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Tag: K-12 Education

Reimagining the School Funding Adequacy Study

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Effective Governance, Funding Policy, Resource Equity.

In 2023, the Washington D.C. Office of the Deputy Mayor of Education (DME) sought to re-examine how schools in D.C. are funded and how the existing funding structures serve students.

Over the past several years, D.C. has made great strides toward adequate and equitable funding, striving to ensure that students have the resources they need to succeed. Even so, persistent opportunity gaps exposed a need for further exploration, especially given that different funding levels targeted to needs did not easily explain those gaps. Why aren’t the investment levels lining up with outcomes?

In light of COVID-19 and other pressing external factors, it became clear that supporting students and families through a global pandemic and intergenerational poverty will take all of us. Schools have been asked to meet increasingly comprehensive needs, without the formal charge or funding structures to support that charge. What is the role of the school, and how can education and community leaders come together to provide the services and resources needed for brighter futures in their respective areas of influence? It was in this spirit of enduring commitment to continuous inquiry and improvement that led us to co-create an innovative approach to guide school leaders’ next steps.

Complex circumstances require a context-sensitive approach

Like many states, DC completes a periodic, legislatively required ‘funding adequacy study’ to determine the resources needed for students to meet standards. Adequacy studies go back to the 1990s as part of the standards-based movement, and the approaches remain in use today. While this history is an important foundation for school funding policies, The Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) saw the 2023 legislative requirement as an opportunity to think differently and partnered with Afton to collaboratively meet the moment. Given the complexity at hand, we knew we needed to examine the problem from multiple angles. We also knew we needed to engage the expertise of those most affected by—and yet also typically excluded from—policymaking decisions: students, families, and school communities.

The desire for a data-informed understanding of current resource use and future resource needs led us to embark on a deep data exploration journey. As part of this journey, we developed archetypes of students and schools that helped us understand current funding and spending relative to student and community needs and outcomes at a far more nuanced level than is typical. This also positioned us to ensure adequate stakeholder representation across all archetypes developed, creating a ‘diverse by design’ approach to gathering input and feedback.

As a team, our desire to more fully understand the local context laid the foundation for a pioneering triangulation method that linked:

  • national expertise, economic modeling, and quasi-experimental research findings;
  • broad local stakeholder engagement from school leaders and staff, parents and caregivers, students, and community agencies; and
  • deep data analysis on student demographics, needs, outcomes, and LEA- and school-level spending data.

This triangulation approach offered significant improvements to traditional adequacy study methods alone. While traditional methods– including the national Evidence-Based (EB) and Professional Judgement (PJ) panels– rightly form the foundation of this work, the triangulation of additional methodologies provides a richer understanding of needs and opportunities. Combining existing methods with deep student- and school-level data analysis and abundant stakeholder engagement allowed us to meaningfully incorporate the insights and wisdom of the students and families experiencing the system every day. While typical adequacy studies offer insight into how much should be spent, this study had a keen eye on how resources can be more effectively allocated. We could better understand student and resource needs at a more granular level than typical need categories, and then take several steps further to determine the appropriate level of local investment that would support those needs.

The substantial stakeholder engagement also provided a better basis for contextual recommendations. We were able to identify levers that can support LEAs and schools and ensure that dollars are spent efficiently and in a way that serves students most effectively.

A research approach that honors nuance, highlighting tensions and common ground

Triangulating the three methods brings out agreements and tensions in the data sets that otherwise may not surface. Where agreements exist, we can see elements of the problem in high contrast and know that it’s a clear pain point. Multiple lenses also can help clarify cause(s) and identify viable solutions. Where tensions exist, we’re better able to design solutions thoughtfully, with higher regard for the possible unintended consequences or trade-offs that we wouldn’t have known to be mindful of otherwise.

Stakeholder voice through school leader interviews and parent surveys helped us understand that schools were being asked to do more than they ever have and, in many cases, without the formal charge or necessary resources to meet those increased demands. Thanks to our triangulation method, we could immediately see that local data backed up that insight.

For instance: on average, schools spend less than 50% of their resources on instruction. Notably, schools with the highest needs often spent the least funding on instruction, as their student population required more non-instructional supports.

Our data also showed that resources spent on mental health support were high, relative to other spending. Even so, school leaders told us they would use extra dollars for additional mental health support and staffing, suggesting that their base resources did not adequately meet needs. Administrators also noted the increased demands of the teaching profession, expressing the desire to find ways to mitigate increasing burnout and turnover.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we heard from parents and families – across all wards and races – that they prioritize a positive academic reputation, highly qualified teachers, and a positive school culture. While we know from research these factors all directly impact student achievement, hearing directly from parents and families that they wanted to prioritize supportive measures to those ends created alignment. Leaders can now move towards pursuing well-informed additional investment and they strengthened the school-community connection having sought their valuable input on where the unmet needs exist.

A human-centered study facilitates better decision-making and promising outcomes

Our triangulation approach to the analysis provided a rich and diverse evidence base that informed a set of options and opportunities. Leaders are now equipped to make decisions for change that encompass immediately actionable shifts to funding levels within the funding formula, while also taking on related policy considerations to support change within and beyond the District.

In fact, change has already happened. Along with a 12.5% increase to the foundation level for teacher compensation, the weights within the funding formula are changing, too:

  • The at-risk weight will increase from 0.24 to 0.300
  • The alternative weight will increase from 1.52 to 1.58
  • The adult weight will increase from 0.91 to 1.00

Beyond the funding formula, specific recommendations also surfaced for additional funding outside the funding formula. These recommendations included support for mental health services, teacher pipeline development, and pilot programs for a neighborhood-based approach to school transformation. We also recommended specific avenues for pursuing improved system efficiencies, as well as enhanced financial reporting and transparency to keep a keen eye on spending patterns as they relate to outcomes.

In addition to the published report of the full study, the work informed an interactive website customized to various users to support broad engagement with study approaches, findings, and recommendations in a human-centered way.

At Afton, we put people first. Doing so results in stronger research design, more nuanced insights, and better decision-making. We are proud to come alongside communities to co-create both problem-solving processes and actionable solutions in a way that respects and engages those who stand to be most impacted. Ready to get started on yours? Get in touch.

If You’re Going To Close Schools, Do It This Way

Written by Katie Morrison-Reed on . Posted in Effective Governance, Financial Sustainability.

Across the country, many school districts have seen continuous declining enrollment trends, with a steep loss during COVID that doesn’t show signs of fully returning, along with declining birth rates and shrinking Kindergarten cohorts. School closings are already here, and data indicate many more on the horizon.

When I hear these rumblings, I’m taken back over a decade to my time at Chicago Public Schools, when the district faced a whopping operating budget deficit, over 100,000 empty seats (roughly the size of the 20th largest district in the country), buildings in need of significant improvement, and lagging student outcomes. Ultimately, as is now known and written about often, CPS decided to tackle the capacity challenge in a big wave of 50 school consolidations in 2013. While excess capacity still remained, it was the largest single year consolidation in history – an effort that allowed the district to consolidate its focus on the schools that remained and, in the process, at least partially address some of the financial predicament it found itself in. I’m not going to opine on this process – if it was the right decision, what went right and what went wrong, or the long-term impact. Those articles and opinions readily exist. But as the Director of Transitions at the time, responsible for pulling together the people, plan, and process to implement CPS’ school action decisions with the guidance of our leadership team, I do want to share reflections from having been through it.

Fact: Closing schools isn’t a process anyone ever wants to be a part of. You don’t get into public education to close schools. It’s gut-wrenching work, and it’s heartbreaking and often devastating to the those most impacted. In a perfect world, our schools would be adequately funded and retain or draw families back into them with appropriate resources, well-compensated and supported staff, and excellent programs. This can happen, like in the successes in Washington, D.C. Closures should not be our first answer, and creative solutions can help. But sometimes, like when demographic shifts leave a plethora of under-enrolled, under-resourced schools, the painful solution can become the necessary one. And when it does happen, we have an obligation to minimize the pain felt by all stakeholders involved. Ideally, we are harnessing the opportunity to offer stronger – albeit fewer – schools. With that as context, I offer these reflections for districts facing the prospect of school closures.

  • Know the why. Be clear on why you are considering closures and what you expect the outcomes will be. Understand the context and stories of the schools and communities at risk of closure and understand deeply the consequences of any actions you might take before you take them. Balance that with an understanding of the opportunities a closure may present. But don’t lead with closures being solely about solving a financial crisis. While consolidations can support long-term financial sustainability, it often doesn’t save as much money as we expect, and it costs a lot to do well. And importantly, it’s not a compelling argument to your community, even if it is true. Stakeholders will – sometimes justifiably – push this argument back on poor district decisions or management. Instead, how might a smaller number of schools enable more equitable resourcing and better schools for all students? Is rightsizing a lever to be able to do this more effectively? “Better schools” is a conversation communities can engage in. Fixing a budget hole is not.
  • Know the how. Going into the work, have a clear decision-making process and “rules” for how decisions will be made, ideally done with a representative community body. Have a single empowered leader, and a cross-functional team at least partially freed up from existing responsibilities to focus on fidelity of planning and implementation. Have a solid process to execute, be overly prepared to do it, and have contingency plans for your contingency plans. Be fully prepared with a plan to track and monitor progress and outcomes and have a quick response system for issue resolution during and after the transition. Be prepared to monitor each impacted student – where they go, how they do through the transition, and how they fare on the leading indicator metrics you monitor for outcomes and growth. Know what will happen to the space that is left behind or the process you’ll use to figure that out, again involving the community. And on the note of buildings, understand that you can separate ‘school’ from ‘building’ – good schools can exist in bad buildings. Be diligent yet creative in your solutions.
  • Prioritize people. Know who will be impacted specifically and how. What’s the population of students in temporary housing situations? Students with limited or interrupted formal education? Racial and ethnic demographics of students and teachers? Community groups with connections to schools? Has anyone in the school been shuffled through a school closure before? Know the human stories. Also know the stories of the schools to be closed and ensure there is a plan to honor them. Support schools that are receiving impacted students to prepare students, teachers, and staff and merge school cultures ahead of time. Give them and the school community time, flexibility, and resources to prepare in a way that is informed by students and those closest to them. Prioritize maintaining meaningful student and staff connections where possible and have a thoughtful staff transition plan in place. Whatever you do, lead with empathy.
  • Communicate transparently. Invite people to the table; closed doors put up walls. With engagement and transparency, while everyone might not agree on the decisions, you can agree on the validity of the process to make those decisions. Align with stakeholders and co-create solutions where you can (ex: supports students and staff will need for the transition). Communicate effectively – in language that is accessible and respects the human element of this, and through communication modes that work for the people you are trying to reach. Make a clear timeline so stakeholders know what to expect when, and follow through. Get ahead of the issues and stories by knowing them authentically.

School consolidations are coming. We need to study the past, take what worked, and improve where we can. I believe by knowing our why, knowing our how, prioritizing people, and communicating transparently, school districts and communities can collaboratively address the systemic challenges in front of them. Our team at Afton is here to support your district and community in this process.

Fiscal Cliff Pressures – the Impact of ‘the Six Es’ on District Budgets

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Effective Governance, Financial Sustainability.

At Afton, we’ve referred to these interrelated challenges in a framework called ‘the Six Es’:

  1. Economy: States, localities, and districts are facing overall rising costs, and those costs are frequently outpacing revenue growth.
  2. ESSER: Many states and districts used one-time pandemic relief funds to cover recurring, increasing costs, but these funds are slated to end this year while the costs remain.
  3. Employees: Educator talent is more difficult than ever to find and competitively compensate, which can be especially challenging for roles and locations that have seen long-standing shortages.
  4. Enrollment: States and districts are experiencing uneven enrollment changes, complicating district revenue in the short-term, and enrollment is likely to continue to decline overall in the long-term.
  5. Exceptional Needs: Although overall enrollment trends are down, the share of students with greater special education needs, language learner needs, mental health needs, and learning loss needs is rising.
  6. Expectations: Increased needs have led to changing community expectations of the role of schools, and a desire for a higher level of baseline services at all schools.

States and districts will need to rely on one another to address these challenges:

  • States need strong districts to provide the best possible experience for all their students.
  • Districts need states to support their work by providing clear expectations and equitable, adequate, and sustainable funding and systemic solutions.

As both plan for the near- and long-term, neither can do it without the other. Understanding your unique state and district “6E context” is foundational to creating strong policies and programs as we move forward in 2024.

Interested in discussing the 6 Es in your context? Please contact Afton Senior Directors Heather Wendell and Kevin Wenzel to learn more about the work we do. We look forward to being in touch!

ESSER: Our Latest Window to Unjust Public Education Funding

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Funding Policy, Resource Equity.

Yet headline after headline places much of the blame on schools themselves for their spending struggles, arguing that they are too slow to distribute the billions of dollars they received from ESSER. But what’s going on behind the scenes is more complex than many recent reports lead us to believe.

Before districts spend their pandemic aid, they must submit a plan to their state education department outlining how they will allocate and leverage the influx of funds. These reports demonstrate that schools are struggling to design plans with investments in programs, resources, and initiatives that measurably move the needle for students. However, there are also legitimate reasons behind that struggle that need to be explored.

  • Historical Inequities Hurt Planning and Talent Initiatives: Many public school districts receiving ESSER funding are historically underfunded relative to student need. As a result, long before the pandemic, these districts have had the unjust burden of trying to attract and retain top teacher talent into high stakes education and care circumstances without the ability to offer commensurate teacher pay and wraparound support services. This injustice was only exacerbated when districts sought more staff with ESSER funding in a competitive labor market. Moreso, these districts have become accustomed to the mindset of doing more with less by prioritizing limited resources that don’t adequately meet the needs of all students. Shifting from this scarcity mindset requires both adequate time and proper training, neither of which were provided in any type of intentional, consistent way. This funding is thus an opportunity and challenge to build a new muscle, albeit on a long-neglected playing field.
  • Decision Risks with Funding That’s Not Recurring: Districts are experiencing pressure to spend quickly and also produce strong results. This leaves little time to think strategically about how to allocate these funds to maximize their impact. Any strategic leader recognizes the danger of allocating one-time funds for recurring operating costs, such as teachers’ salaries or instructional positions. If district leaders come to rely on this surplus of funds, they will be confronted with a deficit if the money isn’t available in the next year or two. With this context, many leaders struggled to identify the best course of action with the funds.
  • Navigating the Day to Day: While the pandemic caused educators to feel burnout, district leaders were faced with retaining staff who felt overworked and underappreciated. These district leaders were not only navigating pandemic-era schooling, but were also focused on preventing a mass exodus of teachers leaving the profession due to stress. In any given month, week, or single day, these same leaders were taking in new information and having to make quick, high-stakes decisions about closing schools, supporting remote learning, shifting masking, quarantine, and vaccination policies, communicating effectively with parents, and addressing learning loss and trauma. As schools reopened, many have seen unprecedented enrollment declines – making planning for student needs uncertain and the funding expected to be received, lower than anticipated. With so many high-priority decisions taking precedence, school systems used the funding in unanticipated ways, at varying paces, and in some cases, as a replacement for funding they had anticipated for a higher number of students.

Now we’re faced with a critical question: Where do we go from here?

The challenges we’re seeing with spending only reinforce the larger challenges of chronic underfunding relative to student needs. As a one-time investment with little infrastructure to support effective spending, the challenges with ESSER are our window into how we might solve systemic problems. If the funding did exist in a reliable, equitable, sustained way, our schools furthest from success would begin to thrive, student mobility would begin to stabilize, and there would be no limit to the positive impact we could make for the next generation.

Financial planning for remote learning: Afton’s lessons learned from hundreds of technology-enabled school models

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Effective Governance, Financial Sustainability, Resource Equity.

Students, teachers, and parents received a crash course in the spring to varying degrees of success, and this summer has allowed schools to evaluate that experience. As SY20-21 approaches and COVID-19 risks grow, more and more cities and states across the country are anticipating delayed in-person re-openings and creating fully remote options for some or all families. For many of these schools, the financial aspects of this continuation in technology-enabled instruction remains blurry.

While the types of technology-enabled learning employed today with remote and virtual learning may change after the pandemic, the experience will inevitably have lasting effects on how instruction is delivered in a post-pandemic world. School systems have made significant investments in hardware, software, and access, all of which will be accessible beyond the pandemic. And teachers will have learned new approaches to instructional delivery and student engagement which may inform their future practices.

For school business officials and boards across the country, now is the time to ensure that your new year’s budget and procurement planning fully captures the needs of your school system as it delivers technology-enabled instruction. And now is the time to understand what longer term investments may be needed to sustain aspects of technology-enabled instruction that will be relevant beyond the pandemic.

Since 2011, Afton has worked with over 200 schools, school systems, and school leaders in developing and evaluating long-term resource plans to support innovative school models, including those incorporating technology into the classroom. While most of these school models were not the virtual classrooms being employed during COVID-19, many of them require similar resources to virtual and hybrid learning. Much can be gleaned from the investments made by these schools to assist in financial planning today. As follows, we share three primary points of advice for school systems about financial planning for technology-enabled instruction.

Invest heavily in staff and their professional development.

For many, this is a new way of instructional delivery. The most critical thing to remember is that technology does not do the teaching – it enables the teaching.

Our advice:

Ensure the budget includes a material, recurring investment in professional development and teacher collaboration and planning time. Time and time again, in our discussions with school leaders and evaluations of their financial plans, investments in additional staff and professional development to support technology-enabled instruction proved to be the most important investments.

District leaders of schools implementing technology-enabled instruction invested more than 50% of one-time and recurring funding in personnel.

Following is a summary of actual and projected 5-year expenditures of Districts and Charter networks implementing technology-enabled school models. The data represent the resource allocation plans for 11 school systems, 110 schools, 850 classrooms and 36,000 students as of fiscal year 2019.

Be flexible and expect trial and error.

There will likely be some initial hardware and software choices that, when implemented, do not fully fit the needs of staff and students.

Our advice:

Ensure the budget includes a contingency for hardware and software and that procurement policies and practices are in place to enable swift course corrections. These often require significant changes in policy, but also culture shifts to ensure responsiveness, flexibility, and adaptability.

Plan now for hardware refreshes and sustaining software and professional development.

Because there are likely to be aspects of today’s pandemic-induced instruction that will forever change instructional delivery practices, school systems will need to plan for maintaining its technology and professional development investments into the future. Devices purchased during the pandemic will need to be refreshed in a few years, and there will need to be a provision for annual replacement devices. Learning management systems and instructional content may need to be enhanced or upgraded. Teachers and administrators will evolve in their use of technology as will their professional development needs. Post-pandemic, there will be school systems that will re-think how instruction should be delivered – including migrating to more competency-based approaches, changing classroom structures, and rethinking school scheduling and course offerings with a new view of in-person and virtual instruction at some grade levels. These considerations may completely change needs for school-level staffing, technology, and professional development investments.

Our advice:

Ensure you have a multi-year financial plan and include a contingency for renewing the current technology and professional development investments. As it is appropriate, begin assessing successes and opportunities that arise from this shift to technology-enabled instruction, and what implications it may have in the post-pandemic world. As you think ahead to long-term strategic planning, identify resources and services that could potentially be repurposed to meet post-pandemic instructional design opportunities.

How does this apply to your remote learning plan now?

As you think about the fall, and investments you might need to make, we can look at the types of investments that have been made by school in other models of technology-enabled instruction. Here we share the costs you can expect at the district and school level, alongside a few ideas for tradeoff considerations.

One-time costs: we define one-time costs as those that will expire or end after the school model has been fully implemented. An example of a one-time cost includes intensive professional development, or a program manager position that may be filled only during implementation, which may take anywhere from one to three years.

These findings are consistent with outcomes of a study our team led through LEAP Innovations in Chicago, wherein we evaluated the costs of implementing personalized learning across six schools. This study, Sustaining Innovation and Preparing for Scale: Financial Sustainability Research and Analysis of Personalized Learning School Models, found one-time investments ranged from $233 to $1,135 on a per pupil basis across the six schools.

Recurring costs: Our definition of recurring costs to support tech-enabled school models includes those investments that will be required to sustain these models in the long-term (i.e. after an implementation period).

Trade-offs: To fund these recurring costs, we have seen Districts employ strategies such as developing a long term staffing strategy, identifying inefficient technology spending and reallocating funding for textbooks and school supplies.

  • Long-term staffing plan. We recommend each district implementing a tech-enabled school model(s) perform a review of their existing position structure to identify opportunities to create positions required for long term success of these new models (such as blended learning coaches, data specialists) while also identifying opportunities for change in their existing structure (review of job descriptions, plan for turnover, etc.). When implemented effectively, a significant component of long term funding of recurring tech-enabled needs can be sourced with this approach.
  • Evaluate technology spending. Various studies have shown a significant underutilization of existing technology within school districts. Performing even a basic technology audit (such as one offered by Learn) could identify opportunities to more effectively leverage limited available funding for more impactful information technology spending.
  • Reallocate existing funding. More and more districts are reallocating historical funding from supplies and textbooks to software, content and devices. There is also an opportunity to evaluate central services and determine how to best support schools utilizing technology-driven instruction through re-evaluating large major contracts.

The specific impact this has on your schools depends on your start point, your approach to SY20-21, and what you envision for the future:

Given this, as you build your financial plan, consider these specific questions:

  • What is our starting point for technology? Should we (have we) conducted a technology audit?
  • What supports do our teachers need? What professional development could be provided to effectively support teachers in effective use of technology for remote learning?
  • What is our level of student access, and what do we need to do now to improve access (including devices, wifi, servers), if anything?
  • Do we have the right blend of online/asynchronous vs. synchronous materials and content? Should we (have we) conducted a software/content audit?
  • Can we improve upon student assessment and/or data systems? Should we invest in or support data-driven instruction PD or platforms for our teaching staff?
  • Do we anticipate these being short-term or long-term investments?
  • What sources of funding exist for one-time and recurring investments?

What have you learned about the financial aspects of remote instruction? Do these findings and recommendations ring true to you? What would you add or change? Let us know! Contact us at connect@aftonpartners.com.