An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Resources, Incentives and Accountability: Overhauling California’s System of School Finance” featuring Eric Hanushek of The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is now available.

Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this seminar, Eric Hanushek concludes that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Instead, Hanushek proposes a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising student achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions about how to run their schools, ultimately leading to improved student performance.

Eric A. Hanushek is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His most recent book (with Alfred A. Lindseth) is Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools, published by Princeton University Press in 2009. The speaker was introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.

Download Mr. Hanushek’s Powerpoint presentation.

Listen to the audio of this seminar: (note: the recording starts a few seconds late)

Download this audio file to your computer (zip)

An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Designing Categorical Grants to Support Student Learning” featuring Lawrence O. Picus with comments by John Mockler is now available.

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. Flexibility in the use of categorical grant funding creates a paradox because categorical programs are established to focus school resources on high priority programs. Allowing alternative use of these funds is both counter-productive and suggests lack of focus in the mix of categorical programs available. This session provided an overview of the purposes of categorical grants, discussed issues pertaining to local v. state control over the use of educational resources and described Picus’ recent research on ways to structure categorical grants to improve student performance. Picus offered suggestions for ways California’s myriad of confusing categorical programs can be reformed to focus on student learning. John Mockler offered some comments on Picus’ presentation.

Lawrence O. Picus is professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. His research focuses on school finance and the allocation and use of educational resources to improve student learning. He has conducted school finance adequacy studies in a number of states, and helped design the school funding systems in Wyoming, Arkansas and North Dakota. Ohio is currently considering a funding system based on his work.

John Mockler is the president of John Mockler and Associates, Inc., a consulting firm in Sacramento. He is the former Executive Director of the California State Board of Education and the former Interim Secretary for Education for the State of California. The speaker was introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.

Listen to the audio of this seminar:

Download this audio file to your computer (zip)