Essay Example on Maximizing School Funds to Improve Student Performance and Wellbeing

Schools, in most cases, are usually underfunded. It is upon the schools' management to design policies on how they should spend the resources at their disposal (Beatriz, 2008). Since these resources are limited, the school has to use the finances in implementing changes in areas that best improve the students' performance and wellbeing. Thus, schools need to carry out budget analyses to ensure that funds go to where they have been planned. Furthermore, with a budget, the school administrations can use any additional funding in another project following the complete implementation of the previous since students' needs are higher than the available resources. Therefore, school administrators should be guided by ethics in determining what project is suitable for the students and using the available resources to implement it.

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Identified Instructional Improvement Target from SIP: 75% of the students at every grade level will improve their math, reading, and writing performance and skills.

Discretionary Funding Grant Funding

Include the source in your draft grant proposal in Module 3 Assignment 1 Community Resources/

Volunteer

Goal 1: promote adoption of textbooks that are based on the evidence of what works (Efficient books): Evidence-based instructions $ 15,000 for evidence-based books, which have been evaluated rigorously in experimental examinations and proven to make favorable, statistically significant variations in reading and writing outcomes. $65,000 for additional staff for tutoring and class size reduction. The team will tutor students encountering problems in reading and writing in the early grades. Local community development group donation of evidence 20 evidence-based books.

Goal 2: Provide adequate professional development, that is, receiving quality staff development on instructional strategies. $7000 for Professional development training

$ 4000 for Specific instructional strategist

$10,000 for Expert reading and writing coaches (fellow teachers) to visit classroom new instructional strategies are being implemented and later discuss with the teacher about the strengths and subsequent steps. Goal 3: Ensuring technology is at the forefront and center of the school's teaching practice. Through digital writing and reading, seeking available reading and writing materials online, doing writing and reading assignments online, and receiving feedback from their teacher. $30,000 for purchasing more online writing and reading tools to assist the students. $80,000 to increase computers in the school. Parents should ensure that the students have a personal computer at home.

Part 1

Priority Target

The priority identified instructional improvement target is promoting the adoption of the evidence-based instructional approach, the use of evidence-based instruction textbooks, and incorporate technological resources to enhance students' performance in math, reading, and writing. Teaching students how to read and write are among the most important instructional tasks for teachers. Low literacy achievements are significantly related to the higher rates of underemployment, poverty, and school dropout (Wagner, 2000). As such, the huge impacts of achieving literacy increase schools' interest in teaching students how to read and write. Educators, parents, policymakers, administrators, and instructors seek to offer literacy instruction that probably will lead to high levels of success among all the students (Darling-Hammond, 2020). As such, to achieve this goal, educators must be conscious of the crucial lessons provided by the research of the past and present instructional methods. In truth, there is no single instructional program that is effective in teaching students how to read and write; instead, efforts to enhance reading and writing achievements that are successful accentuate identifying and implementing evidence-based practices (Titler, 2008). Which promotes higher levels of achievements when employed in the classrooms by tutors with various instructional styles with students whose instructional interests and needs vary (National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform, 2001). As such, the rationale for selecting evidence-based instructional approaches is due to its ability to cater and address all the students' diverse learning interests and needs. At the same time, reducing the negative impacts of low literacy rates in society.

Decision Making Process

A comprehensive need assessment was conducted, which used data to inform the decisions making process. As such, using the data-driven decision-making process, and following the moral compass, I highlighted reading, writing, and maths instructional needs as the most critical since they determine the students' future achievements. Furthermore, considering the negative impacts of low literacy, it is significant to prioritize these needs (Easton et al., 2013). The decision-maker used data on demographics, student learning, implementation fidelity, and school environment to make a decision. The evaluation identified math, reading, and writing proficiency as areas that should be prioritized since they impact most on the students' success. Districts evaluate data on curriculum delivery, standardized tests, attendance, and social and emotional learning variables (Darling-Hammond, 2020). Demographics data allowed the decision-maker to have a thorough understanding of the school's subpopulations. Furthermore, considering the fidelity of the school administration in implementing the program to achieve the goals, I found that literacy improvement was an achievable objective and had positive results for both the students and the school. Lastly, the decision-maker considers the content of the goals for the priority areas and implementation completion timeline. Goals must be reasonable and achievable, triggering sufficient improvement.

To weigh the overall campus needs verse, individual students needs the plan employed the extent of literacy levels to both the society and the individual. First, if the individual reading, writing, and maths literacy levels are low, it affects the overall campus need to improve in the area. Also, by reviewing qualitative studies, the decision-maker was able to understand how the existing instructional programs influence individuals who might not be representative of the overall campus. System thinking helped in prioritizing the school's overall campus and individual needs since it considered the interactions amongst learners, instructors, administrators, learning goals, and digital content (Betts, 1992). It helped in using the available data on the school's needs and in deriving a useful intervention that will improve the efficiency of the educators and ensure the success of the students. Currently, tutors need to understand evidence-based instructional programs and harness them to increase school performance.

Moral Compass

Since all the identified instructional improvement targets were relevant, it was challenging to narrow down to one. In prioritizing the campus and students' instructional improvement needs, I relied on my moral campus. It is my moral responsibility to identify and change poor performance and promote ethical qualities amongst the students by prioritizing the identified improvement instructional target that impacts most on the students. Hence, I followed my moral and ethical standards to provide steady literacy achievement among the students reducing their distrust, shame, and dropout rates. In ranking the identified instructional targets, the decision-maker has to rely on their moral compass and ethics to ensure that they prioritize the target that will have more impacts on individual students and the overall campus.

Part 2

Current Academic Performance

The school's current academic performance is average, with a total of over 1000 students and almost 80 teachers. Teachers' to students' ratio is 15:1. The school proficiency test score in maths and languages is 62.5%, which is 13% below the average level in Texas (Public schools Review, 2019). As such, the school in comparison with other schools in the district and the state is lagging in writing, reading, and mathematics competence levels as established by the state proficiency test scores. Hence, there is a need to improve students' proficiency levels on campus. The intervention target population is the students who are poor in either mathematics, reading, or writing or a combination of two or more. According to Harlaar et al. (2012), there is a significant relationship between mathematics and reading. As such, most students with low maths proficiency tend to have concurrent reading proficiency. Partly, this explains the average school performance in maths, reading, and writing in comparison with other schools.

Available Resources

The current campus capacity, in terms of fiscal, human, and physical resources, will facilitate the implementation of the intervention targeting to improve maths, reading, and writing proficiency. The school's teacher and student ratio are 15:1, which indicates that it has adequate staffing to implement the intervention. Further, the school facility is not overstretched, and there is no need for additional physical facilities to support the implementation. However, the school lacks the finances to fund the program; its budget funds compensated by the state are fully budgeted. School systems have limited financial resources with which they are supposed to achieve their targets (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2016). Therefore, developing school funding strategies plays a central function in making sure that the funds are used where they can make the most positive impact. As such, the school can raise discretionary funds from its special funds. Thus, it will have to rely on grant funding, volunteers, and community resources to ensure that the instructional improvement program is completed.

Instructional Approach Changes

To improve the students' achievement, there is a need for various changes in the current instructional approach. First, the school should promote the use of evidence-based instructional approaches (Sheeler, 2016); this means the approach has been used before to teach maths, reading, and writing and has been proven to be efficient. For instance, students need exposure to rich literature and clear systematic instructions in phonics. Thus, the school should base its educational decisions on evidence, not ideology. The school should promote reading materials that have been chosen based on evidence about their effectiveness since there is sufficient evidence to recommended specific strategies. For example, using texts that have a high proportion of words that fits that particular grade level. Tutors must receive quality staff development on instructional approaches, which implies more than the in-service presentation offered by textbook publishers.

Conclusion

According to the county proficiency test score, the school lags in several subject areas, including reading, writing, and math competence. To improve the student's grade performance, the administration needs to implement an improvement intervention target whose aim is to record over 75% of the students, enhancing their grades in the highlighted areas of needs. The intervention targets those students who perform poorly in the above study areas. As such, this paper has designed a budget for the intervention and the various source of the finances. It has explored the instructional approaches that can be adopted, such as evidence-based instructional teaching methods and evidence instructions texts books.

References

Beatriz, P., Deborah, N., & Hunter, M. (2008). Improving school leadership, volume 1 policy and practice: Policy and practice (Vol. 1). OECD pub...