Karen Hawley Mills, Education Resource Strategies and Marguerite Roza, University of Washington, Center for Reinventing Public Education
July 15, 2004
Karen Hawley Miles and Marguerite Roza co-authored this 33-page "working paper" that is well-summarized in its own abstract: "This paper uses a newly developed analysis tool called the student-weighted index to assess how the shift to student-based budgeting has affected the pattern of resource distribution within two districts: Houston Independent Schools and Cincinnati Public Schools. In the two districts studied, the use of staff-based budgeting resulted in varying degrees of inequitable resource allocation, while the introduction of student-based budgeting yielded significant equity gains in both districts." Though the study points to equity gains via student-based budgeting, it also explains other factors that hamper this effect and that would also need to be addressed in a thoroughly revamped district-wide budgeting system. You can find it online here.
