8: Research in School Finance: A Concern with Equity and Equality

Abstract

The 1970s have been a time of unprecedented change in state systems for raising and distributing revenues for public education. While there has been considerable variety in both the purposes and the degrees of reform, states in all sections of the nation have enacted laws which substantially alter the financing of public education to reduce inequities in taxation, to produce more nearly equal spending patterns among the districts within a state, and to provide greater recognition of the differing needs for educational services among students and districts. Economic trends, political fortunes, and public dissatisfaction with rising property taxes and declining student achievement have been among the underlying causes for these changes. But more important for the purposes of this chapter, research and policy analysis have played a substantial role in shaping the form of these new public policies in education. This chapter will review the contributions to school finance made by scholars and practitioners and will discuss the linkage of their research to recent reforms.