Helping School Leaders Spend Wisely
June 23, 2019
In Education Next, Marguerite Roza, Director of the Edunomics Lab and a research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, takes a look at education finance—and considers the question of why most people “jump to the revenue side of the equation”? The “spending side,” she argues, is just as important. But part of the reason “so much less time is spent on the spending side of the equation is a lack of visibility into how the money is spent.” But that is going to change under ESSA, as school-level expenditure data disclosure is required under the federal law. But administrators aren’t prepared for this situation. The solution? “Training for district leaders and principals must go beyond compliance. Training must build their capacity to make smart, tactical decisions that wring the most from scarce dollars so that they can do the most for students.”