At CRPE, our previous finance research centered on how funding systems could support the growth of charter schools and portfolio-style governance, with a strong emphasis on equity, transparency, and flexibility in resource allocation. We examined how traditional formulas often disadvantaged schools of choice and studied weighted or student-based funding models that might better match dollars to student needs.
Today, our focus has shifted to how education finance can help schools recover and adapt in the face of disruption. We study how pandemic-era funding was used, what lessons districts learned, and how the expiration of those funds creates new fiscal challenges. We also examine how shifting federal priorities—such as efforts to scale back or restructure education funding—affect schools’ capacity to innovate, sustain supports, and equitably serve all students. Across this evolution, our commitment remains the same: to understand how funding systems can be designed to meet student needs while enabling schools to respond to change.
In 2009, the federal government committed over $3 billion to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants in Washington State, where researchers found that districts and schools are using the grants for only marginal change.
In this chapter Parker Baxter argues that by reimagining the distribution of funding, facilities, and other district assets without regard to whether a school is a district school or a charter school, districts can strike a unique and powerful bargain with charter schools: shared resources and shared responsibility.
This essay was written for the PIE Network 5th Annual Policy Summit, September 2011. The authors argue that state education agencies need to shift from their role of compliance monitor to performance manager—a shift most are ill-positioned for.
This study identifies key functions performed by state education agencies, estimates the relative level of resources devoted to each activity, and explores ways SEAs could free up resources to build school improvement capacity.
In April 2010, the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation convened a group of researchers and financial analysts to discuss how to better understand the financing and sustainability of CMOs.