Strategic School Funding for Results Project, Phase II

Urban school districts' standard resource allocation practices are often based on top-down decision making that leaves schools with little or no discretion about how their resources are used. Moreover, the distribution of resources across schools within these districts relies substantially on standardized staffing formulas based on total school enrollment or allocation mechanisms prescribed by categorical funding programs (e.g., Title I). In many districts, principals have little or no authority over how many or which specific teachers or other school personnel they employ, how much they allocate to professional development activities, the nature of the curriculum they offer, or the schedule they employ for connecting staff with students.

This project endeavors to provide an infrastructure with an integrated collection of policies, procedures and tools—including (computerized) enhanced data management information— for decentralized needs-based resource management. Researchers will work with district partners to assess what works and what does not to iteratively build a structure and procedures that can be both formal and flexible, and can eventually be tested rigorously. The project expands on an existing project, the Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR), which was carried out by the American Institutes for Research and Pivot Learning Partners working in partnership with three large, urban California school districts with funding by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation. The outcome of the project will be a fully developed SSFR intervention, together with the identification of factors that affect its implementation.