In planning and implementing CSR, staff members' primary focus is on increasing student achievement, but the key to effectively implementing and sustaining CSR is properly allocating resources. Just as an effective educational program coordinates curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development to create a coherent whole, an effective resource allocation plan for CSR ties every possible resource into supporting the improvement plan. Resources to be considered include federal (such as CSR and Title 1), state, local and private funds as well as staffing and time allocations. The goal is to identify resources to support and sustain the school’s comprehensive reform effort. Ultimately the resource allocation and CSR planning processes should become tied together.
Once initial plans for integrating reforms and resources have been developed, schools and districts may want to explore their options for spending their federal funds. Contrary to what many educators believe, there is considerable flexibility in allocating resources from several federal funding streams. A report by the Center on Education Policy and the Policy Exchange at the Institute for Educational Leadership called Understanding Flexibility in Federal Education Programs (http://www.iel.org/pubs/pubs/underflex.pdf) explains flexibility initiatives in CSR, Title 1, and other federal programs. It also contains several examples, such as a school district that used Title 1 funds to operate family learning centers. Another helpful guide released in 2002, Many Programs, One Investment: Combining Federal Funds to Support Comprehensive School Reform, suggests ways to coordinate funding from multiple federal programs to have the greatest impact on student achievement
(http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/ManyPrograms.pdf).
Of course, flexibility at the federal level does not guarantee flexibility at the state and local levels. Schools should investigate their state and local policies before developing detailed plans to combine funds.
What Are the Costs Associated with CSR?
It is very difficult for schools to plan for CSR and properly coordinate resources without knowing what resources are required to successfully implement CSR. While specific needs will vary from school to school, an Issue Paper (http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP175/index.html) by RAND sheds some light on this issue. RAND collected data on required resources and sources of funding for one school year at 58 schools implementing CSR models. The findings were as follows:
1) Average resource requirements imposed by CSR:
- Total: $162,000
- Broken down by category:
- Teacher time - 40% - $66,000
- Personnel - 36% - $59,000
- Model Services - 16% - $25,000
- Materials and Conferences - 8% - $12,000
2) Sources of funding for CSR:
- Reallocation of a school's normal district allocation - 38% - $62,000
- Title 1 (not considered part of the normal district allocation
because not all schools receive Title 1 funds) - 33% - $53,000
- District budget - 18% - $30,000
- Grants (this study was conducted before the initiation of CSR) - 7% - $11,000
- Other - 4% - $6,000
Also, a study of 26 models has tabulated the associated fiscal costs of implementation. The Success For All model, for example, has been identified as one of the most expensive models, with cost estimates of between $70,000 and $270,000 for just first-year personnel, materials, and training costs (Herman et al., 1999,
http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/district_organization/
Reform/index.htm), with the most expensive reform models requiring $261,060 to $646,500 per year (from http://www.successforall.net/resource/PDFs/LTEffectsandCost
EffofSFA-2003.pdf). Such statistics emphasize the importance of allocating and reallocating resources to make schoolwide improvement possible with careful thought from the planning stage through the sustaining phase.
Resources
The Securing and Reallocating Resources section of NCCSR’s Step by Step directs practitioners to tools to help with this component including some of the following:
- Making Education Dollars Work: Understanding Resource Allocation (2001) by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) introduces state policymakers to information about current practice and research on education resource allocation. This issue of Insights on Education Policy, Practice, and Research begins with a general description of patterns in education resource allocation over time, followed by a brief review of research about the relationship between resources and student performance. The next section provides an overview of tools to examine resource allocation that can shed new light on how resources can be allocated and used more effectively.
http://www.sedl.org/policy/insights/n14/insights14.pdf
- In How to Rethink School Budgets to Support School Transformation (2000) Allan Odden explores the costs of seven New American Schools designs and how schools can pay for them by reallocating resources. The designs include ATLAS Communities, Audrey Cohen College, Co-NECT Schools, Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute, National Alliance for Restructuring Education (now called America's Choice) and Roots and Wings. http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/How%20to%20Rethink
%20School%20Budgets%20to%20Support%20School%20
Transformation.pdf
- Rethinking the Allocation of Teaching Resources: Some Lessons from High-Performing Schools (1997) by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education contains a method for measuring the extent to which schools use their resources to support teaching and learning. It also explains the following five principles of resource allocation: reducing specialized programs to create more individual time for all students in heterogeneous instructional groups, providing more flexible student grouping by school professionals, creating structures for more personal relationships between teachers and students, developing longer and more varied blocks of instructional time, and creating more useful common planning time for teachers.
http://www.cpre.org/Publications/rr38.pdf
- In only ten pages, Money Matters: Rethinking School and District Spending to Support Comprehensive School Reform, by the Education Resource Management Strategies, explores how both districts and schools can rethink their spending and organization to support comprehensive school reform. It provides helpful bulleted lists of the important steps schools and districts should take to ensure effective use of their resources.
http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/MoneyMatters.pdf
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