To Raise Student Achievement, Overhaul School Finance Systems, Claremont Researcher Says
Claremont Graduate University Education Professor Jacob Adams leads presentation in Washington, D.C. which highlights education finance reform needs


    CLAREMONT, CA, October 30, 2008 /Canada PR News/ -- After years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to raise the level of student performance, educators, politicians, civic leaders and parents have not produced the results they expect.

Now we know why. A basic flaw in these improvement efforts is that they look to the education finance system for solutions when the system itself is the problem, according to a five-year study of K-12 school finance by a large team of top education scholars from throughout the country.

Their conclusion is that education finance needs to be redesigned to support student performance.

According to Jacob Adams of Claremont Graduate University, "States will never educate all students to high standards unless they first fix the finance system that supports America's schools. These systems dictate how much is spent, who gets what, how resources are used, and which outcomes are tracked. Unfortunately, the way they do these things no longer matches the results we expect from schools."

Adams chaired the group that conducted the study and has issued its report, Funding Student Learning: How to Align Education Resources with Student Learning Goals. A presentation by the group will take place on October 27 at Washington D.C.'s National Press Club.

The 39-page report summarizes the work of eleven scholars. It both describes the problems with state school finance systems and offers solutions.

"Funding student learning requires more than merely adjusting funding levels, tinkering with distribution formulas, creating new programs, imposing another sanction, or singling out hot-button issues," Adams says. "The system itself must be transformed so that resources can better support the ambitious learning goals the public now demands."

Adams says he expects the results will help elected officials and educators use resources more effectively to achieve the ambitious student learning goals that public consensus now demands.

Key ingredients in the recipe for fixing broken school finance systems are:

• Allow dollars to follow students to their schools

• Integrate resource decisions with instructional plans; measure and analyze results of different expenditures

• Define and fund a research and development agenda that expands what we know about effective resource use

• Make resource use and academic achievement central to financial reporting practices, and use funding contingencies to create about fair and meaningful accountability
.
Members of the working group included:

Jacob E. Adams, Jr., Chair Professor, Claremont Graduate University
Christopher T. Cross Chairman, Cross & Joftus, LLC
Christopher Edley, Jr. Dean and Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
James W. Guthrie Professor, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
Paul T. Hill John and Marguerite Corbally Professor and Director, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington Bothell

Michael W. Kirst Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
Goodwin Liu Associate Dean and Professor, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Susanna Loeb, Associate Professor, Stanford University
David H. Monk, Dean and Professor, Pennsylvania State University
Allan R. Odden, Professor and Co-Director, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Joanne Weiss, Partner and Chief Operating Officer, New Schools Venture Fund

The full report is available at www.crpe.org. It was produced by the School Finance Redesign Project at the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education

The School Finance Redesign Project (SFRP) was created to help elected officials, practitioners, and the public better understand how education finance systems now work and to identify new options for deploying K-12 resources to support state and national educational goals. The project, initiated in 2003 and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, includes more than 30 separate studies.

About Claremont Graduate University

Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is one of the top graduate schools in the United States. Our nine academic schools conduct leading-edge research and award masters and doctoral degrees in 22 disciplines. Because the world's problems are not simple nor easily defined, diverse faculty and students research and study across the traditional discipline boundaries to create new and practical solutions for the major problems plaguing our world. A Southern California based graduate school devoted entirely to graduate research and study, CGU boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio.

About the School of Educational Studies
Based at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, its program is in one of the top-ranked Schools in Education in California. Its programs include a Masters and PhD programs with emphases in K-12, special education, urban leadership, educational policy, administration, human development, qualitative research, and teaching and learning.
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Contact:
Jacob Adams
Claremont Graduate University
165 E. Tenth St.
Claremont, CA 91711
909-607-3794
jacob.adams@cgu.edu
http://www.cgu.edu

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Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University
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