprehensive tabulation of these data, we show that this subsidy can be as much as $2,400 per pupil, as it is in Connecticut. In Illinois, it comprises an additional 56% of state spending on K–12 on top of all formula and categorical aid.

Making sense of education policy at the state level: A conversation with Sara Dahill-Brown

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
Rafael Heller
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Educational Decision ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Every Student Succeeds Act ◽  
Educational Decision Making

Kappan’s editor talks with political scientist Sara Dahill-Brown about the new realities of educational decision making under the Every Student Succeeds Act, which follows nearly two decades of strong federal influence over K-12 policies at the state and district levels. Rather than promoting one-size-fits-all approaches to school improvement, argues Dahill-Brown, advocates for education change must now pay close attention to local contexts, needs, and governance models.

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