Rethinking the Allocation of Teaching Resources: Some Lessons From High-Performing Schools

Abstract

Although a great deal of debate surrounds the level and allocation of resources to public schools, very little research addresses how schools might organize teaching resources more effectively at the school level. This article describes case studies of five high-performing public schools that have organized professional resources in innovative ways. The study sought to detail alternative ways of deploying instructional resources in order to provide concrete alternatives to traditional organization of teachers and to quantify objectively the ways in which these schools use resources differently depending on their instructional goals and strategies. Although the schools studied looked very different from one another, they shared six principles of resource allocation that are outlined in this article. The article develops a framework for examining the use of resources and a methodology that may be used to measure the extent to which schools use their resources in focused ways to support teaching and learning.