RE: Question 1: Funding Model

Ken Diamond wrote: "To determine how much an adequate education should cost, examine schools that are doing a good job and look for the most efficient."

This is a great principle for the Master Plan to try to follow: Start by looking for success and then copy it.

But the Master Plan seems to not be granular enough to be of much value in this regard. Regarding funding: If we have a district that is successful and find that it's per-student expenses are broken down a certain way, that by itself doesn't actually prove that the budget produced the results. If two districts spend the same on a science department and one is successful, the difference is probably in what the department chairman does and not in what he or she spends.

It seems to me that the Master Plan should promote R&D; into a very granular "mapping" of cost-benefit ratios that are keyed to the specific activities of the humans and resources funded by each expense item. If the Master Plan mandates "accountability" for all districts in order to collect this data, we should all resign and go to work for private schools to escape this invasion "supervision". But if the Plan endorses spending on Pilot programs that are well documented and which produce the data we need, then local administrators and boards can make informed decisions for their unique circumstances.