How can school district budget procedure in California be improved? This thesis submitted evidence indicating a need for improved practices in many areas directly connected with school district budgets. Problems involved are shown to be extremely complex, and from the facts presented the study concludes that there can be no simple, piecemeal approach. How may the problems of school district budgeting in California be solved through a comprehensive study of all related fields, made by a committee giving representation to all interested groups, the committee to be appointed and financed by the State of California, with instructions to recommend and prepare legislation?

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Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was originally created to ensure academic equity and opportunity for all students. As the largest federal program supporting elementary and secondary education, providing nearly $11.6 billion annually, Title I targets resources to local education agencies (i.e., school districts) to support additional programs and services for improving student achievement. Despite expansive reform efforts, political cries for accountability, and standardized testing, urban school-wide elementary school students are still--in large numbers --experiencing failure and defeat. The process of determining how Title I funds can be used effectively to address the needs of disadvantaged students is quite often multi-layered and complex. Due to the limited availability to research to support Title I coordinators in determining how to purposefully utilize Title I funds to supplement the disadvantages of urban elementary school students, the extent to which Title I funds are supporting and/or contributing to the transformation of low-performing Title I schools is relatively unknown. The focus of this mixed-methods study was to provide important insight into the appropriateness of federal funding of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001), in particular Title I funds, that support and/or contribute to the academic achievement of high poverty Title I elementary schools. Four data collection tools were employed in this study: Document review of the Single Plan for Student Achievement for 10 elementary schools serving high poverty, low-performing student populations, survey questionnaire sent to 10 Title I coordinators serving at school-wide Title I elementary schools, a follow-up questionnaire interview to gather further insight into the survey questionnaire responses, and open-ended response interviews conducted with 4 Title I coordinators to understand the challenges and obstacles that impede their ability to address the needs of Title I students. Results of this study provide local education agencies, schools, and Title I coordinators with research-based data regarding the impact of Title I funds to support high poverty, historically low-performing students.

During recent years, courts in the United States have in many instances attempted to force other agencies of government to take some sort of affirmative action. In doing so, they have sought repeatedly to force those other agencies to act where, left to their own accord, they would choose not to do so. A specific example of a situation of this sort is the United States Supreme Court's entry into the field of race relations with the issuance of the Brown decision in 1954. Quite obviously, in rendering that decision, the nation's highest court was seeking to force local school boards to act in a manner distinctly at odds with how they would otherwise have chosen to proceed. In the Brown situation and others like it, a crucial question which has arisen is this: to what degree is a court able to force other agencies to act where they otherwise would not? It is, moreover, with this question that this dissertation is concerned. Specifically, this volume seeks to explore the capability of the courts to force unwilling agencies to act in a manner opposed to their natural inclination by exploring the California school finance litigation and the legislative responses to it. What this exploration leads to is the conclusion that, although courts can and do force other agencies to act, their ability to do so is nonetheless limited. Specifically, it would appear that courts can act as agenda setters, thereby forcing other agencies of government to at least consider issues they otherwise would have ignored. Courts also, it would seem, can play some role in the molding of the substantive provisions of a given policy. There, though, their impact would appear not to be a particularly great one; rather, in that regard it would seem that all they are capable of doing is simply prodding other policy-makers in a given direction but little more. Indeed, it would appear that the capacity of courts to act as actual molders of substantive policy is seriously undercut by the fact that the decisions they issue are merely one component of the overall political environment with which nonjudicial officials must be concerned.

No description available.

In this thesis I explore the rhetoric behind the assessment push nation-wide and, particularly, in California. I take a close look at what politicians, educators, and citizens say about public education and their views of the current educational reform: whether they are speaking in support of or opposition to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I look specifically at the finances of public education in California, the impact and current outcome of NCLB, and propose new reforms as suggested by those intimately involved in education.

The author has designed a guidebook to accompany the State of California Department of Education's Coordinated Compliance Review Manual. The purpose of the guidebook is to provide English language learners' (ELL) coordinators the information needed to facilitate and achieve compliance with the State of California's rules, regulations and policies that will insure that ELL students' needs are being addressed and met. The design and method of the project are discussed.