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 Can District Level Support Impede School Turnaround? (continued)
 The author of the report, Karen Baroody, who is the managing director of Education Resource Strategies, found most districts give supplemental money for schools targeted for improvement through local or state money, federal school improvement grants or a combination of all. However, pre-existing imbalances in district spending allocations, like the cost of more experienced staff who tend to work at better performing schools, suggests schools in improvement status often have a lower operating budget than the district average, even considering the additional funds for turnaround efforts. Furthermore, considering most supplemental funds expire a few years after a school improves academically, schools can slide right back into academic failure if the underlying resource gaps are not fixed. In other words, treating schools equally that face very different circumstances is not really equitable.
Here are a few recommendations the report makes to districts for ensuring their strategies support low-performing schools:
- Develop a comprehensive, systemic and ongoing process to identify what each school needs.
- Identify all the district's resources, including every level of funding (local, state, federal, grants) and work with principals to determine how to best use the funds. According to Ms. Baroody, high-leverage changes are more difficult politically, but cost less financially.
- Customize the improvement strategy for each school versus providing general, across-the-board support.
- Improve the entire district, not just the individual schools.
JP works with their partner districts to understand the contextual and structural basis for each school improvement goal individually AND as part of the whole as part of a concise and collaborative strategic planning process. What do you think about this concept? Are you an administrator facing this dilemma? Have you been faced with these very issues in turning your low-performing districts around? Or are you a teacher wondering about the direction your school or district is taking? Share your thoughts with us by clicking the engage button below - we want to hear what you think!
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The Dashboard will represent areas critical to improving educational results and achieving Obama's 2020 college attainment goal. Areas included on the website are:
