Education leaders, school business officials and practitioners continue to confront a full plate of difficult and time-sensitive decisions. How can we reflect on and improve practices and approaches for making those decisions to better serve students? In this episode, host Jason Willis and special guest Alex Jacobson from WestEd explore how good decisions in our school systems that lead to successful outcomes for all students are in part contingent on the ways in which people make those decisions. 

As part of this exploration, we’ll look through the frame of what’s known as System 1 and System 2 thinking – and discuss how education leaders can begin to apply some of what the research tells us to strengthen approaches to decision making, both individually and organizationally.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Alex Jacobson is a Senior Research Associate with the Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd. In this role, he serves on research projects related to education finance, strategic resource allocation, and cost modeling. Alex also provides collaborative, research-based capacity building to education practitioners, including direct organizational improvement assistance and facilitating stakeholder engagements. He also supports state education agencies across the U.S. through Regional Comprehensive Centers at WestEd. Prior to joining WestEd, Alex served as a researcher and technical assistance provider for the American Institutes for Research (AIR). He has a Masters of Public Policy from Georgetown University.

RESOURCES

Jason and Alex refer to some key studies in this episode:

• Estimating the Costs Associated with Reaching Student Achievement Expectations for Kansas Public Education Students: A Cost Function Approach: This adequacy cost study examines the structure of the Kansas school finance formula as well as estimates the potential costs associated with reaching student achievement expectations for K-12 students in Kansas.
• Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, authors Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West examine the implications of individual differences in performance and introduce the concepts of System 1 and System 2 processing.

ABOUT OUR HOST

Jason Willis serves as the Director of Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation for WestEd, where he oversees and guides the agency’s school finance, governance, and accountability efforts. Prior to WesEd, Jason served as a chief business official in several California school districts,

Budgeting for Educational Equity is presented in partnership between the California Association of School Business Official (CASBO), the premier resource for professional development and best practices for more than 24,000 California school business leaders, and WestEd, a national nonprofit research development and service agency that works to promote excellence and equity in education. We are grateful to the Sobrato Family Foundation for providing additional support. Our series is written and produced by Paul Richman and Jason Willis. Original music and editing by Tommy Dunbar. John Diaz at WestEd develops our companion written briefs. Follow us at @budget4edequity.