Many states have used professional judgment panels to determine the resources schools need to meet certain performance targets. This study initiates a critical study of that method. Using budget simulations with hypothetical schools, we collected the judgments of forty-five principals about how school budgets should be allocated and how school resources affect student achievement. We found considerable variation among principals in both budget allocations and achievement predictions. We also found that principals were more optimistic about student achievement than is warranted by either achievement in comparable schools or recent research on the relationship between resources and achievement.

This article reports the results of school budget simulations with 568 randomly selected California public school teachers, principals, and superintendents. Simulation participants were presented with the budget for a hypothetical school and asked to use that budget to employ the resources that would maximize the academic achievement of the school's students. Their responses were used to estimate the resources that professional educators believe their schools need to meet state academic achievement standards.