Agency: State Board of Education

Line Item: USOE - Initiative Programs

Function

The Utah State Office of Education-Initiative Programs line item was created during the 2009 General Session and is designed to provide greater accountability and reporting on educational programs developed by the Legislature. The line item will continue to incorporate legislative initiatives that target specific educational priorities deemed high priority by the Legislature and state education leaders. These programs are mainly distributed to school districts, charter schools or private entities on a contract or grant basis.

Background

Over the course of several years, the Legislature established several new education initiative programs designed to meet the needs of certain student populations, establish new programs, or provide funding for pilot programs. Appropriated funds are distributed to public or private entities on a contractual basis, and, in order to provide oversight, are included within the Utah State Office of Education's budget. After several years, individual initiative program funding levels became hard to track within the larger USOE budget. To ease program tracking, the Legislature created the Initiative Programs line item which includes the following programs:

• Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships;

• ProStart Culinary Arts Program;

• UPSTART Early Childhood Education;

• Financial and Economic Literacy Education;

• CTE Online Assessments;

• Performance-Based Compensation Pilot Program in Elementary Schools (moved to the Minimum School Program in FY 2011);

• The Utah Electronic High School (moved from the Minimum School Program in FY 2011)

• K-3 Reading Program (2011 General Session); and

• Sixth Grade Math Assessment (2011 General Session).

Intent Language

The Legislature intends that the USOE develop quantifiable performance measures associated with the programs contained in the USOE - Initiatives line item. The performance measures should directly tie the achievements of the various programs to the incurred costs.

Performance

The Initiatives Programs line item contains a broad range of programs, ranging from the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarship Program to UPSTART. Rather than select a few performance mesures here, the following linked document contains relevant performance measures by program.

Funding Detail

For more detail about a particular source of finance or organizational unit, click a linked entry in the left column of the table(s) below.