This policy brief details how states can see a net reduction in costs by moving expenditures away from large, congruent care facilities (often called "training schools") for youth and investing in community-based alternatives. Such a resource realignment can reap better results for communities, taxpayers, and children. Evidence is growing that there are cost-effective policies and programs for intervening in the lives of delinquent youth which actually improve community safety and outcomes for children. While there is no silver bullet that will guarantee reductions in crime, policies that include prevention and intervention for youth in the community have been shown to have a positive public safety benefit. Major findings and recommendations for reform are included.

This is the conclusion of an extensive six-year national study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The study's final report, Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools, authored by Paul Hill, Marguerite Roza, and James Harvey, criticizes school finance systems because they are so burdened by rules and narrow policies that they commit dollars "with little regard for results, holding adults accountable for compliance but not results."  Facing the Future offers a four-part action plan to overhaul today's outmoded school finance systems:

• Drive funds to schools based on student counts--the money would be given to principals to allocate and manage within their individual schools. A weighting formula could be used to provide extra funds for disadvantaged students.
• Concentrate federal funds on low-income students--direct money on the basis of student characteristics right down to the individual student's school.
• Redesign states' school finance systems for continuous improvement--demand innovation and continuous improvement, keeping what works and discarding what does not.
• Base accountability on performance--make superintendents and the chief of state schools responsible for judging school performance and finding better options for children whose schools do not teach them effectively.

By: Larisa Shambaugh, Jay Chambers, Danielle DeLancey
This report, prepared by REL West, describes the planning and implementation of San Francisco, California's weighted student formula policy, an equity-driven, student-based planning and budgeting policy. It examines one district's policy goals, planning and implementation considerations, and how the policy interacted with other local, state, and federal policies.

• Allow dollars to follow students to their schools
• Integrate resource decisions with instructional plans; measure and analyze results of different expenditures
• Actively support continuous student improvement
• Define and fund a research and development agenda that expands what we know about effective resource use
• Make resource use and academic achievement central to financial reporting practices, and use funding contingencies to create fair and meaningful accountability

The report was produced by the School Finance Redesign Project (SFRP), with funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

These profiles of state policy in Indiana, Massachusetts, and North Carolina examine how various education options are accessing public funds in three states. They contextualize the funding of education options within larger secondary education reform and dropout prevention and recovery efforts and provide a close look at state education funding policy in each of the three states. Building on previous work of the National Youth Employment Coalition, each profile begins with a one-page overview of the secondary education reform context, major dropout prevention and recovery efforts, and funding of education options in the state. Overviews are followed by more in-depth discussion of these areas, as well as detailed information on state funding of public education in each state and examples of how state policy affects programming at the local level.