This study examines how five diverse California elementary schools--two underperforming and three high achieving, with statistically significant subgroups of English Learner, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and minority students--have allocated resources to improve student achievement. The applied research contributes new information to the current body of knowledge regarding Adequacy Oriented School Finance Reform (Picus, Odden, Aportela, Mangan, & Goetz, 2008). The goal of this project is to collect school data from the 2007-2008 academic year and examine how site level financial allocations have changed in response to the 2008-2009 California education budget cuts and how those reallocations have impacted programs at the five elementary schools. These findings will then be overlaid with the Evidence Based Model (Odden & Picus, 2008) to validate the Model's theory of improved student achievement. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]