Introduction: Issues in School Finance

Abstract

Most teachers and administrators think of their own school or school district budget when the topic of school finance arises. The picture in their mind is local: of the actions of a school board or municipal council to approve a budget, of votes by residents of the school district to approve a certain level of taxes, or of salary negotiations. Mental comparisons with other school districts are made only to determine whether the local salary is competitive. This local perspective, however, obscures vast differences in the financing of public school districts across any state. Per pupil expenditures in wealthy school districts may be more than twice the per pupil expenditures in poor school districts. Most often, the level of per pupil expenditures is the result of the residential property wealth of local school districts. Although all states provide assistance to low-wealth school districts, this aid is seldom sufficient to permit per pupil expenditures comparable with wealthy school districts'. Inadequate resources in some poor school districts have led sympathetic lawyers to bring legal challenges to the courts, alleging that the state school aid system violates the state constitution. State constitutions typically have a clause requiring the provision of a free public education that is thorough and efficient-or some similar phrase that the courts must interpret and against which they must judge the adequacy of the state education aid formula. Almost half the states in the nation now have such lawsuits pending.