Dorothy Siegel, ERIC Digest 168
May 2003
This digest offers a quick overview of research supporting school-based management practices, based mainly on the author's study of former chancellor Rudy Crew's Performance Driven Budgeting (PDB) initiative in New York City (see http://www.nyu.edu/iesp/publications/pdb/PDB_final_rpt.pdffor that study). Following experiments in Edmonton and Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, New York in 1997 instituted a pilot of PDB in 61 schools. They were given greater autonomy over their budgets and instructional plans, with the aim of aligning the two to boost student achievement. It seems to have helped. Siegel finds a "small, but statistically significant, increase in student academic outcomes" for PDB schools. That's striking when you recall that PDB did not give schools full control over staffing decisions. Imagine what might happen if districts went allowed principals to make their own personnel decisions. Of course, New York has since moved in the opposite direction - toward greater centralization - and the PDB experiment has ended. But these results should serve as evidence that empowering school leaders is one good route to educational improvement. To read the digest, visit http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest168.html.
