April 2008 EdSource Forum Resources

Main 2008 Forum page

The resources below provide substantive background for the April 2008 EdSource Forum, Big Visions and Hard Realities: What We Can Do Now

What does it take to turn around schools and districts?

From EdSource

• Worthy Goals, Limited Success: Intervention Programs in California
  This 16-page EdSource report looks at the history and evaluations of the state's intervention programs.

From Mass Insight

• Turnaround Challenge
  Mass Insight Education & Research Institute is an independent non-profit that organizes public schools, higher education, business, and state government to significantly improve student achievement. This report focuses on school turnaround design.

From the Center on Education Policy

• Managing More Than a Thousand Remodeling Projects: School Restructuring in California
  This national policy group looks, in a Feb. 2008 report, at California's turn-around efforts in response to NCLB.

California's education budget

From www.californiaschoolfinance.org

• Budget and Funding
  This impartial analysis describes Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for 2008-09 and outlines the immediate impacts it is expected to have on California school districts. It also links to the Legislative Analyst's Office analyses of the budget.
• Finance System
  This section describes how the state's education system is funded, including revenues, allocations, and expenditures. It provides a history of California school finance.

From EdSource

• School Finance Highlights 2007-08
  This two-page summary focuses on the money budgeted for schools in the 2007-08 fiscal year, including challenges facing districts and the state as well as funding projections in the near future.

From the California Government

• California Department of Finance
  The DOF posts the state budget and other official documents.
• Legislative Analyst's Office
  The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office provides annual analyses of budget proposals and final decisions, and this year has released an alternative proposal for the K-14 budget.
  

Finance reform

From UC Berkeley Law School (Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity)

• Getting Beyond The Facts: Reforming California School Finance
  This brief provides specific recommendations for reforming California’s school finance system. It details a simplified system of revenue allocations based on student needs and regional cost differences.

From the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)

• Funding Forumulas for California Schools: Simulations and Supporting Data
  This report is based on a computer simulation of the funding reforms proposed in the policy brief listed above.

The power of data

From the Getting Down To Facts studies

• California’s State and Local Education Data Systems
  This 5-page research summary distills the findings from two data-systems studies from the Getting Down to Facts research project.

From EdSource's Fall 2007 California Education Policy Convening

• Children’s Education: The Clear Case For Data Systems Redesign
  Children Now's policy brief discusses the problems with California's data collections efforts and calls for a new system.