The audience for this guide is state, local, and program leaders who want to learn more about federal funding sources that can support early literacy programs and systems reform. Funding available through federal programs can help address the underlying causes of children failing to learn to read by the end of third grade, such as limited access…

President Barack Obama submitted his third budget request to Congress on February 14th, 2011. The detailed budget request includes proposed funding levels for federal programs and agencies in aggregate for the upcoming 10 fiscal years, and specific fiscal year 2012 funding levels for individual programs subject to appropriations. Congress will use…

As part of the evaluation of the Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project, American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted surveys of principals, teachers, and members of School Site Councils (SSCs) to gather information on the attitudes and perspectives regarding the implementation of key components of the SSFR model in Twin Rivers…

In 2009 the Obama administration announced a focused commitment to turn around 5,000 of the United States' chronically lowest-performing public schools as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This commitment came with $3 billion in funding for the School Improvement Grant program, or SIG, along with new guidelines to ensure…

Title I, Part A and Title II, Part A funds are provided to Houston Independent School District (HISD) through the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Both funds focus on enhancing student achievement, Title I, Part A through providing…

This study was based on convergence of two educational theories: 1) that professional development improves teacher quality and instructional practices and therefore positively affects student achievement and 2) allocation of school resources positively affects student achievement. It is a common educational belief that professional development…

There's a lot of work happening all over the country to "turnaround" schools. Federal stimulus programs, including Title 1 Improvement Grants and Race to the Top, have caused many states and school systems to focus on how to address schools trapped in a cycle of failure and "turn them around." On the school level, there are…

Two years ago, the problems of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) were so significant that many believed the system was beyond repair. According to the 2007 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), only eight percent of eighth graders were on grade level in math, and 12 percent were in reading. With achievement gaps between…

Principals must devote a vast amount of time and energy to campus funding and budgetary issues because budgeting and accounting procedures are an integral part of an effective instructional program. In fact, a principal's role in the budgetary process significantly impacts both budget development and instructional planning. Principals who fail to…

To get a feel for the last time Vanderbilt University confronted economic volatility and stress similar to what U.S. colleges and universities have experienced over the past two years, the author carefully reviewed his predecessors' notes. His conclusion: the early 1930s. That was the last time a chancellor at Vanderbilt University detailed…

Family characteristics' links to literacy learning and their differences across macrosystems (economic and cultural contexts) were explored in multilevel analyses of the reading tests and questionnaire responses of 193,841 fifteen-year-olds across 41 countries. Students who had two parents, had higher family socioeconomic status (SES), were native…

Museum educators at small museums are sometimes thrust, solo, into building budgets from scratch. In this case study an emerging professional discovers that she has limited funding for an existing program that she was hired to run. She finds that she has to rebuild the budget to discover the program's true costs, and that sustainability depends…

Beginning in 1997, a series of Ohio Supreme Court decisions ruled that Ohio's school foundation-based funding system was unconstitutional. Despite judicially mandated reform directives, little change was made until recently when Ohio adopted a modified Evidence-Based Model (EBM) into its statutory funding scheme. Ohio's EBM is intended to remedy…

This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation's (GEF) "Developing Futures"™ in Education program in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS). As described in the CPRE proposal and research design, the purpose was to closely…

The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965" ("ESEA") requires that school districts provide services to higher-poverty, Title I schools, from state and local funds, that are at least comparable to services in lower-poverty, non-Title I schools. The current Title I comparability requirement allows school districts to…