Cost Allocation Model for Shared District Resources: A Means for Comparing Spending Across Schools

Professional learning funding for individual schools often comes from “shared district resources,” a district-level funding source. This working paper says shared resources (which include a range of resources managed by the central office) typically go unreported in school budgets, despite representing a substantial portion of a school’s total resources. The authors propose a cost allocation model policymakers can use to better understand costs for individual items, such as professional learning, and how these funds are distributed among schools.