Education Week - August 29, 2018 - 24

FOR ESSA TO IGNITE CHANGE,
IT TAKES PARTNERS

WE NEED
AP ETHNIC STUDIES

21
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

How Districts
Spend Is About
To Be a Big Deal
By David A. DeSchryver
& Noelle Ellerson Ng

t's time for superintendents to
tackle a challenging conversation about how they allocate their
limited financial resources-and
how those decisions align with
the core values of public education. The Every Student Succeeds
Act's fiscal transparency reporting
requirement is a sleeper issue that will demand more of district leaders than just a
change in how they communicate policy decisions with their communities. It will also
prompt both school and district leaders to
figure out how they manage productivity.
The idea of educational "productivity"-
sometimes referred to as "performancebased investments" or "return on investment"-is not new. More than a decade ago,
the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's
tried to measure school productivity with
their now-defunct SchoolMatters service.
The U.S. Department of Education took a
stab at it in 2011, under the previous administration, with productivity guidance.
The Center for American Progress got in on
the action with its Return on Educational
Investment report in 2014. Meanwhile,
several states are beginning to explore the
intersection of finance and academic performance at the school level. The list of initiatives goes on, but they have not required
school leaders to meaningfully change the
ways they manage school spending relative
to student outcomes.
ESSA's new reporting requirement, which
kicks in for funds spent during the 2018-

19 school year, will likely be different. (The
first reports will be available in the 20192020 school year.) ESSA requires districts
to publish per-pupil allocations for actual
personnel and non-personnel expenditures
by each funding source (federal, state, and
local funds), for each district, and school on
their annual report cards.
Reader, this is a big deal.
The federal government has never asked
this of districts, and few superintendents
have thought through the mechanics of the
work at the school level. Hard questions are
cascading across the country: What to do
with shared school costs? What about centrally purchased items? Do existing charts
of accounts adequately capture the information required by law? All of these are sticky
questions that administrators must soon
resolve.
In the short term, superintendents and
principals will need to get on the same page
about current district allocation policies and
practices, why some schools appear to get
more resources than others, and how this
all aligns with the stated vision and mission
of the district.
Consider, for example, a scenario where
Elementary School A receives $250 more
per pupil than Elementary School B down
the road. Why is that happening? Perhaps
School A serves more students with learning disabilities. If so, why is that the case?
Perhaps High School C benefits from more
state and local per-pupil revenue than a
neighboring school because of an effort to
better serve regional workforce technology
campaigns. Is that a fair distribution of resources? If the allocations seem to contradict the district's stated objectives, what will

24 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 29, 2018 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

be done to adjust the investment strategy?
The earlier that district leaders begin to
pay attention to these matters, the less disruptive the new reporting and transparency
will be for school and district staff faced
with new questions from the public.
Over the long term, the new expenditure
reporting requirements will push superintendents to be more strategic about managing productivity. This new transparency will
make it easier for the public to investigate the
relationship between academic and financial
data. With a little effort, for example, a go-

What does a productive
school-investment
model look like?"
getting local reporter or parent can get a
snapshot of a school's status based on test
scores, graduation rate, and more. With a
bit more effort, she or he can connect those
data to the new school quality and student
success indicators and map those data over
time. Inevitably, stakeholders will couple the
academic information with the new expenditure information to investigate productivity.
Over time, districts will have to field questions about not only school level allocations,
but also the return on these investments,
prompting district leaders to be more mindful of productivity.
At the same time, ESSA now asks super-

Jonathan Bouw for Education Week

COMMENTARY

intendents to strengthen their investment
strategies. The law's predecessor, the No
Child Left Behind Act, encouraged disproportionate investment in supplemental
math and reading programs, at the expense
of all else. With ESSA, lawmakers have
broadened the focus to allow school and district leaders to address the wide range of
student academic needs. Some need social
and emotional support. Others need personalized instructional support.
In exchange for this wider range of allowable costs, state and district decisionmakers
are expected to make smarter investments.
When possible, these investments should
now be evidence-based, effective, and continuously scrutinized internally during program implementation. In other words, the
investment should be productive.
But what does a productive school-investment model look like? There isn't a single
way to scour information to drive continuous improvement. Rather, each school
leader will need to figure out what works
for their community, and in so doing they
will transform school management and
communication practices.
But first things first. Beginning next year,
superintendents and principals need to get
ready to communicate what is going on with
per-pupil expenditures for actual personnel
and non-personnel costs by each funding
source districtwide and for each school. n
DAVID A. DeSCHRYVER is a director at the
Washington-based Whiteboard Advisors, an
education strategy firm. NOELLE ELLERSON NG
is the associate executive director for policy and
advocacy at AASA-The School Superintendent's
Association-which is located in Alexandria, Va.

http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - August 29, 2018

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