Megan Sweet / commentary
November 12, 2013

Megan Sweet

Megan Sweetness

For every bit long every bit anyone tin recall, California has had a strong reputation for designing and testing bold reforms. From the standards movement to accountability to charter schools, California has initiated policies aimed at improving educational outcomes for all children. But recently, faced with crippling budget cuts, we've struggled to maintain our current practices, let lonely take on exciting new ideas.

Today, with the worst of the budget cuts behind us and two new state policies promoting more local autonomy over fiscal and programmatic decision-making, we are entering a new era with the potential to revitalize public pedagogy.

California's adoption of the Common Core State Standards affords significant leeway to school districts in how they address the transition. The state'due south new Local Control Funding Formula promises a sea change in the human relationship between the state and districts, and therefore between districts and schools and the communities they serve. Together these two initiatives represent a whole-system change that could disrupt how schools are run in California – from the California Section of Teaching downwardly to the individual school level and everywhere in between. This disruption is a good matter. It has the potential to address the achievement gap that has persisted in California for decades, and to empower families and communities to partner with educators to create schoolhouse programs tailored to local needs.

But these initiatives besides pose major design and implementation challenges, and the traditional ways districts support schools, measure student outcomes and hold schools accountable for results all must change. With the magnitude and complication of these changes, it is tempting to address each change in our traditional organizational silos, to permit the curriculum and education experts to manage the changes related to the Common Core standards, and to leave the new funding system to the budget or finance role.

This would be a grave mistake.

While the two might seem like distinct programs that require separate approaches to implementation, they have more in common than may exist obvious on the surface. At that place is a great benefit to addressing the changes together.

For both the new standards and the new funding formula, school districts are required to engage their stakeholders to develop plans for the changes called for under each initiative and to meliorate student achievement. The stakeholders are the same: teachers, students, parents, union representatives and community-based organizations. This means that districts are being held accountable to school communities in a formal mode that tin can experience loftier-risk and complicated. Simply it also provides an opportunity to develop a coordinated plan to conduct this engagement. This plan should include preparation for staff that will be working directly with communities, a system for gathering and reporting the feedback received, professional development for site leaders who will be shouldering the bulk of the changes, and evolution of a clear and consistent moving-picture show of what new freedoms and responsibilities school sites will take, and why.

The shift to more local autonomy requires a corresponding shift in practices and systems at the district fundamental office. For example, while the district departments responsible for curriculum and instruction tightly managed earlier standards-based curricular reforms, many districts have decided to allow school sites to drive Mutual Core implementation efforts. This will require a dissimilar structure, a new mindset and new skills at both the school and district level. The new funding formula creates a similar shift for district fiscal services and budgeting departments. They must develop transparent budgeting processes that allow sufficient time for community date and new systems for monitoring school-based funding decisions.

Finally, with the shift to local control, in that location will exist an increase in local accountability. The goal of both Common Cadre and the new funding formula is to improve student achievement, particularly of our highest- demand students. This means schools and districts need to regularly appraise (and make necessary adjustments to the plan for) student outcomes like accomplishment on assessment tests, omnipresence and discipline. Adding to the complexity is the contempo decision to pause country testing during the transition to the new standards. So, while both Common Cadre and the new funding formula require districts to demonstrate a positive impact on student achievement, there will be no standard measure out of that achievement for at least the adjacent 2 to three years. While this tin be scary, it marks an opportunity for districts to decide the best way to assess student accomplishment.

At that place is a real adventure that the private plans for each initiative will work at cross-purposes. But breaking down silos and working together provide a great opportunity to create a systematic and coordinated approach to both reforms. This is the best chance districts will have to ensure that staff and community purchase into strategies to back up student achievement. It also ensures that districts are both more supported and clear on how they will be held accountable for results.

Taken together, the Common Core standards and the Local Control Funding Formula will piece of work improve and accept a greater bear upon on how our schools serve students than if they are approached separately.

Megan Sweet is Director of Education Finance Reform for Pivot Learning Partners. In that chapters, she leads Pivot'south work on the Planning, Budgeting and Accountability for Resources (PBAR) Program, and provides analysis of statewide policies, including the Local Command Funding Formula. She has been a middle school teacher, an assistant master, a partner supporting local school reform, and most recently a central office administrator.

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