What Brain Research Can Teach About Cutting School Budgets
- Karen D. Olsen - Mid-California Science Improvement Program
Foreword by Susan Kovalik
This book offers an alternative—a way to use brain research to create powerful but politically neutral decision-making criteria. The author offers clear action items, brain research summaries, and checklists to guide leaders through the budget cutting process, and to ensure that they reinvest money into the key programmes that will truly impact student achievement.
"Karen Olsen has put budget topics into perspective so that school administrators can make decisions based on what is best for children, not what is easiest and most efficient for adults. We used this book in our district with all our principals and it was a powerful guide in helping them see through the fog of mandates, policies, and red tape and get to the priority of students!"
"I’m very pleased to see a book bold enough to assert that the realm of brain research should be applied to wherever human brains are working and whatever challenges we face. Not only can and should brain research inform how and what we teach in the classroom, but it should be brought to bear in boardrooms and the school budgeting process. This book is brilliant and groundbreaking. Every school in America should have a copy in its professional library."
"Olsen addresses a current national issue with a focus on budget deficits and identifying a process for making decisions about budget cuts. This is definitely a different and unusual approach to budget cutting—a compelling contribution to the field."
"The entire nation is struggling with budget cuts, and this book is a very practical guide, a guide that has longevity and can be used time and time again with the same profound results. I would recommend this text as a must-read for anyone affected by budget cuts in education."
