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How schools spend money
How does your district's spending on central administration, maintenance, instructional services and so forth compare with others around the nation?
The ERS National Survey of School District Budgets shows the typical breakdown of school district budgets nationwide in 1995-96 was as follows:
Instructional services, 69.7 percent, including 50.5 percent for classroom instruction, 9.6 percent for special education services, 2.8 percent for books ;and materials, 4.2 percent for auxiliary instructional services such as counselors and librarians, 1.5 percent for curriculum and staff development and the remainder for contracted services such as tuition to other districts.
School site leadership, the offices of principals and assistant principals, 5.6 percent.
Student services, 7.2 percent, including health, attendance, transportation, food service, and so forth.
Central office administrative and school board functions, 4.8 percent.
Maintenance and operations, 7.9 percent.
Heating, cooling and utilities, 2.6 percent.
Other expenses, 2.2 percent. These included fire insurance premiums and short-term interest on borrowed money.
Over ten years, from 1985-86 compared to 1995-96, the percentage of the budget allocated to instructional services has increased, from 65.4 percent to 69.7 percent. Maintenance an operations expenses declined from 8.9 percent to 7.9 percent in 1995-96, and heating, cooling and utilities declined the most, from 3.9 percent ten years ago to 2.6 percent in 1995-96.
For more information about ERS or the survey of school district budgets, call 703/243-2100 or write ERS at 2000 Clarendon Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22201.
Source: School Business Affairs, September, 1996
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Population trends
According to the U.S. Department of Education, between 1996 and 2006:
Total public and private school enrollment will rise to a new record, 54.6 million.
Public high school enrollment will increase by 15 percent.
The high school graduation rate will increase by 17 percent.
College enrollment is expected to rise by 14 percent.
Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans will be the fastest growing segments of the student population.
To serve these children at current levels, the nation will need:
90,000 additional teachers.
More than 6,000 more schools
About $15 billion in additional annual operating expenditures.
In Illinois, according to census reports, population is projected to increase from 11.708 million in 1993 to 13.218 million in 2020. Census Bureau figures project an increased proportion of minority Illinoisans under the age of 19. The population of whites under the age of 19 is projected to decline from 2.633 million in 1995 to 2.499 million in 2020. The black under-19 population is expected to increase from 681,000 to 903,000 in that time period, and the number of Hispanics under the age of 19 is expected to increase from 440,000 in 1995 to 778,000 in 2020.
Source: "Baby Boom Echo 2" at Internet site www.ed.gov and U.S. Census figures found at www.census.gov .
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Chicago
The new leaders of the Chicago Public Schools are serious about improving student achievement. In a bold assault on the widespread academic failure that plagues the nation's third largest school system, Chicago's School Reform Board of Trustees has placed 109 schools -- almost 20 percent of the city's total -- on academic probation. The board targeted schools where fewer than 15 percent of students performed at grade level on national standardized reading tests.
The action puts these troubled schools under the supervision of outside management teams and allows the school board to replace principals and teachers if student performance does not improve.
Earlier this year, the districts chief executive officer Paul G. Vallas ordered mandatory summer school for about 100,000 poor-performing students.
In another initiative, Vallas reportedly is exploring partnerships with Chicago churches to help meet the needs of youngsters growing up in tough, poor neighborhoods. Vallas' vision is that the churches can help with tutoring, pre-school, homework centers and anti-truancy programs -- and that they can do it without running afoul of church-state constitutional issues.
Vallas also is training welfare mothers to serve as tutor-mentors in the homes of the city's most at-risk children.
Source: School Board News, October 15, 1996, and Daily Report Card, October 23, electronically distributed by the National Education Goals panel
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Preschool
All three- and four-year-olds should have access to high-quality preschool, urges the Carnegie Task Force on Learning in the Primary Grades. A study released on September 16 calls for the nation to focus its attention and resources on the education of children during the crucial age span of three to ten years.
The report, Years of Promise: A Comprehensive Learning Strategy for America's Children, notes that children "during the preschool years make the developmental leaps that form the basis of later achievement."
The task force finds that "while most industrial nations have publicly supported education for three - to four-year -olds, the United States has an ineffective and substandard non-system of early care and learning that relies too heavily on parent fees, compromises children's healthy development, and jeopardizes their chances of succeeding in school."
Shirley Malcon, head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, argues that universal preschool can become a reality if there is a national commitment. She notes that there was no universal kindergarten 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, ERIC researchers find that that the U.S. lags far behind many other countries in providing public preschool. In the U.S., 66 percent of five-year -olds, 36 percent of four-year-olds, and 14 percent of three-year-olds were enrolled in public programs in 1995.
That compares to:
The ERIC researchers also found that -- no surprise -- most poor children are not enrolled in public programs, and those who are take part mostly in Head Start and other programs in public schools.
You can order the report from the Carnegie Corporation at 301/645-2742 or 212/207-6285.
Source: National School Boards Association News Service and electronically-distributed ERIC reports accessed via http://www.ed.gov
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Teenage birthrates
The birthrate among teenage girls ages 15 to 19 dropped three percent from 1994 to 1995, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate for African American women dropped the most: eight percent from 1994 to 1995 and 17 percent since 1991. No reasons have been pinpointed for the welcome decrease, but information programs advising teenagers to delay sex or use protection may be having an impact.
Donna Butts, executive director of the National Organization for Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting, suggests that programs targeting upper elementary and middle grades are still needed.
The decline reverses a trend since the early 1970s, of births to unwed mothers increasing by one percentage point a year.
Source: Education Week, October 16, 1996
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Baby boomlet
Perhaps you've heard the term "baby boom echo." It refers to the current crop of youngsters who are breaking the baby boom record for school enrollment, 51.3 million students in 1961. Appropriately enough, the record-breakers are the children of the baby boomers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 51.7 million of them started school this fall.
"With so many young people coming of age and needing a quality education to prepare for the future, America will surely be tested on whether we will invest in time, energy and resources so that these children and this nation can look to the future with confidence," said Education Secretary Richard W. Riley.
Like any echo, the effects of this one will reverberate. This year's enrollment record represents only the mid-point of a 20-year trend of rising school enrollments. By the year 2006, Riley estimated, America's schools will have to educate 54.6 million children.
Factors contributing to the growth include late marriages and child-bearing among baby boomers, a high birth rate among minority groups, and increased immigration. A fourth factor is that more children are enrolling in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and more young people are staying in school until they get their high school diplomas.
Source: "Baby Boom Echo I," a statement by Education Secretary Richard W. Riley, found at the Education Department's Internet site, http://www.ed.gov .
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Fighting crime
In defiance of conventional wisdom, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, school district plans to cut crime by turning off the lights after 11 p.m. in some buildings. Up until now, the district has kept the lights on 24 hours a day in all 118 of its schools. Now, six schools and two administration buildings will try turning off the lights at night and on weekends and holidays until January.
Dennis Robinson, who heads the district's risk management office, thinks that will cut crime "because people have to see what they're doing."
Says Robinson, "The utility companies have brainwashed us all into thinking that if you want safety, you have to keep the lights on."
The experiment will show whether turning off the lights reduces crime. It certainly will result in savings in the electric bill, which will be put into the educational program.
Meanwhile, in the Azle, Texas, Independent School District, criminal charges are used as a discipline tool. The district's no-tolerance code of conduct calls for students to be ticketed for such offenses as fighting, assault, disorderly conduct, theft and foul language.
Students who violate the code can either admit guilt and pay a $20 fine or request a hearing in teen court where offenders "pay" through community service.
However, teens can't opt for teen court if they've been there in the past two years. Instead, they are sent to municipal court, where they can be assigned to perform community services or face a $132 fee for each charge. Charges are filled by individual students or teachers, with the support and blessing of the district. For more information, contact Dwain Bates, director of personnel and board policy, 817/444-3235.
Source: School Board News, published by the National School Boards Association, October 29, 1996
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Reforming the reformers
For years now, every politician and every academic in the country has been telling you how you should run your schools. By and large, they're all wet, says Stanley Pogrow.
In an article titled "Reforming the Wannabe Reformers: Why Education Reforms Almost Always End Up Making Things Worse," Pogrow, associate professor of educational administration at the University of Arizona, says reforms fail because they are based on myths.
One of several myths that Pogrow explodes is that "you can understand large-scale change by understanding what happens on a very small scale." Wrong-o, says Pogrow. The reality, he says, is that "it's the scale, stupid!"
He goes on to say that "the fact that something works in a few classrooms, in a few schools...and so on says nothing about whether or how it can be disseminated or will actually work on a large scale."
There are, he says, "almost no cases in which researchers have studied an innovative practice on a large scale, as it was happening, over an extended period of time...Thus, reforms supposedly based on research are, at best, little more than hunches that are usually based on inapplicable studies."
Reforms based on this and other myths, says Pogrow, have led to the repeated failure of reform initiatives, repeated cycling of inadequate progressive and traditional reforms, an misleading conclusions and misleading uses of research.
Source: "Reforming the Wannabe Reformers," Stanley Pogrow, Phi Delta Kappan, June, 1996, p. 656