Implementing the Federal Mandate for Fiscal Transparency: Examining Wisconsin's Sensemaking Across Multiple Levels of Governance

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Sesion 4
  In Roundtable Session: Toward a Holistic Examination of Educational Policy: Perspectives on Context and Scale

Abstract

Objectives
While a significant body of school finance research has documented education funding inequities (Corcoran & Evans, 2008; Odden & Picus, 2014), particularly at the national and state levels, scholars have paid less attention to intradistrict and intraschool inequities and school leaders’ role in resource decisions. In an effort to promote equity and financial transparency, the reauthorization of ESSA (2015) now requires states to report per-pupil expenditures for each school (Section 1111, h, 1, c, x). These recently published data publicly illuminate the differences in district allocation and spending between schools (Roza & Anderson, 2020), suggesting a need to understand the implementation and effects of these data. This qualitative case study investigates how one state and two districts within that state made sense of and enacted the new federal mandate, calling into question whether the state could meet the policy’s equity-based goals.

Theoretical Framework
I use the theory of sensemaking--the process of encountering, constructing meaning, and acting on a policy (Weick, 1995)--to understand how messages passed from the federal level to the state agency responsible for collecting and publicly reporting school-level data. Then I apply this theory to further investigate how districts and schools made sense of their reporting responsibility to the state. This theory is particularly well-suited to understanding this process because education leaders at all levels of governance engage in sensemaking to implement policy.

Methods and Data
Using a qualitative case study design, this study examined implementation of the federal financial transparency mandate in Wisconsin. Data sources include semi-structured interviews with the state leader responsible for school-level reporting, two district leaders who provided the data to the state, and principals in four different sites. Additionally, I analyzed documents and presentations provided from the state Department of Instruction to districts, schools, and community members along with the school level expenditure reports.

Findings
Analysis suggests that the federal government gave minimal guidance to states due to the administration change in 2016, which left state and district administrators to navigate the policy’s challenges, such as districts categorizing and reporting expenditures in different ways. Even though these data are publicly reported for all schools, none of the principals interviewed were aware of its existence. Messaging from the state to the schools and districts focused on how they can explain the disparities based on school characteristics and context, rather than considering how educators and researchers can use these new data to promote more equitable funding.

Significance
This paper contributes to studies of school finance policy implementation across multiple contexts. The new federal mandate required great effort for state and district administrators with the goal of prompting conversations about equitable funding allocation at the school level. Rather, this policy has been treated as a perfunctory action to fulfill a mandate. As Hess (2020) stated, “what’s needed is a focus on how to make this information available, concrete, and useful for all stakeholders” (p. 162). Findings should prompt conversations among researchers and policymakers about how to make this information useful and a catalyst for equitable funding.

Author

• Lena Batt, University of Wisconsin - Madison