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Tag: School Funding

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Condron & Roscigno, 2003

The debate over whether educational spending shapes achievement has persisted for decades, largely because of methodological and analytical limitations associated with the use of districtlevel data. In this study, the authors analyzed unique within-district variations in spending and achievement among 89 public elementary schools in a large, North Central, urban district. The analyses reveal considerable disparities in spending within the district, which are linked to local patterns of racial and class stratification and concentration. They show how these locally driven inequalities and their links to specific school resources have consequences for achievement in five distinct subject areas. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their findings for understanding the local production of class and racial educational inequality and recent moves toward resegregation that are evident in many U.S. cities.

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KnowledgeWorks Foundation, 2005. Good small schools create supportive communities where students succeed, and both students and teachers thrive. Years of research and experience – not to mention common sense – support this notion. Yet legislators and other decision-makers continue to close small schools and build large ones because they think large schools are more cost effective to build, maintain, and operate. The first report, Dollars & Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools, outlines the economic and social arguments in support of smaller schools and demonstrates that the true costs of large schools are enormous and the benefits dubious (D&SI, pp. 8 - 19).1

Dollars & Sense II: Lessons from Good, Cost-Effective Small Schools strengthens the case for the cost effectiveness of small schools with new research and examples of what’s working at such schools across the nation. It answers the question – “Can small schools actually be built and run at a cost per pupil that is comparable to that of large schools?” – with a resounding “yes.”

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Gracye Cheng, Steve English and Mary Filardo, 2011. Acute disparities in the access of public school students to adequate facilities, coupled with the compelling evidence of how poor quality school facilities are implicated in lower student achievement, make it imperative that any inquiry into the nature of inequity of education in the United States include an understanding of the conditions, design, utilization and location of public school facilities. In the attached paper, we provide background on the role and impact of school facility condition and recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education Excellence and Equity Commission. We are joined in expressing our concern about inequity in facility conditions by: Center for Cities and Schools, UC Berkeley, California; National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Washington, DC; Innovative School Facilities, Portland, Oregon; Public Education Network, Washington, DC; Healthy Schools Network, New York; Designs for Change, Chicago, Illinois; and the ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland.

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Mary Filardo, Jeffrey M. Vincent, Marni Allen, and Jason Franklin, 2010. In this paper, the 21st Century School Fund and the Center for Cities and Schools at the University of California Berkeley provide a conceptual frame for the joint use of PK-12 public schools. There is a growing conversation about and demand for joint use as a way to provide services to children and families in convenient locations, improve opportunities for physical activity by increasing use of school recreational and outdoor spaces, leverage capital investments, and more. However, engaging in joint use, particularly intensive sharing of space or use by multiple parties, presents ongoing challenges to school and community leaders. In this paper, we frame the basic challenges and opportunities for joint use to facilitate better conversations and planning for these type of collaborations.

This conceptual paper serves as a companion to a set of tools for practitioners and policymakers for implementing and sustaining joint use and joint development of public school facilities. Other tools available from the 21st Century School Fund and the Center for Cities and Schools on joint use and development include:

  • Examples of joint development and joint use;
  • Catalogue and analysis of state policies and model school district and state level policies to support joint use and development (See: http://www.BestSchoolFacilities.org);
  • A “joint use calculator” tool for computing the real costs associated with the use of school facilities; and
  • A database template for including community use data and information in a facility information management system.

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21st Century School Fund, 2011. There is no national database of information on public school facilities. Some states collect information and some do not. The 21st Century School Fund and its Building Educational Success Together (BEST) partners have worked to understand the scope, scale and condition of public school facilities. This is important to building our nation’s public will and our government’s capacity to provide high quality public school buildings and grounds for all children in all communities.

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Council of the Great City Schools, 2014. The report describes how school districts, financially squeezed over long periods of time, made economic decisions that reduced the most cost-effective types of maintenance work: preventive and predictive maintenance. The result of those decisions “to save money” will, in the long term actually increase the amount and frequency of much more expensive breakdown repair and replacement work.

As funds continued to be inadequate, the higher costs of breakdown repair work are forcing districts to make fewer repairs, which accelerates the deterioration of buildings and component systems. Ultimately, districts experienced and will continue to experience premature failure of buildings and systems, and are forced to borrow large sums of capital funds (with their accompanying debt service costs) to upgrade and/or replace facilities. Sadly, new buildings are likely to receive the same lack of preventive and predictive maintenance, thereby repeating the cycle of deterioration.

The report contains contemporary references that link the conditions of school buildings to student achievement and a variety of other issues. It also provides information and references to a variety of strategies that have proven successful in reversing the cycle of deterioration.

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A Policy Research Report to the California Department of Education, 2012. "In California’s K-12 Educational Infrastructure Investments: Leveraging the State’s Role for Quality School Facilities in Sustainable Communities, the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Cities & Schools provides an analysis of the state’s K-12 infrastructure policies, regulations, and funding patterns. Findings reveal the need to greatly refine school facilities planning and funding policies and practices to promote sound, efficient, and goal-oriented decision making at state and local levels. The recommendations re- envision the state’s role in K-12 infrastructure as one of appropriately supporting educational outcomes and contributing to more sustainable communities through a framework of public infrastructure best practices for sound planning, effective management, adequate and equitable funding, and appropriate oversight."

"A host of policy and implementation challenges remain barriers to California maximizing its strategic use of state-level K-12 infrastructure funds. Our research findings indicate concerns of inequitable facility condition; inadequate investment, particularly in existing facilities; and lack of local government and LEA collaboration around infrastructure and land use decisions. We found likely causes for these challenges in the capital facility planning, management, funding, and accountability systems in place in the state."

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School Facilities and Organization, 2011. The purpose of this manual is to explain the spectrum of activities involved in the planning, design, and construction of school facilities and to increase awareness of all activities that comprise the total effort necessary for successful, cost-effective school projects. If your school district is ready to embark upon a school facility building program: Have you already started, and are you uncertain of what to do and when to do it? Do you know what resources are available to help you plan, design, and construct? Do you know how to find appropriate consultants and what you should expect from them? Do you know who all the people are that normally participate in planning, design and construction?

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Stephanie Riegg, Cellini Fernando, Ferreira Jesse Rothstein, 2008. This paper analyzes the impact of voter-approved school bond issues on school district balance sheets, local housing prices, and student achievement. We draw on the unique characteristics of California's system of school finance to obtain clean identification of bonds' causal effects, comparing districts in which school bond referenda passed or failed by narrow margins. We extend the traditional regression discontinuity (RD) design to account for the dynamic nature of bond referenda, since the probability of future proposals depends on the outcomes of past elections. By law, bond revenues can be used only for school facilities projects. We find that bond funds indeed stick exclusively in the capital account, with no effect on current expenditures or other revenues. Our housing market estimates indicate that California school districts under-invest in school facilities: passing a referendum causes immediate, sizable increases in home prices, implying a willingness-to-pay on the part of marginal homebuyers of $1.50 or more for each $1 of facility spending. These effects do not appear to be driven by changes in the income or racial composition of homeowners, and the school bond impact on test scores cannot explain more than a small portion of the total housing price effect. Our estimates indicate that parents value improvements in other dimensions of school output (e.g., safety) that may be not captured by test scores.

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Mary Filardo, Michelle Bar, Stephanie Cheng, Jessie Ulsoy, Marni Allen, 2010. In this study, the 21st Century School Fund (21CSF), with support from the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, examined the state capital outlay funding for elementary and secondary public education facility construction and modernization. We examined how much capital outlay has been expended by states from 2005‐2008 as reported to the U.S. Census of Governments and surveyed every state on what share of these funds were provided from state sources as compared to local sources. 21CSF collected information about school facility capital outlay and related capital data management, planning, funding and oversight practice from each state’s department of education and/or building authority.

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