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Doing More With Less: A State Checklist for Sustainable School Transformation

By Karen Hawley Miles & Karen Baroody

With applications in for round two of the Race to the Top competition, states must now turn their attention to the challenging future they face, whether or not they win federal dollars for the reform plans they’ve outlined. Unless states choose to overhaul the antiquated cost structures and operating models that undergird most schools systems, any new investment they make will fall short of hoped-for transformation.

Few states have embraced an approach that creates sustainable systems for the information age. This focus on creating school systems , instead of collections of individually good schools, is critical if we care about educating all students and continuing to improve outcomes.

If states want to promote school systems that succeed at scale, they must get in the game of restructuring the use of existing resources for systemwide transformation—not simply adding resources on top. Even the innovative compensation structures that most states propose add performance-based incentive pay on top of the industrial-age and bank-breaking district compensation...