Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the U.S. now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. In this seminar, Eric Hanushek concludes the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Hanushek proposes a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions on running schools, leading to improved student performance.

As CA continues to wrestle with the challenges of providing sufficient funding for schools, understanding the relationships among school funding, effective school resources, and outcomes is essential. In this seminar Norton Grubb addresses four principal questions: (1) What kinds of school resources make a difference to outcomes? (2) Why is the relationship between spending per student and outcomes so weak? (3) Why are outcomes so inequitable? (4) And what should CA do now, in both school finance and other areas of school policy, to avoid further damage to the state’s education system?

As part of the Legislature’s February 2009 budget revisions, school districts were granted more flexibility in the use of some categorical grants. These actions offer an exceptional opportunity to reform California’s confusing system of categorical grants. This seminar provides an overview of the purposes of categorical grants pertaining to local v. state control over the use of educational resources to improve student performance. Lawrence O. Picus offers suggestions for ways California’s myriad of confusing categorical programs can be reformed to focus on student learning.

American Institutes For Research presents findings from a recent study of the implementation of a weighted student funding system in two California school districts. Researchers will assess how the distribution of resources changed in these two districts after the move to student-based funding, and identify “lessons learned” for other districts and for state policy-makers who are considering more equitable and effective strategies for allocating scarce resources in California’s education system.

This seminar will feature Jacob Adams, Professor of Education, Claremont Graduate University, presenting the findings and recommendations of the National Working Group on Funding Student Learning, with comments by Gerry Shelton, Founder and Partner, Capitol Advisors Group. Moderated by David N. Plank, Executive Director, PACE.