How Education Leaders Can Reduce Administrative Burden and Reclaim Staff Time
Marley Arechiga in Conversation With Kelsey Krausen, Research Director of Literacy at WestEd
Kelsey Krausen:
In a funding environment where every dollar really matters, the time that is spent on reporting that isn’t used is taking time away from students.
Marley Arechiga:
Welcome to Leading Voices, the podcast where WestEd experts break down pressing challenges in education and human development and provide insights you can apply to practice and policy. I’m Marley Arechiga.
They say time is money. In education, that’s especially true right now as administrators are being asked to do more with less funding certainty. Yet across schools, districts and colleges, leaders spend hundreds of hours each year on meeting reporting requirements that are duplicative, outdated, or disconnected from decision-making. It’s what public policy researchers call, “administrative burden” and it’s diverting time away from supporting students and educators. So how can education leaders tell the difference between reporting that drives improvement and reporting that simply adds more to the workload–and what can they do about it? Here to help answer these questions is Kelsey Krausen, Director of Education Finance at WestEd. Kelsey has worked with states and districts for over two decades on how to make the most of their existing resources including time.
Kelsey, thank you for being here.
Kelsey Krausen:
Thanks for having me.
Marley Arechiga:
To get us started, what does administrative burden look like for district and state leaders in their day-to-day work?
Kelsey Krausen:
It shows up in a number of different ways, but in education the administrative burden really shows up in reporting requirements and those reporting requirements consume a considerable amount of staff time, attention, and a lot of their capacity.
Some examples of the ways in which it shows up are reporting requirements that may be designed for specific funding streams and the intention is good. They’re designed to help demonstrate how funding will be used to drive student achievement, which is a really important goal. But when on funding stream reporting requirement is piled upon another and another and another, it’s hard to know which of those reports to pay attention to, which really tells us what we need to know about what’s driving student achievement in our systems.
Another thing that we see frequently are reporting requirements for specific policy areas that are important to our policy makers. So for example, you may see a specific set of reporting requirements around class size and it may be that there’s not just on report that’s generated to show class size over the course of the year, but multiple reporting requirements where class size is reported in different ways and more than once a year, maybe on a quarterly basis when there really aren’t substantive changes in class size throughout the course of the year.
So staff are essentially submitting very similar data multiple times throughout the year, which takes up a lot of their time. So one congressional subcommittee’s review of the federal role in education documented that federal requirements once generated nearly 49 million hours of paperwork annually and that’s the equivalent of about 25,000 full-time employees.
Marley Arechiga:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that’s a lot of time.
Kelsey Krausen:
It’s a lot of time. And this spans not just K-12 education, but also higher education as well. And WestEd is currently working on a study to try and capture or estimate the cost of federal regulatory compliance in higher ed. For this reason, because policymakers are paying attention also and they know that this is taking up a lot of time and they want to make sure that it’s the best use of our system leader’s time.
Marley Arechiga:
What are they spending time on that maybe might surprise people outside of the system?
Kelsey Krausen:
One example that came up in our work is having to post specific requirements to the town’s local newspaper, which as you can imagine, is somewhat dated in this day and age. Another set of reporting requirements that we’ve come across are for laws that have been sunsetted. So the law itself no longer exists, but the reporting requirement remains. So there was a change to the law, but no mechanism within their education system in order to sunset the reporting requirement along with the law. And then also something we see frequently are reports that are just never reviewed, let alone used to guide decision-making.
Marley Arechiga:
Even though it’s outdated, I imagine that the newspaper requirement has something to do with transparency or maybe accountability. And I wonder how you help leaders navigate any kind of tension between reducing the administrative burden but also maintaining accountability and transparency.
Kelsey Krausen:
Local and state leaders from my experience doing this work are generally not in disagreement about the importance of data collection for accountability and transparency. And in fact, they value the availability of data to inform their own decision making and to help inform policy at the state level and budget decisions. It’s really more about the need to shift towards ensuring that data collection is meaningful for measuring what matters most in our systems so it can be used to inform that decision-making.
Marley Arechiga:
So how did we get here? What’s driving these excessive reporting requirements?
Kelsey Krausen:
Well, there’s sort of some combination of external accountability and systems that aren’t really effectively designed to talk to each other and really driven by good intentions, I would say. But most states don’t have systems in place for ongoing review of reporting requirements. We frequently see that new reporting requirements are added, but infrequently do states have those mechanisms in place for review of existing reporting requirements to see if new requirements may be either partially or in full duplicating an existing requirement or asking for information that’s already collected but in just a slightly different way. So it’s an additive system. Each new funding stream and initiative gets a new reporting requirement, but reporting requirements are rarely, if ever, reviewed and removed.
Marley Arechiga:
That cumulative effect seems really daunting. What does it take to get a full picture of what leaders are collecting and why?
Kelsey Krausen:
Well, in some ways it’s a deceptively simple challenge. You really need to take stock of the reports that are required of school districts and charter schools and determine which ones actually matter. And that’s also the case in higher education, right? We need to take stock of what’s required both at the state level and at the federal level for our institutes of higher ed. So we gather information, usually starting at the district level, a comprehensive list of the current reports. Then we also work with state leaders to understand which reports, to have them review the list of reports and add any reports that may be missing. And then we look across those reports, where is their duplication? We look at frequency. We look at how those reports are used. We ask our state leaders, how much of the data that is included in this report, do you review regularly and incorporate the information in the report into your ongoing decision making, into your ongoing work?
We did a similar review to what I’m describing in Nevada last year and we found that there were about 200 reports required of school districts and charter schools. And when we helped the state really take stock of these reports, we found that a lot of the data went unused or was duplicated and in some cases, data were collected just more frequently than was actually necessary.
Marley Arechiga:
Wow, that’s a lot of reports. Can you share an example of what was being duplicated?
Kelsey Krausen:
Class size reduction was one. I think there were three separate reports that required information on class size. Because it was an important area of focus in the state, they wanted to ensure that class sizes remained small. And so again, there were really important good intentions behind the focus on ensuring that class sizes remained small and where school districts, not through fault of their own, but because of staffing challenges, the ability to recruit teachers in hard-to-fill subjects or in areas that are more geographically isolated or having to have larger class sizes that they could then build a support system or way of reaching out to those districts to better understand how to address the issue in those spaces. But the multiple reports on the same topic was–it creates noise in the system so that it’s hard to know what to focus on, which report is the most important for community members, for parents, for our principals, for teachers, for our state leaders to review when you have so many?
Marley Arechiga:
How much time does that process normally take of taking stock of every report and figuring out where you can reduce, consolidate, or eliminate?
Kelsey Krausen:
Done well, the process takes a few months generally because it does require that input from the local level and at the state level. And sometimes state leaders aren’t aware of the full picture of requirements because some of the requirements on school districts and charter schools actually go to other agencies within the state.
And then really importantly, it takes some time to make meaning of the list of the reports, to have a group make recommendations on which reports are most meaningful to maintain. And in our work, it may come as a surprise, but local leaders really aren’t suggesting that we get rid of reporting requirements wholesale. They really see a value in those requirements also, just not the volume and just not all reports. And then the next step is there’s usually some kind of legislative action necessary to change the requirements in statute or an ed code.
Marley Arechiga:
You mentioned that sometimes state leaders aren’t aware of the full picture of requirements because some of that information actually goes to other agencies. What are some examples of what those other agencies might be?
Kelsey Krausen:
You may have the Department of Taxation involved or you may have your Health and Human Services Department involved. And in some states, you have a central data management system where all agencies have access to reports so that your districts or other entities can submit a report once into a state data system. In other cases, districts are sending the same report to multiple agencies. So even above and beyond the reporting requirement itself, the process and requirements around how those data gets shared and with who. And in some cases, it may be the responsibility of the Department of Ed to share a particular report that’s submitted with another agency. So the onus is actually on the Department of Ed to do that sharing with other agencies.
Marley Arechiga:
Wow. So, even just mapping where all of this information is going can be a little bit of an undertaking. Once leaders do get that fuller picture of what they’re collecting and where it’s going, what common themes bubble up?
Kelsey Krausen:
The one notable theme is that there’s generally agreement across all interest holders on the need to streamline the requirements. There may be some need for discussion on the details of exactly which changes need to be made, whether it’s to frequency or an entire report can be eliminated or the number of data points can be reduced in some way. But generally speaking, the recognition of administrative burden is shared between state leaders and local leaders. We see this as a really fruitful area of collaboration between district and state leaders because there really is shared agreement on the need to be very strategic about how we’re using our time and that there are reporting requirements currently in many states that are taking away from some of the really critical work to support schools and students.
Marley Arechiga:
What’s it like to be in the room during those conversations?
Kelsey Krausen:
It really validates how local leaders are experiencing the requirements. They feel overwhelmed and they feel like it’s not the best use of their time to improve student outcomes. Again, not that there are reporting requirements, just the volume of reporting requirements. So having a conversation about how to free up leaders’ time to do critical strategy work, to redesign their data collection systems so that they actually provide the data that’s necessary for them to understand return on investment, those are really exciting conversations to have.
Marley Arechiga:
Did you see that kind of effect in the Nevada case you mentioned?
Kelsey Krausen:
What’s exciting about Nevada is they have a real system-wide commitment to continuing to dig into reporting requirements and they understand that this is ongoing work, that there is not just one focused effort on reducing administrative burden, but that it actually requires continued review. And it’s really important to note that Nevada is not unique in the collection of data in this way, the number of reporting requirements and yet Nevada has really taken this critical step over the last couple of years to address the issue and use time more effectively.
Marley Arechiga:
Listening to all of this, it does sound like the kind of problem people hope AI can help solve. What role are you seeing AI play in reducing administrative burden?
Kelsey Krausen:
I think there’s a lot of potential there and we are actively working on ways to use AI and other tools to assist in this work to create more streamlined ways of identifying some of the duplication that we’re seeing across reporting requirements. Some reporting requirements are in files that are generally difficult to read. They may be in copies of PDFs and other things that present some challenges for allowing them to be read by technology, but I think there’s lots of room to use some of these new tools again because we are describing such a volume of information that we can use new tools to help us organize those data in ways that allow us to make meaning of them faster with a human in the loop.
Marley Arechiga:
If a district or state does successfully reduce administrative burden, what are the consequences of that? What actually changes for staff and teachers and maybe even students?
Kelsey Krausen:
In a funding environment where every dollar really matters, the time that is spent on reporting that isn’t used is taking time away from students. So administrative burden really has real consequences. It diverts our most important resource––people’s time––away from classrooms and student support. It limits leaders’ ability to focus on strategy and improvement and it can contribute to burnout and inefficiency in the system. And it can also weaken the connection between data collection and actual decision-making, when there’s just too much data to actually make sense of it in order to inform decision making in a strategic way. So, when that burden goes away––teachers, staff and students––there’s an ability to really refocus time on what matters and that’s a critical, critical win in this work.
Marley Arechiga:
For listeners who are thinking about reducing this kind of administrative burden, what is a realistic place for them to start?
Kelsey Krausen:
So, depending on where they sit in the system, they may want to reach out, start conversations with others who may be able to support this work. So if you’re a district leader, consider reaching out to someone at your State Department of Ed to see if you can garner support for an effort like this. Or if you’re at the State Department of Ed and you see this as an issue in your state, you might want to reach out to a district leader to start the conversation to se if they would be interested in providing input into the process. And in some cases, these efforts have been driven by the work of membership organizations representing school district leaders or school board members, superintendents who have worked with their representatives in the state legislature to consider passing legislation to support the kind of review necessary to do a really comprehensive overview of current reporting requirements.
I think there’s also a growing body of work, as I mentioned before, our team is working on a federal study to estimate just the cost of responding to regulatory requirements and accreditation in this case for institutes of higher education. So I think some of these types of studies help create a foundation for understanding the magnitude of current reporting requirements and how that translates into the ways in which our system leaders are using their time on the ground and some of the opportunity costs in some cases that the requirements create.
Marley Arechiga:
We’ll make sure to link to that report when it’s ready. Before we wrap, Kelsey, what’s one moment in your work with state and district leaders that captures for you what’s at stake here?
Kelsey Krausen:
The thing that really stands out to me is hearing from district leaders that they spend days on reports that they are not sure if anyone ever even looks at. And what those comments capture for me is that this isn’t just about inefficiency in our system, it’s about really highly skilled people spending time on work that isn’t moving student outcomes, time that could be spent supporting schools, working with educators, focusing on improving student outcomes and that’s really what’s at stake here.
Marley Arechiga:
All right, Kelsey, we will end it there. Thank you again for sharing your wisdom on how to reduce administrative burden and thank you for being on the show.
Kelsey Krausen:
Thank you. I really appreciated the time with you today.
Marley Arechiga:
Yeah, of course. To our listeners, keep the conversation going with Kelsey on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. In the show notes, you’ll find details about how Kelsey and her team helped Nevada streamline their reporting and how you can partner with her to do the same in your school, district, or state. While you wait for the next episode, subscribe to Leading Voices on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora, or iHeart.
This podcast was brought to you by WestEd. WestEd is a nonpartisan research development and service agency. We work to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. Special thanks to our audio producer, Sanjay Pardani, and to Gretchen Wright for her editorial support. Thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll catch you in the next episode.