Improving Student Learning When Budgets Are Tight

A how-to manual for achieving excellence despite budget cuts

How do you stay focused on increasing student learning when budget cuts threaten everything you are striving for? This book offers a comprehensive framework to enhance student achievement in good times and in bad. School reform expert Allan R. Odden outlines a school improvement action plan focused sharply on student learning and then shows how to target resources to implement each strategy in that plan. More than just a "theory" book, this text describes concrete, specific actions that can be taken immediately. Key strategies include

• Using data to support boosting student performance
• Focusing on effective instruction
• Setting goals to drive resource allocation priorities
• Establishing priorities for situations that require budget cuts
• Hiring top teachers and providing ongoing professional development
• Providing needed technology resources

Educators will find a wide range of real-life examples of schools and districts that have implemented these strategies and significantly improved student learning. Also included is research-based guidance for optimizing teacher and principal talent, teacher recruiting and hiring, online learning, and more. This book successfully communicates many years of work and offers well- grounded advice that will help educators move from financial frustration to effective action.

Author: Allan R. Odden
Publisher: Corwin Publishers
Published: 02/06/2012
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.80h x 6.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781452217086

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2012 pg. 151
Voice of Youth Advocates 08/01/2012 pg. 296

About the Author
Allan Odden is Co-Director of Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC) in public education, a project of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). SMHC seeks to improve student performance through talented teachers and school leaders and improved instructional practices produced by SMHC, focusing initially on large urban districts. He also is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is Co-Director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). CPRE is a consortium of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pennsylvania, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Teachers College-Columbia University, and Stanford Universities.

He is an international expert on the management of human capital in education, teacher compensation, education finance, school-based financing, resource allocation and use, educational policy, school-based management, and educational policy implementation. He worked with the Education Commission of the States for a decade, serving as assistant executive director, director of policy analysis and research, and director of its educational finance center. He was president of the American Educational Finance Association in 1979-80 and received AEFA′s distinguished Service Award in 1998. He was a mathematics teacher and curriculum developer in New York City′s East Harlem for 5 years. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University, a Masters of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary and his B.S. in aerospace engineering from Brown University. He is married, has two children, and one grandchild.

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