Freeing Resources for Improving Schools: A Case Study of Teacher Allocation in Boston Public Schools

Abstract

Increasingly, discussions of education reform end up in debate over how much money will be required to fund it. Although educators often argue for more funds and critics counter that school spending is already at an all-time high, neither group has looked systematically at the use of existing resources. This analysis addresses how school systems might reconsider their use of teachers, their most important and expensive resource, to support reform. A case study of Boston Public Schools shows how the specialization and fragmentation of teaching resources reduced the individual attention most students received and limited a school's flexibility to respond to student needs. The analysis develops three measures that might be used as indicators of the size of opportunity for freeing teaching resources. It identifies four practices that together account for over 40% of Boston's teaching resources and could provide significant opportunity to redirect resources to support reform.