 | Presenter: Karen Hawley Miles
President and Executive Director, Education Resource Strategies
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This session followed up on the opening plenary by giving attendees the chance to make tough decisions on how to improve education in a time of scarce resources. Miles talked about the nuts and bolts of slimming down school budgets, and how states and districts should go about deciding what to spend money on and what to cut, with the ultimate goal of improving student achievement. She said
states and districts ought to think long-term and make decisions that are sustainable, not short-term cuts that aren’t. Miles also talked about the importance of having a concrete vision to guide decisions on budget issues. “We’re still working from what is. But we have to invest toward a vision,” she said.
Most of her guidance focused on rethinking current policies on issues such as job and compensation structures, standard class size, and the time spent in schools to meet student and teacher needs.
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| Teams try to reach consensus on tough budget decisions. |
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What advocacy groups can do
She suggested PIE Network members can help in this effort by:
- Building an understanding of the current misalignments.
- Supporting investment and profiling resource trade-offs required for new school design.
- Promoting the implementation of teacher evaluation systems that are more than just tests and fit with new school designs.
- Supporting the revision of work rules to include quality and fit over seniority in staffing and assignments.
A game with tough choices
Afterwards, players discussed their top challenges. Several said that they were mindful of the political costs involved in making some of their decisions. They also observed that when making decisions on cuts versus expenditures, they tended to default to status quo constraints without keeping their reform vision at the forefront.Miles session was highly interactive—participants played “Budget Hold’em,” a game in which players must cut their budget by 5% without sacrificing students. Players use the guidelines Miles outlined in her presentation to inform their decisions.
