Publications & Resources
- Newsletters
- Apr 10, 2024
Is it too late to protect what’s working as the cliff hits districts?
Next year's school district budgets will be locked in this spring. After that, influencing spending for 24-25 gets a lot harder.
- Articles & Publications
- Mar 03, 2024
Closing schools: How much money does it save, and is it worth it?
School closure decisions are never easy. In this EdSource commentary, Roza and Dhammani outline several factors districts should consider in order to bring transparency to the process and ensure all students are served well.
- Tools & Infographics
- Jul 13, 2023
The Grid: A Framework to Explore Budgeting Choices
This tool helps school, district, and state leaders strategically weigh investments by calculating per-student costs and spelling out desired results, risks involved, and how effectiveness will be measured.
- Articles & Publications
- Oct 05, 2022
Public Education Missed the Data Revolution. It’s Time to Catch Up
Data-free schooling means the system can’t learn as it goes and improve on what it does. It means students aren’t getting the full value from the nation’s investment in public schooling, write Marguerite Roza and Chad Aldeman. What can be done to chip away at this data desert?
- Newsletters
- Mar 29, 2022
Which schools are better at leveraging dollars for student outcomes?
We've created interactive data displays to compare student outcomes and spending by similarly situated schools to show which are beating the odds with the dollars they have.
- Articles & Publications
- Nov 01, 2021
NAEP scores are down. Funding is up. Wait, wut?
NAEP scores are going down or flat. People have different takes on why. In this Eduwonk blog, Marguerite Roza takes a look at the question of money.
- Articles & Publications
- Jan 23, 2020
The Big Bet on Adding Staff to Improve Schools Is Breaking the Bank
By going all-in on staffing, we’ve crowded out other potential investments that can positively impact student learning. In this paper, Marguerite Roza writes that competing strategies should be viewed through the lens of which can do the most for students with the limited dollars at hand.
- Articles & Publications
- Oct 08, 2019
The “Would You Rather?” Test
Education spending always involves choices, and smart choices require understanding value for the dollar. This paper uses the "would you rather" exercise to explore tradeoffs in school spending and think through the value of various cost-equivalent investments.
- Articles & Publications
- Sep 01, 2018
Equipping School Leaders to Spend Wisely
In this article in the National Association of State Boards of Education journal, The Standard, Marguerite Roza writes that financial transparency presents state boards of education with a timely opportunity to turn the tide on local leader training.
- Articles & Publications
- Dec 20, 2017
Funding Student Types: How states can mine their own data to guide finance policy on high-needs students
To help states design effective funding policies to serve high-needs students, this brief by Marguerite Roza helps states ask the right questions, tap their own data, and analyze funding in relation to student outcomes.
- Webinars & Presentations
- Jul 03, 2017
Webinar: What does the ESSA financial transparency requirement mean for districts?
This webinar provides an overview of the financial transparency requirement in the Every Student Succeeds Act, highlight lessons learned from states working toward meeting the requirement, and provide a district lens for thinking about the opportunities this new data can provide.
- Articles & Publications
- Jun 04, 2017
Financial Transparency Reporting Requirement: Where to start
In this brief we describe our work with 22 state education agencies to identify data readiness to meet the financial transparency reporting requirement under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and outline the inventory processes so other states can identify their own next steps to meet the requirement.
- Webinars & Presentations
- Jun 02, 2017
School-level spending: Financial transparency coming to every community in 2018
At the Education Writers Association National Seminar on June 2nd, hosted at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Marguerite Roza presented on new school spending reports emerging under the federal ESSA financial transparency requirement.
- Articles & Publications
- May 03, 2017
With New Data, School Finance Is Coming Out of the Dark Ages
In this blog and podcast, Marguerite Roza explains how a sleeper provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) will serve up a motherlode of new school-level financial data, offering an unprecedented opportunity to be better equipped to tackle some of education’s most pressing issues.
- Articles & Publications
- Dec 21, 2016
Productivity Improvements Paper Series
These five Rapid Response briefs model the costs of productivity improvements in K-12 education, including changes in staffing ratios, the impact of late-career teacher pay raises on pension debt, and paying the best teachers more to teach more students.
- Webinars & Presentations
- Apr 26, 2016
New Era of School Finance
In 2016 we convened leading authorities to discuss the complexities of education finance in light of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. Watch Marguerite Roza’s research presentation, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s keynote, and an expert panel discussion of the shifting roles in education finance decisions.
- Articles & Publications
- Apr 22, 2016
Are public universities neglecting in-state students?
Marguerite Roza responds to an online “Room for Debate” conversation hosted by the New York Times, arguing that chasing after nonresident students threatens the very nature of public universities as institutions that serve the state.
- Articles & Publications
- Apr 16, 2016
Productivity is sometimes seen as a dirty word in education
This article explores how school systems can improve productivity even when so much of what matters—the human variables and relationships in student learning—can’t be centrally managed and scaled across schools.
- Articles & Publications
- Mar 15, 2016
The Productivity of Rural Schools
Remote rural districts are often more expensive and yield lower student outcomes than urban and suburban districts. Yet some rural districts generate higher-than-expected learning results without proportionately higher spending. Based on interviews with leaders in 30 rural remote districts, Marguerite Roza identifies six factors that make some districts “productivity superstars."
- Webinars & Presentations
- Feb 22, 2016
Advancing System Productivity Webinar Series
Edunomics Lab, in partnership with Council of Chief State School Officers and the Building State Capacity and Productivity Center, convened a Community of Practice to support a group of leaders in all states interested in developing a state-specific framework and strategy set related to the SEA’s role in increasing productivity. This series of five webinars is designed to help Regional...
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