School Room ~ Photo by Rob Shenk

Photo past Rob Shenk

Fifty-fifty every bit schoolhouse districts around California and the nation come under pressure to sustain existing reforms and introduce new ones, budget cuts are threatening to irksome or halt those reform efforts.

That is just one of the findings of a national survey of school districts conducted between February and May 2022 by the Washington D.C. based Centre on Didactics Policy (CEP), and released this summertime.

According to the survey, ii-thirds of the well-nigh 500 schoolhouse districts surveyed that were not able to completely starting time state budget cuts with federal stimulus funds "responded to these cuts by either slowing progress on planned reforms or postponing or stopping reform initiatives."  The CEP study says the districts surveyed are a representative sample of districts nationwide.

School districts were not asked to specify which reforms were affected, as Michael Kirst, president of the California State Lath of Didactics and Stanford professor emeritus of education, noted.  He said what was beingness imperiled in California was not so much planned reforms such as the introduction of "common cadre" standards and linking teacher evaluations to student performance, but by reforms such as California'southward fifteen-yr-erstwhile K–3 grade size reduction plan.

Kirst said sustaining those reforms will be more difficult considering over the past two years California schoolhouse expenditures accept been cushioned by federal stimulus funds, which at present have been largely spent, and district reserves, which are at present in many cases severely depleted. "Nosotros are just at the cusp of seeing the bear upon of the cutbacks," Kirst said.

The survey too underscored the extent to which budget woes experienced in California are mirrored in other states.

California, Washington and a scattering of other states, are "in a very bad state of affairs," while a few states like Due north Dakota and Wyoming are doing relatively well, CEP president Jack Jennings said in an interview with EdSource.

Merely, Jennings said, "this written report shows the economic difficulties facing school districts is non an isolated problem, it is a national trouble."

The report found that some 70 percent of schoolhouse districts nationwide experienced budget cuts during the last school year. Some 84 percent expect cuts during the current school year.

Underscoring the depth of the impact, the written report plant that "no type of school district—city, suburban, town, or rural—has been immune from declining budgets."

What's more, the report found, school officials expect the already grim upkeep situation to worsen in the coming school year.

The report asserts that the slowing of reforms comes at only the time that a "broad consensus" has emerged around the central elements of reform, including the "adoption of 'mutual core' standards and assessments in core academic subjects and accountability for outcomes."

Despite their budget woes, school districts receiving federal funds are withal required to meet the extreme demands imposed past the federal No Child Left Backside Act to brand "adequate yearly progress" and to require 100 percent of students to score at a "adept" level by 2014.

CEP's Jennings said "the wise thing to do would exist to give districts some flexibility and some slack to carry out these requirements." At the moment, notwithstanding, the Obama assistants is saying it will only requite "waivers" to districts that meet several notwithstanding-to-be specified requirements. The Heart on Education Policy is tracking state requests for waivers—and administration responses—in its "NCLB/ESEA Waiver Lookout man."

States and districts seeking a range of federal funds are also under pressure to adopt the requirements established for the Race to the Peak contest, such every bit establishing longitudinal data tracking systems, linking instructor evaluations to educatee test scores, and "turning around" their lowest performing schools.

The situation is expected to worsen in the upcoming school year, when more four-fifths of school districts anticipate budget decreases and "few American Recovery and Reinvestment Deed or Education Jobs funds remain to cushion the accident," the written report noted.

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