Schools lose records; English learners pay (US)

Poor recordkeeping keeps California schools from getting all of the funding that they have coming, a failing that especially hurts English learners, according to research from the University of California, Davis, School of Education.

Findings from the ongoing, eight-year study of two California school districts will be presented today, April 8, at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in New Orleans.

In the study, UC Davis doctoral students Irina Okhremtchouk and Shonte Stephenson found that at the high school level, more than 21 percent of student records are missing. Even more are incomplete or inaccurate.

Student records are the source of data that districts report to the state and federal government; the data are used to determine the courses and services that students receive, how schools are rated – and how much money a school receives per student. The per-pupil allocation is higher for English learners, making an accurate count of these students especially important.

Read more: UC Davis, April 8 2011