Financing Schools for High Performance: Strategies for Improving the Use of Educational Resources

This essential new resource shows how educators can use existingdollars effectively and productively. The key lies in creatingfinance systems that give schools greater control over theirbudgets?allowing more resources to flow directly to teachers andstudents.

Allan Odden and Carolyn Busch look at inefficiencies in currenteducation spAnding, examine varied approaches to school-basedfinancing, and offer recommAndations for restructuring financesystems to meet ambitious reform goals. In addition, they proposeways to make funding more equitable across districts, outline thevarious elements that make school-based management work, anddescribe the key roles and responsibilities for the district, evenin a decentralized system.

Financing Schools for High Performance is filled with examples ofbudgets, finance structures and formulas. It will prove to be anindispensable aid for state, district, and school-leveladministrators.

ALLAN ODDEN is professor of educational administration and policy at the University of Wisconsin?Madison and codirector of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. He is the editor of Rethinking School Finance (Jossey-Bass, 1992). CAROLYN BUSCH is an education finance advisor to Governor Locke in Washington State. Previously she worked as a research associate at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Wisconsin?Madison.