The Education Gadfly Weekly

The dictum states: Teacher quality is the single most important in-school factor for student achievement. The corollary goes: It’s hard to staff low-income schools with high-bar teachers. Thus: Students who need the strongest teachers often do not get them. This recent Institute of Education Sciences report, using data from seven large urban districts that participated in its two-year Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), analyzes whether school districts can incentivize top-tier teachers to transfer into chronically low-performing schools. TTI recruited districts’ top 20 percent of elementary and middle school teachers (based on two years of value-added scores). It offered each potential participant $20,000 in added pay (awarded over the course of two years) if he or she transferred to and remained in an identified low-performing school. (Retention bonuses of $10,000 were also awarded to upper-echelon teachers already in low-performing schools.) Most eligible teachers did not apply to participate in the TTI program. Of this group, 29 percent cited their lack of confidence in teaching in a low-performing school as reason not to transfer. A quarter stated that $20,000 was not a large enough incentive. Still, the 24 percent who did apply (and were subsequently placed by principals) filled 90 percent of the vacancies at the low-performing schools. The report offers much more by way of descriptive analysis (those who participated in TTI, for example, were more likely to be African American, unmarried, or unsatisfied with their previous schools’ policies). But it stops there. Those curious as to how the transfers affected student achievement in the receiving schools will have to wait until the next report in this series. Yet even these preliminary data suggest that it is possible to incentivize top teachers to move into needy schools.

Steven Glazerman,Steven, Ali Protik, Bing-ru Teh, Julie Bruch, Neil Seftor, Moving Teachers: Implementation of Transfer Incentives in Seven Districts (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2012).

Over the past few years, Detroit has undergone a host of large-scale reforms in attempts to revitalize the city’s K-12 education system: Among the more promising, Motown has dramatically expanded choice options for students. Now, under the auspices of the Michigan Future Schools and others, Detroit is set to launch three dozen new choice schools over the next several years. This unique study by Patrick Wolf and Thomas Stewart examines the school-choice shopping behaviors of parents in the Motor City and offers recommendations that bear on the next generation of choice schools. Researchers conducted doorstep interviews of over 1,000 households representing roughly 1,700 school-age children to ascertain how many Detroit parents, particularly those of low income, exercise school choice. They found that 71 percent of Detroit families have shopped for alternative schools before—though with varying levels of engagement. At present, roughly 45 percent of Motown children are attending a non-neighborhood school (with 22 percent in charters, 15 percent in public schools outside Detroit Public Schools (DPS), and the rest in magnet and private schools). Parents rely mostly on other parents and friends when they consider options and most say they value strong academics, school safety, convenience, and, especially at the high school level, extracurricular activities. They typically school-shop when their children are entering capstone grades (such as fifth or eighth). As for why many families do not avail themselves of Detroit’s school-choice options: Language barriers, transportation and scheduling issues, and parent literacy skills top the list. But there is also a contingent of parents (about 21 percent) who are “unlikely” to shop or demand choice options without a catalyst—some of whom are satisfied with or loyal to DPS. The study offers a few worthwhile if commonsensical recommendations to school-choice leaders on how to expand their services. Among them: Promote schools as part of a network (to increase brand recognition and make it easier to disseminate information), target mothers (who do most of the shopping), make open houses more convenient, and do canvassing for the schools. Too little attention has been paid to the demand side of school choice in urban districts (key for smart program expansion). This study goes a welcome distance in ameliorating that.

Patrick J. Wolf and Thomas Stewart, Understanding School Shoppers in Detroit (Detroit, MI: Michigan Future Inc, February 2012).

This how-to guide from noted ed-school professor and school-budget expert Allan Odden offers some necessary advice for school administrators learning to wield their budget axes deftly (and a number of helpful examples of how districts are doing just that). Odden’s mission—for district leaders to make cuts intelligently rather than clumsily or politically—would lead to a radical shift in the K-12 spending paradigm. And it’s about time. His thoughts on ending across-the-board, quality-blind layoffs, nixing seniority-based salary schedules, and reconfiguring employee benefits are sage advice for all. But Odden fails to embrace the full slate of funding reforms needed to save school budgets while holding students harmless. A few of his recommendations are questionable at best: one-on-one or small-group tutoring as first resort for low-performing students is likely prohibitively expensive for districts, for example. And mindless minimum staffing levels prescribing “one librarian per school”—no matter the size of the school—are shortsighted. There are a number of worthy and actionable recommendations for hard-pressed school-budget officers in this volume. Just be wary of those suggestions that add, not delete, formula-based prescriptions for funding.

Allan R. Odden, Improving Student Learning When Budgets Are Tight (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, A SAGE Company, 2012).

Will Mitt take on ed? Is Jindal gutting public schools? The podcast has answers. Plus, Janie provides the inside scoop on state accountability and Amber analyzes school shoppers in Detroit.

Amber's Research Minute

Understanding School Shoppers in Detroit

Most charter schools nationwide serve urban communities, this documentary provides a look at the challenges and successes of a rural Appalachian charter school.

The Tartans is the unique story of Portsmouth East High School in South Eastern Ohio. Portsmouth City school district was going to close the facility in 2000 until the community rallied to form a charter school and keep the school from shutting its doors.

The Fordham Foundation has sponsored Sciotoville Community School and Sciotoville Elementary Academy's since July 2011.

I’ve been in favor of results-based accountability pretty much forever. And for good reason: Before the era of academic standards, tests, and consequences, all manner of well-intended reforms failed to gain traction in the classroom. New curricula came and went; states and districts injected additional professional development into the schools; commission after commission called for more “time on task.” Yet nothing changed; achievement flat-lined. And it was impossible to know which schools were doing better than which at what.

Schools should be judged by inspectors, as well as numbers.  Photo by nathanmac87.

Then came the meteoric shock of consequential accountability, and student test scores (on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and state exams, too) started to take off. For some subgroups of students, math and reading skills improved by two or three grade levels since just the mid 1990s.

Yet we all know the downsides of the narrow focus on reading and math scores in grades three through eight and once in high school. This regimen puts enormous pressure on schools to ignore or exclude other important subjects (art, music, history, even science). It penalizes schools with an educational strategy that succeeds in the long term but doesn’t produce sky-high scores now. (I’m thinking of Waldorf schools, for instance, such as the preschool my son attends.) And it undervalues other important contributions that schools make, such as to students’ character development and social skills.

When it comes to evaluating teachers, there’s wide agreement that we need to look at student achievement results—but not exclusively. Teaching is a very human act; evaluating good teaching takes human judgment—and the teacher’s role in the school’s life, and her students’ lives, goes beyond measurable academic gains. Thus the interest in regular observations by principals and/or master teachers. These folks can pick up on nuances missed by value-added data—plus can provide actionable feedback to instructors so that they can improve their craft. (Harrison School District Two in Colorado has one of the best plans in this regard—and its architect is about to take over the much larger Dallas school system)

So why do we assume, when it comes to evaluating schools, that we must look at numbers alone? Sure, there have been calls to build additional indicators, beyond test scores, into school grading systems. These might include graduation rates, student or teacher attendance rates, results from student surveys, AP course-taking or exam-passing rates, etc. Our own recent paper on model state accountability systems offers quite a few ideas along these lines. This is all well and good.

But it’s not enough. It still assumes that we can take discrete bits of data and spit out a credible assessment of organizations as complex as schools. That’s not the way it works in businesses, famous for their “bottom lines.” Fund managers don’t just look at the profit and loss statements for the companies in which they invest. They send analysts to go visit with the team, hear about their strategy, kick the tires, talk to insiders, find out what’s really going on. Their assessment starts with the numbers, but it doesn’t end there.

So it should be with school accountability systems. The best ones today take various data points and turn them into user-friendly letter grades, easily understandable by educators, parents, and taxpayers alike. So far so good. Why not add a human component to the process, via school inspectors like those in England? (See this excellent Education Sector paper, by my friend Craig Jerald, for background on how that works.)

Imagine: At least once a year (more would be better) a group of inspectors visits a school. (These would be professionals on contract with the state department of education—typically retired teachers and principals. In the case of charter schools, authorizers would be involved, too.) They would mostly look for two things:

• Evidence that the school is achieving important outcomes that may not be captured by the state accountability system. For example, the school’s administrators might show them test score data from a computer adaptive exam like NWEA’s that demonstrates progress for individual kids (especially those well above or below grade level) that isn’t picked up by the less-sensitive state test. Or perhaps a high school has compelling data about its graduates’ college matriculation and graduation rates that put its mediocre test scores in a different light.


• Indications that the school’s culture and instructional program are inculcating valuable attributes in their students. This is to guard against the “testing factory” phenomenon. Is the school offering a well-balanced curriculum (and extra-curriculars), or engaging in test-prep for weeks on end? Is it focused on teaching “non-cognitive” skills and attributes, such leadership, perseverance, and teamwork? Character traits like empathy, honesty, and courage?  

The school visits should not be exercises in excuse-making. This isn’t about lowering expectations because of difficulties particular communities face, or delaying needed changes because the school’s educators appear to be “trying hard.” Rather, it’s a chance to round out the picture generated by the state’s (inevitably) incomplete accountability report.

So here’s how it would work: The state would develop school grades based on a variety of indicators, as it does now. Then those grades could be raised or lowered based on the findings of the school inspectors. (Generally just a letter grade, but sometimes more.) Grades would go up because of evidence of strong outcomes not captured by the state accountability system; grades would go down because of evidence of unhealthy curricular narrowing.

Such a system would remain imperfect. Human judgment would introduce subjectivity and error into the process. Inspectors might face pressure (maybe even bribes) to raise schools’ grades. And it would be expensive—at least as compared to the testing-and-accountability systems we have now. These issues would need to be addressed.

Still, it’s worth it. To the extent that school grades (and consequences linked to them) drive policy and behavior, we ought to make sure that those grades are informed by more than just numbers. The correct response to the unintended consequences of accountability isn’t to end accountability, but to make it work better. That could have positive consequences for many years to come.

Fordham has served as an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio since mid-2005. Our schools have been mainly in Ohio’s urban core—including Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus—and the vast majority of their students have been poor and minority.

This year, we added two more schools to our sponsorship portfolio, both located in Scioto County near Ohio’s southern tip on the shores of the Ohio River, i.e., what most would term the Appalachian region of the Buckeye State. Families and children there face challenges as daunting as those in Ohio’s toughest urban neighborhoods. Scioto is one of the state’s poorest counties with an unemployment rate of 12.7 percent (the state average is 8.5 percent). It has also been ground zero for the state’s opiate epidemic: It has the third-highest overdose death rate of all eighty-eight counties in Ohio.

Together the Sciotoville Elementary School (Kindergarten through fourth grade) and Sciotoville Community School (fifth through twelfth grades) serve about 440 students. This represents about one in five children who attend a K-12 school in the local Portsmouth City School District (the home district for most Sciotoville students). The percentage of kids attending charters in that district matches the rate in Cincinnati.  

Sciotoville Community School became a charter in September 2001 when the district decided to close East High School. The master plan called for busing Sciotoville students to other buildings in Portsmouth, some of them more than an hour away. Rather than watch their school close and their kids be shuttled off to distant neighborhoods, however, community leaders rallied around the school and decided to secede from the Portsmouth City School District and turn it into a charter.

Alumni, friends, students, and staff came together to purchase the building and fix it up to serve 300 students in fifth through twelfth grades. In 2008, a Kindergarten through fourth grade elementary feeder school was added to provide a seamless K-12 experience for the community’s children.

As we learned more about Sciotoville, its schools, its families and children, its history, and its challenges over the past year, we felt compelled to share the story of the Tartans (the schools’ nickname). So Fordham’s talented “new media” manager, Joe Portnoy, and Kathryn Mullen Upton, Fordham’s director of sponsorship, spent several days there in the fall, interviewing students, parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, community leaders, and alums—literally the entire school community—to understand this story.

The resulting video documentary, “The Tartans: The story of the Sciotoville community schools,” has just been released. It documents life inside the schools and out. Joe and Kathryn interviewed alumni (of the pre-existing district school) going back as far as the 1940s. Some of Sciotoville’s current teachers had been students who returned after college. Joe filmed local business owners and community leaders who support both schools with time and money even though their kids have long since grown up. As one person says in the film, “The schools are the heart of the community and without them we’d not have a community.”

Despite tight budgets and multiple challenges, the two Sciotoville charters have steadily maintained a Continuous Improvement (a “C”) rating by the Ohio Department of Education. Their elected governing boards (an arrangement which is virtually unheard of for Ohio charters) have committed to improving student achievement.

State law in Ohio uses the term “community schools” for what others call charters. In Sciotoville, that turns out to make sense, for these schools are owned and operated by local citizens and parents. Their story is compelling and says much about how important schools and children are to sustaining a community even in the toughest of times. We invite you to view it.

Rumor has it that we will soon see an actual education plan from Mitt Romney, his team having been loath to wade into this debate during the primaries. I predict that it’ll include a strong push for vouchers, if only because this remains the clearest divide between the GOP view of education and the reform agenda of Arne Duncan and the Obama administration.

Most other distinctions are grayer today, involving degrees of difference about things like teacher evaluations, “common core” standards, and just how much discretion Washington should return to states.

Short of plain goofiness, vouchers are where bright lines get drawn.

Short of plain goofiness (as in “abolish the Department of Education”), vouchers are where bright lines get drawn. The conventional explanation is that Democrats don’t dare cross this threshold lest the teacher unions (already antsy about charters, merit pay, test-based accountability, etc.) forsake their traditional party—or simply sit on their hands come campaign season and election day, while Republicans tend to take the side of parents and don’t much care what the unions—or other parts of the education establishment—think or do.

It feels and acts like a political line—witness the political football known as the D.C. voucher program—yet not so many years ago this was primarily a split over platform language, and party positioning because vouchers were all but nonexistent. (For ages, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and a few wee towns in northern New England were the only places you could actually find any.)

That’s changed—and continues to. A few weeks back, one could already point to Indiana and Ohio, both with statewide programs. The D.C. program is back, at least for now. Louisiana moved the other day. And then there are kissing-cousin programs like tax credit scholarships in Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, and beyond.

Vouchers and their cousins are real today, thanks partly to political realignments, partly to the Zelman decision (which took the Establishment Clause issue off the table as far as the feds are concerned), and partly to mounting dismay over the performance of public schools, as well as the meager returns from other education reforms of the past two decades.

As vouchers have become real, however, the political picture has grown more complex. Eight newish factors are worth noting:

Resistance to school vouchers stems from more than just concern over separation of church and state.  Photo by Vik Nanda.

First, while the U.S. constitution is no longer a deal-breaker, some thirty-eight states have sundry provisions in their own constitutions that make it difficult or impossible to aid private schools and/or religious institutions and/or any sort of education program that isn’t “free and uniform.” (This is what killed the Florida “opportunity scholarship program” in that state's Supreme Court in 2006.) Hence there’s a practical limit to how far vouchers can really spread.

Second, as religion has loomed larger as a political issue, evangelicals (most often Republicans) are keener and keener for it to play a role in public policy, including religious education and church-affiliated schools, while secularists (more apt to be Democrats) are even more resistant to public support for such schools.

Third, other features of private schools—that have nothing to do with unions—also cause palpitations among liberals (most often Democrats), such as selectivity in the admissions office (and the risk of “exclusion” of poor or disabled or minority or other “diverse” kids). Such anxieties may not cause them to keep their own daughters and sons out of such schools but a double standard often comes into play where “public policy” is concerned.

Fourth, even as the pro-voucher team has picked up a handful (but only that) of influential Democrats, a lot of state and local Republicans have grown somewhat equivocal about school choice—charters, vouchers, inter-district transfers, and more. Their own suburban constituents, whether enrolled in public or private schools, are averse to welcoming many of those kids into their classrooms, and their proud suburban school systems don’t much want to lose their own pupils, either.

Fifth, what was for decades the strongest lobby in favor of vouchers (and tuition tax credits and more), namely the Roman Catholic Church, is today neither nearly as strong as it once was nor nearly as committed to revitalizing its own schools. It seems to have lost most of the wind from its sails.

Private schools in general are queasy about government entanglements and rules.

Sixth, private schools in general are queasy about government entanglements and rules, worried about “accountability” requirements, alarmed at the prospect of forfeiting their distinctiveness, fretful about losing control of their standards and admission processes, leery of disclosing comparable data on their own educational effectiveness, and, sometimes, legitimately unsure that they really can do a good job with those kids. Nor has American private education shown much entrepreneurial inclination to grow to accommodate greater demand.

Seventh, with state and local budgets tight, the claim that vouchers save taxpayer money over the long run is met with incredulity by school systems that can only see revenue disappearing along with headcount. And the argument that vouchers will be a needless and, for the taxpayer, costly windfall for middle-class families whose children already attend private schools is not easy to refute. (Of course, a carefully designed program may aid only “new” students.)

Eighth, and finally, the word “private” has grown even more suspect in American education circles today than it was yesterday. “Privatization” has sometimes gone badly. Some private operators of charter schools are greedy, self-absorbed, and uninterested in educational quality. (Likewise for private SES providers and such.) Early evaluations have yielded mixed results for privately operated “cyber schools." Private school (and college) tuitions keep rising without evidence of improved results. And in era of transparency and accountability, the reluctance of private educational institutions to disclose key information about themselves, their students, their academic gains, and their finances—even to private organizations such as GreatSchools.net—has made them at least slightly suspect. (Why are they so secretive?)

I’m still heartily in favor of more vouchers, provided that the program is structured with an eye toward serving the neediest kids first and making participating schools reasonably accountable for their results. I do expect the momentum in this direction to continue. But I don’t expect it to accelerate. And that’s not just because of hostility from Messrs. Obama and Duncan.

When Louisiana lawmakers last week approved Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to award vouchers to low-income children, they also ordered state schools Superintendent John White to develop a system that holds participating schools accountable for the performance of their voucher students. Now it’s up to White and his Department of Education to figure out how this is going to work. May we make a suggestion? They might consider a sliding scale of accountability, with heightened accountability requirements for private schools that rely more on public revenue. Schools that see only a few voucher students out of a private-paying enrollment of hundreds should be treated more like private schools (those voucher students would still have to take the state test under the law Louisiana adopted), but schools that see upward of 90 percent of their revenues coming from public sources should be treated more like public schools, even if that means removing them from the program for poor performance. Such an approach balances the choice of the parent, the unique characteristics of a school, and the rights of the taxpayer.

“Jindal bill tweaked to add accountability,” by Kevin McGill, Associated Press, April 7, 2012

Colorado Springs superintendent and teacher-compensation-reform pioneer Mike Miles is taking the reins in Dallas. The political and practical challenges of adapting his promising approach to a large urban district are no joke, but it's encouraging to see such a district buying in on a leader with a track record of taking on broken systems.

The Center for Education Reform recently released its annual review of the nation's charter school laws. Even with 2011 victories for charter schools in several states, the U.S. still averaged a "C" by CER's reckoning, a good reminder that choice supporters can't afford to rest on recent successes. (For another thorough look at the state of charter laws, don’t forget NAPCS’s excellent rating system.)

David Brooks neatly framed America’s economic and political divide this week in his description of two distinct U.S. economies, one driven by global competition to improve at all costs, the second insulated from these forces and slow to adapt as a result. Education, as Brooks notes, falls into the latter category, and that’s a shame: Make no mistake, our schools are very much in competition with those in other countries…and we’re not winning.

Getting Americans to sign on to an overhaul of the rules and systems governing our schools takes time, but here’s one reform we should all be able to agree on: In order to succeed, teachers cannot be hamstrung by a system that bends over backwards to litigious parents.

Congrats are owed our colleagues at Education Sector on the arrival of distinguished education scholar/reformer John Chubb as interim CEO. A veteran of Brookings, Stanford, Hoover, Edison Schools, and, most recently, Leeds Global Partners, John has co-authored seminal books on both school choice and education technology and has written sagely on many other topics, including his excellent recent Fordham piece on the governance of digital learning. We wish him and EdSector well.

Most charter schools nationwide serve urban communities, this documentary provides a look at the challenges and successes of a rural Appalachian charter school.

The Tartans is the unique story of Portsmouth East High School in South Eastern Ohio. Portsmouth City school district was going to close the facility in 2000 until the community rallied to form a charter school and keep the school from shutting its doors.

The Fordham Foundation has sponsored Sciotoville Community School and Sciotoville Elementary Academy's since July 2011.

Most charter schools nationwide serve urban communities, this documentary provides a look at the challenges and successes of a rural Appalachian charter school.

The Tartans is the unique story of Portsmouth East High School in South Eastern Ohio. Portsmouth City school district was going to close the facility in 2000 until the community rallied to form a charter school and keep the school from shutting its doors.

The Fordham Foundation has sponsored Sciotoville Community School and Sciotoville Elementary Academy's since July 2011.

The dictum states: Teacher quality is the single most important in-school factor for student achievement. The corollary goes: It’s hard to staff low-income schools with high-bar teachers. Thus: Students who need the strongest teachers often do not get them. This recent Institute of Education Sciences report, using data from seven large urban districts that participated in its two-year Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), analyzes whether school districts can incentivize top-tier teachers to transfer into chronically low-performing schools. TTI recruited districts’ top 20 percent of elementary and middle school teachers (based on two years of value-added scores). It offered each potential participant $20,000 in added pay (awarded over the course of two years) if he or she transferred to and remained in an identified low-performing school. (Retention bonuses of $10,000 were also awarded to upper-echelon teachers already in low-performing schools.) Most eligible teachers did not apply to participate in the TTI program. Of this group, 29 percent cited their lack of confidence in teaching in a low-performing school as reason not to transfer. A quarter stated that $20,000 was not a large enough incentive. Still, the 24 percent who did apply (and were subsequently placed by principals) filled 90 percent of the vacancies at the low-performing schools. The report offers much more by way of descriptive analysis (those who participated in TTI, for example, were more likely to be African American, unmarried, or unsatisfied with their previous schools’ policies). But it stops there. Those curious as to how the transfers affected student achievement in the receiving schools will have to wait until the next report in this series. Yet even these preliminary data suggest that it is possible to incentivize top teachers to move into needy schools.

Steven Glazerman,Steven, Ali Protik, Bing-ru Teh, Julie Bruch, Neil Seftor, Moving Teachers: Implementation of Transfer Incentives in Seven Districts (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2012).

Over the past few years, Detroit has undergone a host of large-scale reforms in attempts to revitalize the city’s K-12 education system: Among the more promising, Motown has dramatically expanded choice options for students. Now, under the auspices of the Michigan Future Schools and others, Detroit is set to launch three dozen new choice schools over the next several years. This unique study by Patrick Wolf and Thomas Stewart examines the school-choice shopping behaviors of parents in the Motor City and offers recommendations that bear on the next generation of choice schools. Researchers conducted doorstep interviews of over 1,000 households representing roughly 1,700 school-age children to ascertain how many Detroit parents, particularly those of low income, exercise school choice. They found that 71 percent of Detroit families have shopped for alternative schools before—though with varying levels of engagement. At present, roughly 45 percent of Motown children are attending a non-neighborhood school (with 22 percent in charters, 15 percent in public schools outside Detroit Public Schools (DPS), and the rest in magnet and private schools). Parents rely mostly on other parents and friends when they consider options and most say they value strong academics, school safety, convenience, and, especially at the high school level, extracurricular activities. They typically school-shop when their children are entering capstone grades (such as fifth or eighth). As for why many families do not avail themselves of Detroit’s school-choice options: Language barriers, transportation and scheduling issues, and parent literacy skills top the list. But there is also a contingent of parents (about 21 percent) who are “unlikely” to shop or demand choice options without a catalyst—some of whom are satisfied with or loyal to DPS. The study offers a few worthwhile if commonsensical recommendations to school-choice leaders on how to expand their services. Among them: Promote schools as part of a network (to increase brand recognition and make it easier to disseminate information), target mothers (who do most of the shopping), make open houses more convenient, and do canvassing for the schools. Too little attention has been paid to the demand side of school choice in urban districts (key for smart program expansion). This study goes a welcome distance in ameliorating that.

Patrick J. Wolf and Thomas Stewart, Understanding School Shoppers in Detroit (Detroit, MI: Michigan Future Inc, February 2012).

This how-to guide from noted ed-school professor and school-budget expert Allan Odden offers some necessary advice for school administrators learning to wield their budget axes deftly (and a number of helpful examples of how districts are doing just that). Odden’s mission—for district leaders to make cuts intelligently rather than clumsily or politically—would lead to a radical shift in the K-12 spending paradigm. And it’s about time. His thoughts on ending across-the-board, quality-blind layoffs, nixing seniority-based salary schedules, and reconfiguring employee benefits are sage advice for all. But Odden fails to embrace the full slate of funding reforms needed to save school budgets while holding students harmless. A few of his recommendations are questionable at best: one-on-one or small-group tutoring as first resort for low-performing students is likely prohibitively expensive for districts, for example. And mindless minimum staffing levels prescribing “one librarian per school”—no matter the size of the school—are shortsighted. There are a number of worthy and actionable recommendations for hard-pressed school-budget officers in this volume. Just be wary of those suggestions that add, not delete, formula-based prescriptions for funding.

Allan R. Odden, Improving Student Learning When Budgets Are Tight (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, A SAGE Company, 2012).