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In short, many educators are being asked to do more with less.

We believe that if our education system had a more robust way of tracking expenditures, it could do more to increase productivity.

Hanna’s analysis looks more closely at the programs and practices of more effective districts.

We continue to believe, for instance, that school vouchers do not further the cause of public education.

The bottom line is that we believe policymakers and educators need to focus on what works in education and scale up those practices.

The lowest productivity school districts serve about 3 percent of the more than 41 million students covered by our study.

Only a few states, such as Rhode Island, currently take a weighted-student funding based approach to education, where money is distributed to schools based on student need.

Some policymakers are taking on the issue of productivity, however, and some states, such as New York and Virginia, have taken smart capacity-building approaches.

Key expenditure-related definitions vary, and while almost every state now has a common chart of accounts a type of budget dictionary the specifics are not comparable across states.

States should build capacity for productivity gains through targeted grants, assistance teams, and performance metrics.

recommend that states build technical assistance teams that assist districts in increasing productivity.

Educators can do a lot within their communities to make accounting and budgets more transparent and actionable.

Something similar should be done within the fiscal space, with states coming together to develop more rigorous budgeting procedures.

Specifically, we recommend weighted student funding, which has the potential to both solve equity and efficacy issues with current school funding approaches.