Educational Economics ─ Where Do School Funds Go?

Roza, who worked with a group of researchers at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the U. of Washington to analyze school spending, examines the inefficiency of educational spending from the perspective of schools in the US and questions who decides to use the money in a certain way, why the money is used that way, what drives spending decisions and how it relates to what the US is trying to do for students, and how costs compare across different priorities, strategies, and objectives. She demonstrates how funding flows inhibit a school's effort to deliver services to students aligned with its academic priorities, and how individuals at different levels of the system play different roles in determining the use of resources. She contends that the current state of spending creates no accountability for resource allocation decisions and considers how competing theories of action create problems for schools, claiming that connecting spending to student outcomes will require an overhaul of the system. She offers a framework for this overhaul in conclusion. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)