CPRE's School Finance Research: 15 Years of Findings

With the ever-increasing emphasis on rigorous performance standards in education, schools face more demands for accountability. In the world of school finance, this emphasis has induced a shift from equity to adequacy in policy and litigation.

For 15 years, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has worked to better align allocation and use of resources to school-based strategies to boost student learning.

The last installment in this series discussed uses of dollars after a school finance reform. This installment concludes the series by offering a synthesis of findings and implications for policy and practice.

Over the past 100 years, per-pupil spending in the U.S., after adjusting for inflation, has increased about 3.5% annually, says UW-Madison education professor and CPRE director Allan Odden. The percentage of the dollar spent on instruction has remained the same, about 60%–61%. Policy makers and researchers still need to know more about the way resources are currently being used within the instructional category, Odden says. Gaining that knowledge would represent a first step toward knowing how better to use these resources to produce higher levels of student achievement.

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Press

David Williamson Shaffer believes that computers alter “the way people think in the digital age,” and he rates their advent with “the development of language itself” (The Chronicle, 24 August).

Susan Millar discusses the proposed National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies  (The Chronicle, 20 August).

Adam Gamoran and Richard Halverson discuss the process of assigning children to their new classrooms in the fall (Wisconsin State Journal, 14 August).

In a paper commissioned for  the Center for American Progress, Sara Goldrick-Rab and Josipa Roksa argue that federal higher education policy focuses too much on colleges and not enough on their students (Chronicle of Higher Education Daily, 13 August).

CENTER SITES

Pribbenow to Evaluate Biology Scholars Program

Bringing her experience as evaluation director for UW-Madison’s Women In Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), bacteriologist and WCER scientist Christine Pribbenow has been chosen to evaluate the national Biology Scholars Program. This multiyear leadership program aims to enhance biologists’ understanding and practice of evidenced-based teaching and learning and to help college biology faculty to bring about reforms in undergraduate education. Program participants participants come from community colleges, undergraduate colleges, and doctoral institutions. Each participant commits up to two years conducting research.