Explores differences between analyses of instructional resource allocation at district and school levels in Florida's 67 counties, concentrating on possible effects of noneducational student characteristics on deprivation of educational opportunity. Results revealed clear evidence of inequality for schools with high percentages of low…

Effective professional development requires that the district take charge to develop a comprehensive strategy. Districts must be able to describe the strategy and organize to meet their goals. A balanced strategy includes compensation, planning time, teachers' job structure and responsibilities, and professional learning opportunities. Districts…

Ever since the publication of "A Nation At Risk" in 1983, Americans have been preoccupied with two problems regarding public education: (1) student performance is unsatisfactory to most Americans despite large increases in real spending per student; and despite several attempts at reforming curricula, teacher training, testing, and other…

Even as the United States extends a free public education to all children, it rigs the system against the success of some of the most vulnerable by taking those who arrive at school with the greatest needs and giving them less in school. Low-income and minority students, in particular, get less of what matters most; these students get the fewest…

This report summarizes 2005-2006 school year activities at facilities for neglected youth and facilities for delinquent youth in the Austin Independent School District (AISD) attendance zones that were supported through federal Title I funds.

Three crucial factors which have inhibited past school improvement efforts are analyzed in this paper. These factors include: (1) promising more than can be delivered; (2) failing to effectively deal with the reality of limited resources; and (3) failing to recognize and initiate opportunities for collaboration and resource sharing. The paper…

To help school boards, educators, and citizens in Connecticut do more comprehensive district planning, this handbook introduces the planning, evaluation, and resource management (PERM) model and describes how it works. Section 1 of the document gives an overview of the planning process, defines comprehensive planning, and answers general questions…

This study is an attempt to obtain a national assessment that could help inform federal policy. The study looks at all the states in order to obtain an assessment on a consistent basis, is based solely on results of reform--disparities in the distribution of education funds, and examines not only the state's status in a recent time period but also…

As part of a Title I demonstration project, sixteen school districts were chosen to change their compensatory education Federal fund allocation procedures by substituting an educational definition of need for the formerly used income definition. The purpose of this report is threefold: (1) to describe the demographic characteristics of the…

This paper attempts to study the local politics of compensatory education. It addresses the question of why some neighborhoods appeared to be more politically influential than others over the distribution of compensatory education funds in a large urban school district. Data for this study was gathered from 100 schools and neighborhoods of the Los…

This document discusses the role of educational objectives in the construction of a program budget. Special emphasis is given to the necessity of specifying primary objectives--those that support basic values and fulfill community needs. Because primary objectives are at the top of the educational objectives hierarchy and provide the format for…

This manual was prepared to provide local school districts with a model to follow in implementing a local planning-programing-budgeting system (PPBS). Section I (chapters 1-4) gives the basic concepts and overall design of a PPB system for local districts. Section II (chapters 5-7) describes computations used in a semiautomated PPBS version,…

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

This study compared the equity and adequacy outcomes for plaintiff and nonplaintiff school districts as they relate to the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990. Both descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were used in comparing variables and in determining the differences in selected finance measures. There were three major…

This report recommends a new poverty indicator to use when distributing Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid (DPIA) to Ohio school districts. It also describes the implications of substituting the new indicator in the current formulas used to calculate DPIA funding. Ohio school districts receive DPIA, based on earlier aid programs, to provide all-day…