Rethinking cause & consequence in U.S. school funding inequality: a future role for quant crit perspectives

Public schools in the United States offer tuition-free primary and secondary education to their students, and are divided into school districts funded by the local and state governments. Although the primary source of school district revenue is public money, several studies have pointed to the inequality in funding across different school districts. In this paper, we focus on the spatial geometry/distribution of such inequality, i.e., how the highly funded and lesser funded school districts are located relative to each other. Due to the major reliance on local property taxes for school funding, we find existing school district boundaries promoting financial segregation, with highly-funded school districts surrounded by lesser-funded districts and vice-versa. To counter such issues, we formally propose the Fair Partitioning problem to divide a given set of schools into k districts such that the spatial inequality in the district-level funding is minimized. However, the Fair Partitioning problem turns out to be computationally challenging, and we formally show that it is strongly -complete. We further provide a greedy algorithm to offer practical solution to Fair Partitioning, and show its effectiveness in lowering spatial inequality in school district funding across different states in the United States.

It has been a busy time for the Association of Education Finance and Policy (AEFP). Over the past few years the association has acquired a new name, a new journal, and many new members. The 2012 annual conference, convened in Boston last March, proved to be the largest conference in the association’s thirty-seven-year history, with 556 members in attendance. The theme, selected by incoming president Deborah Cunningham, was “Education Finance, Policy, and Practice: The Role of Evidence in a Dynamic World,” which underscores the contemporary challenge to the association: how to apply an increasing abundance of information and sophisticated analytical tools to produce the evidence needed to guide decision making by educational policy makers and practitioners. The Boston meeting was notable not only for the number in attendance. The unique qualities and strengths of the association were in clear display: papers of unusual methodological rigor; an interdisciplinary mix of academics from the social sciences, public policy schools, and colleges of education; educational finance professionals, policy analysts, and practitioners, a mix rarely found in the same place; and sessions addressing today’s hot topics as well as issues that have endured over the years. Having said this, all indications are that AEFP is what it has always been: a small, diverse group of people tackling some really big problems. Of particular note was a trend that has been growing for years but has clearly come into full flower: the large

abstract: In Texas, significant disparities in school funding have led to several court cases and revisions to school funding formulas. The current paper finds that the funding that districts in the High Plains Region of the Texas Panhandle receive has a statistically significant relationship with districts’ size and student population characteristics. School districts with larger populations of students of color, economically disadvantaged students, and English Language Learners (ELLs) are likely to receive less funding per student compared to less diverse districts. This disparity in school funding proves especially striking considering many economically and linguistically diverse districts receive additional funds from the state and/or federal government. Specifically, districts receive additional state funding for each ELL student participating in a bilingual or ESL program. Districts with high percentages of low-income students likewise garner additional federal funding through the Title I program. As such, the present study demonstrates that significant inequities in school funding continue to exist in Texas, especially in the Texas Panhandle.

Political constitutions are essential components of political-economic regimes. If one accepts the postulate that society needs to move towards a post-capitalist political-economic system, a key question that immediately follows is whether and in what ways existing political constitutions will need to change.The concept of property-owning democracy has been extensively explored in recent scholarship.1 In a nutshell, property-owning democracy consists of a system combining political democracy with a market economy, but with explicit measures in place to broaden the distribution of capital and property as widely as possible and prevent domination of the economy (and state) by a small elite. Many recent articulations of the idea also call for establishing in effect a right to a meaningful share of property (be it cash, housing, and/or productive capital) for individuals or households. A property-owning democracy is intended to realize effective political equality, fair equality of opportunity, and an economy that lifts the position of the least well off group over time to a much greater degree than do even the best forms of welfare state capitalism. Property-owning democracy shares many of the same features and intellectual sources as the “Pluralist Commonwealth” model articulated by Gar Alperovitz,2 and most if not all of the argumentation below would in my view apply with equal force to the Pluralist Commonwealth. Indeed, the Pluralist Commonwealth model can be viewed as a specific version of property-owning democracy, tailored especially to American conditions.There is good reason to doubt that property-owning democracy (or a Pluralist Commonwealth) can be achieved under the existing Constitution (especially as presently interpreted by the Supreme Court majority). I have in mind here not, primarily, the obvious defects of the U.S. Constitution with respect to political equality—such as the extraordinary overrepresentation of rural, often more conservative states in the U.S. Senate, at the expense of larger, more diverse and urban states—defects which have been catalogued by Robert Dahl and other political scientists.3 These defects in the mechanics of the American system are serious, and in general tend to harm the practical possibility of achieving a politics of property-owning democracy (or other conceptions of social justice), but I leave them aside here. Instead, I focus on the question of what social and economic rights would need to be constitutionally guaranteed if a fully realized property-owning democracy were to be established in the United States.Elsewhere, I have sketched accounts of property-owning democracy, and also promoted an “egalitarian interpretation” of the idea that involves an explicit long-term scheme to distribute productive wealth directly to all adult citizens, with the long-term aim of assuring that practically all households control at least $100,000 in net assets. Clearly, it would not be necessary or wise to hardwire such a scheme in any detail into an actual constitution.4Here I am concerned with property-owning democracy in a more general form: a regime that seeks to secure (in Rawlsian terminology) the fair value of the political liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and either the difference principle or some other reasonable limit on inequality by distributing human and productive capital as widely as feasible. The intended contrast is with regimes in which control of productive capital is dominated by a tiny minority of citizens (i.e. the top 1%, who now control nearly two-fifths of all wealth in the United States), in which human capital (and also, often, effective political agency) is also distributed in a lopsided fashion, and that rely primarily on redistributive taxation to achieve a measure of social justice.5In the American context, realizing property-owning democracy in a stable form will require five constitutional guarantees: 1.A right to an equal public education.2.A right to a minimum income and/or the means for supporting one's self at a minimal level of social acceptability.3.Explicit limitations on corporate political activity and provision of a public system of campaign financing.4.An individual right to a share of society's productive capital and/or wealth.5.A community right to sufficient productive capital to sustain a viable local democratic community. Below, I discuss the justification for each of these constitutional guarantees.Before proceeding, however, it is important to clarify why addressing constitutional issues is a useful exercise. It is not my claim that implementation of all, or indeed any, of these amendments is required to continue to advance important experimentation consistent with a Pluralist Commonwealth vision (such as the Cleveland Model), or to build public support and strong political movements in favor of such a vision. Nor do I claim that these proposed amendments ought to be imposed over the objections of the majority (or a strong minority) of Americans so as to foreclose democracy in the name of justice. Instead, my claim is that if we take either property-owning democracy in general or the Pluralist Commonwealth in particular as models of alternative regimes that are to work on fundamentally different principles than the existing system, then political movements must at some point confront the question of how to permanently alter the architecture of the U.S. political system in ways that would facilitate the full development of an alternative regime (i.e. political-economic system). The five proposed amendments are designed to either remove serious impediments to the realization of a meaningful Pluralist Commonwealth in the U.S. or to enshrine key institutional elements of the alternative regime. It is assumed that adoption of each of these amendments could take place only after a long period of public debate and building understanding of the logic of a Pluralist Commonwealth model, in which a firm democratic majority came to recognize these proposed amendments as desirable and essential. Such democratic majorities, of course, do not exist at present. But concrete constitutional proposals can at least stimulate the public discussion that is needed if such majorities are ever to emerge.Why should a discussion of broadening property distribution begin with a discussion of education? Here I accept the conventional view that “human capital” is itself an extremely important form of property. The skills and abilities that one carries in one's person, including in particular the capacity to continually learn new skills, have lifelong impacts on the ability of individuals to flourish in modern economies. To be sure, in existing capitalist economies there is a tiny class of people who can convert access to large material wealth into a comfortable and lavish (though not necessarily respected) life, without having to actually do anything substantial by their own efforts. But for the vast majority of the population, what one can do is at least as important as what one has in shaping lifetime economic prospects, and this would continue to be true in a property-owning democracy. Large inequalities in human capital—a situation in which some people have had ample opportunity to develop their capacities and skills in many directions, while others have had a minimal, stripped-down education, and in which some young people have access to enormous development resources (i.e. college) and others do not—are a recipe for long-term inequality at least as consequential as differences in assets or incomes.In addition, there are strong reasons of justice to begin with education. Provision of a quality education to all so as to counter-act the advantages of class is a primary requirement of what Rawls termed “justice as fairness.”6 Sociologically, the very existence of distinct social classes and the differences in the care and training imparted to children of different socio-economic backgrounds by their parents makes assuring literally fair life chances impossible. But the public is obliged minimally (a) to devote equal public resources (in quality and quantity) toward the education of all children as a matter of right and (b) to devote additional resources to those known to be severely disadvantaged as a consequence of (for instance) high poverty, the experience of childhood trauma, or the existence of a disability. In short, a just society both shows equal moral concern for all children and makes whatever investments are necessary to assure that the especially disadvantaged have an effective opportunity to develop their own talents and abilities. The sum result of this process is unlikely to eliminate the intergenerational transmission of class status altogether, but properly executed it can play a crucial role in reducing it. It can also play a crucial role in assuring that the bulk of the population develops sufficient education and civic skills to act as effective political agents.The American system of public education falls criminally short of these normative standards. Epoch-making federal cases in the early 1970s (e.g., San Antonio v. Rodriguez) established that: (a) gross disparities in the funding of schools within the same state are not violations of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so long as states have some plausible rationale (such as the desire to maintain “local control” over public schools); and (b) that states are not obliged to end racial segregation in schools within metropolitan areas that results from the clustering of white students in suburban school districts that are separate entities from the urban school districts with minority (specifically, African-American) children (see Milliken v. Bradley; also, Bradley v. Richmond School Board). These cases codified the Court's view that Brown v. Board of Education had not in fact established a national right to an equal education (even within states). As Justice Thurgood Marshall remarked at the time in a bitter dissent, the Supreme Court's decision in the Milliken (Detroit) case consigned generations of children in many metropolitan areas to public schools that are effectively segregated by race and class, and divided up American city-regions into areas that have “good” schools and those that have “bad” schools that middle-class families will refuse to attend.7School inequity in the United States thus has three dimensions. The first is inequality of educational provisions between the different states. The second is inequality of funding between school districts in the same state. In recent years, 44 percent of local school budgets have been funded by locally generated sources—namely, local property taxes. Fourty-seven percent of local budgets are funded by the individual states, and just 9 percent by the federal government. In a well-understood dynamic, this method of funding makes it much easier for richer, more affluent communities with higher property values to generously fund the local schools, at a tax rate that does not deter residents from moving to the community.8 The third and most profound source of inequality, however, are demographic differences in the composition of schools resulting from (a) residential segregation by race and class, and (b) allowing each locality/county to maintain a separate school system.From the standpoint of justice as fairness, this is an unholy mess that has essentially zero hope of being rectified within the current structure of public education. Recent “reform” efforts such as No Child Left Behind have arguably exacerbated many of the problems by promoting the adoption of testing-based teaching regimes, to the detriment of the development of critical thinking and civic skills.9 Many U.S. urban public schools resemble mini-authoritarian regimes in which students who cannot comply with disciplinary rules are sequestered in quasi-prison “correctional schools” or expelled altogether. Seizing on the visible failures of urban public education, neoliberal reformers have energetically promoted charter school and privatization strategies, gaining control of some entire school systems such as New Orleans and Detroit. Other reformers have attempted to develop new models of holistic education that explicitly redress the problems associated with poverty, combining social services and resource centers for parents with traditional educational activities.10 All current U.S. reform efforts take for granted the existence of permanent race and class segregation rooted in residential stratification.There is essentially no hope for realizing property-owning democracy in any substantive sense unless this set of problems is redressed. Hence I propose that the U.S. Constitution be amended so as to provide an explicit federal guarantee of an equal public education. An “equal public education” is to be understood as one that provides equal public resources (qualitatively and quantitatively) to children not defined as “special needs,” and further additional resources to children who have one or more special needs. What are special needs? These can be defined as a disability, a diagnosed learning disorder, suffering from emotional problems related to abuse or other experiences of trauma, and/or simply as growing up in a household of poverty. Schools ought to be given additional resources proportionate with the number of special needs children in attendance. How many additional resources? This is a question that must be settled at the legislative level, but the underlying principle should be to provide sufficient resources to allow all children to achieve a high level of functioning and capability development.Provision of an equal public education must be understood as more than equalizing schooling resources. It also must encompass the inequalities that result from the mere fact of the clustering of affluent students into affluent school zones and poor children into poor school zones. Specifically, a constitutional amendment should overturn the reasoning in the Milliken v. Bradley decision and provide a legal basis for challenging systemic inequalities within metropolitan areas. One promising approach would focus on the fair distribution of high-needs children across all the schools in a given metropolitan area. For instance, in a metropolitan area with an overall poverty rate of 15 percent (currently the national average), all districts might be required to have a student poverty population between 12–18 percent, and all individual schools might be required, wherever feasible, to have a student poverty population between 10–20 percent.11Given the inevitable complexity of any serious proposal to rectify educational inequalities in the United States, a fair question is whether it is really a good idea to embed any particular rectification strategy in the constitution itself. The approach I would favor is having a constitutional amendment specifically affirm (a) a general right to a substantively equal public education guaranteed by the federal government but implemented by the states and localities, understanding the substance of that right to require (b) substantively equal funding of schools within the same state (c) compensation for the costs of educating special needs children and (d) balancing to the extent possible the distribution of high-needs (impoverished) children across school districts and individual schools. This amendment would give each child the right to an education, the right to be educated in a school that is funded at the same level as other schools in one's state (with allowances for the additional costs of educating high-needs children), a right to receive appropriate resources to address any special needs one may have as a public school student, and a right to attend a school with a moderate level of poverty (relative to local norms), if one chooses. This, probably, is enough for a constitutional amendment: strong enough to overturn the existing disparities in metropolitan education in the United States, but without permanently enshrining a one-size-fits-all institutional remedy.A property-owning democracy must seek to provide a guaranteed social minimum, for a variety of reasons. First, some people in our societies, for a variety of legitimate reasons, are unable to support themselves through market activities (paid employment). These include people literally unable to work or to keep a steady job, and also people who can work enough hours to earn a livable income only by shortchanging or violating other responsibilities (such as parenting).Second, many people who are willing and able to work are nonetheless unable to find steady work, and hence must live on the margins of the formal economy. In the United States, this category increasingly includes middle-aged people who have been downsized or laid off and whose skills are considered out-of-date, as well as many young people—including a fair few with college degrees—who are unable to find a steady first job.Third, in the context of affluent, consumerist societies, a minimal level of consumption is not just a matter of meeting permanent human needs; it's also a requisite of participating in the larger society as a social equal. We thus might judge that people should all have decent housing, access to health care, and sufficient food to sustain themselves: this minimum level of consumption is needed if people are to enjoy the full range of capabilities, including the most basic one (the top of Martha Nussbaum's list), a life of normal length.12 A person who lacks this minimum typically lacks the capacity to act as political agent on equal footing with others. Indeed, a person who is destitute and deprived is unlikely to regard themselves or be regarded by more affluent others as a social equal. This is an old point recognized as early as Adam Smith, who spoke of the importance of proper shoes in citizens' self-respect.13 But in the context of consumer society, we might say that equal social and political status requires that all have the ability not only to meet their basic needs, but to participate in consumer society at least in some modest way. A social minimum in consumerist societies probably should be understood as encompassing not just the obvious basic needs but also as providing enough money to permit at least some participation in the goods of consumer society.Fourth, the very existence of poverty is a standing violation of the principle of fair equality of shows that children who time in poverty have long-term life than children who have poverty. It is not reasonable to children growing up in households that are unable to meet the basic needs of all will develop their to their should a social minimum be As and point there are three The first is to provide basic human needs in through public care, public housing, food and public might be in and quality to meet the basic needs of even with a very small market The second possibility is to provide support to allow individuals to these on their The third possibility is to provide guaranteed to all willing to work, with government as of Here we might that there is a strong case for a right to work not just as a for providing a social minimum but also as a requirement of equal social and political the American there are strong reasons for a right to the of a constitutionally guaranteed social First, it the that if to should are it should be possible to that principle without also productive in only of market primarily on a work strategy may a sense of and social those the the work strategy more to the development of (especially for than do the alternative the work strategy has of reducing the social associated with and U.S. have strong support for the idea of government as of cannot be the only for providing the social minimum, provision or allowances will also be The between these alternative can be on To the extent that the aim is to assure that basic needs are the public provision strategy has much to to just of a concern that people might a provision on but the market often does not provide goods in (especially in the case of as households sufficient income to participate in at least a minimal in consumer society is crucial to the of a social not just meeting material needs, but social and the standpoint of a constitutional we might say that such an amendment should (a) a right to the provision of sufficient quality and of and to assure a to be either by public or a and (b) a right to at a with for all willing to work, with for both and with a right to needed support services (such as and child constitutional might of be by other legislative measures intended to of a higher minimum the A guaranteed right to properly would in fact a long towards addressing the of problems associated with long-term poverty This fact to the importance of constitutionally a right to full is an of at the federal level, but in the good of full is off other goods (such the good of A constitutional amendment would access to productive a not a matter of political or U.S. legal as having rights as individual human as are legal of the the state is to their rights and The of a constitutional amendment would be to clarify that are not to be as with respect to rights of public such an under current there is to from on the political in ways both to justice and to the public that such an amendment need not of all political rights For instance, would to public to and to to within should be as the of corporate entities might a reasonable to the but such activities the should be participation in activities or should be of public on public issues is a at a minimum and public from corporate might be obliged to public to to the of such The point of the amendment is not to all such but to doubt the constitutional of corporate political in to secure a process that the public corporate does not the of what Rawls termed the value of the political is also the of inequalities in the effective political between and households. seek to the of individual may to But this approach does not redress the between those who can to give and those who One to this is the proposal of and to give all a of that can be to any This is a system of public that would some of the of the existing American system, by those who can to the and by viable from It also would political equality, and the of money the of the of money now even in would be able to their own of but the of to public would be at is good reason to a of this into the have strong reasons not to campaign rules that political equality and now to the most of property-owning the distribution of version of property-owning democracy on for of large to distribute shares of their widely taxation in general at the same The version of property-owning democracy I and not just to up existing of wealth but to guarantee each household a meaningful share of each of three forms of capital property and shares in productive or are a number of possible for assuring each either a right to capital and/or a right to a from The state for instance, to each a share of the from on public in the each as an resources as well as other goods (such as the and from in this could a of additional income for all the possibility of the public shares of (with in proposals aim to secure public of large in the of but we might more with the of those whose existence and are directly on the such as entities that do with all of government might be required to new to percent of the This would be as a public on of all citizens, and all citizens might be given an share of the on this A related approach is the which requires to new each that are by the over time to control of how a scheme such as my own proposal to (and a to provide an capital to a for all U.S. citizens under and a for citizens between and might be I have how this if in place for would allow all citizens to at least in capital for different distinct by A concern is that a government might such a begin funding it for a few years, then political with the new government or Hence a constitutional guarantee might be important to this which is essentially a to to all American a meaningful of capital through How could this The most method would be a constitutional guarantee that: (a) into citizens' individual capital accounts to a of are to be and (b) money for these are to be taxation that assure that at least percent of the population have a net

Investment in schools has wide‐ranging implications for society, from improving learning outcomes to economic growth and social cohesion. Addressing inequalities in school funding is important, as part of an effort to guarantee equal opportunities. However, little is known about the consequences of recent changes to school funding in England on school spending, including the introduction of the National Funding Formula (NFF) policy. We employed interrupted panel regression models to assess trends and inequalities in school spending, and whether the NFF policy was associated with a decline in geographical inequalities between schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities and the rest of England. We used routinely available school‐level spending data for all publicly funded primary and secondary schools in England between 2015 and 2023, aggregated to lower‐tier local authority level (N = 315) and adjusted for inflation. We found reduced funding for schools in England over the last decade, with clear geographical inequalities. These cuts have particularly impacted schools in deprived local authorities. While funding across schools increased after the introduction of the NFF, inequalities in spending remain. These patterns are concerning in the context of rising inequalities in educational attainment and recent inflationary pressures impacting school spending. School funding policy should take into account social factors affecting schools in deprived areas, where pupils often face higher rates of poverty, food insecurity and housing instability.

abstract: After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states in the US have reformed their education aid formulas but have still faced many criticisms. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a more equitable and adequate aid formula with tools to win broad support from communities and lawmakers. It develops a measure of the gap between education cost and revenue capacity as an indicator for each district’s need for state aid. Both education cost and revenue capacity are estimated using school district characteristics that are outside the direct control of local officials at any given point in time. This paper shows that Connecticut school districts have a wide range of cost-capacity gaps, due to disparities in cost factors and property tax base, and therefore have different needs for state aid. While larger-gap districts, on average, received more state aid per pupil than smaller-gap districts, many districts—especially the largest-gap ones—received less aid than they needed to close their cost-capacity gaps. Further analysis suggests that inadequate school funding could have a negative impact on student test performance. As a potential solution, this paper proposes a gap-based formula to allocate state aid and includes tools to make the formula more attractive to a wide range of school districts. The policy simulations show that the gap-based formulas can align aid with the gaps better than the existing formula does. However, applying tools to increase the formula’s attractiveness to small-gap districts would compromise the ability of state aid to eliminate inequity and inadequacy and would often require a larger state aid pool. This paper expands the academic community’s knowledge about the US education equity and adequacy by examining Connecticut’s school funding for the first time under the regression-based cost-capacity gap approach. This analysis can be relevant and useful for other states facing similar issues, as it provides a practical, step-by-step roadmap how to apply the sufficiently general research method and formula design to an individual state.

This article aims to “modernize” the current legal debate over inequitable public school funding at the state and local level. The 1973 Supreme Court case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez established precedent, allowing for property-tax based education funding programs at the state-level—a major source of local inequality in funding. For a number of reasons discussed in this article, the jurisprudence utilized by the Supreme Court in Rodriguez is outdated and the time is ripe for education finance litigators to, once again, challenge state-level inequality in public school funding.

During the 1980s, school finance research in general, and research on fund distribution and equity issues in particular, has been in a depressed state, with little progress being made on either the substantive or the methodological fronts. There is a backlog of old issues requiring attention, and certain new finance issues are emerging, mainly in connection with current education reform efforts. The priority tasks to be undertaken in the next round of research would seem to include (a) upgrading the methods used to address the traditional core topic in school finance research, equity in the distribution of funds among school districts; (b) extending the research on fund distribution issues to deal with hitherto-neglected dimensions of finance, including allocations of funds by type of resource, by level of education and type of pupil, and by curricular area or program; and (c) initiating new research into the relationships between education finance and efforts to improve the schools. The research on the finance-reform relationship should deal not only with the financial implications of particular reforms but also with the broader question of how school finance systems can be used to facilitate reforms and stimulate better performance.

There is an unquestionable connection between systemic reform, equity, and school finance reform that requires the attention of educators and policymakers at all levels of government. Instead of disconnected reform initiatives prevalent in the 1980s, the 1990s is the beginning of a new era of educational reform that strives for coordination, integration, and cohesion around a clear set of outcomes. Within this framework of systemic reform, it is essential that policies leading the efforts be coordinated with school finance reforms that foster equity. This article analyzes the factors that must be considered when forging these linkages. The concepts of equity and adequacy are discussed along with their relationship to school finance litigation. Examples of linkages between systemic reform and school finance reform are examined. A policy linkage model is proposed that illustrates the connections between the policy-making bodies, systemic reform initiatives, and the various components of school finance reform. General recommendations for policymakers to consider when fostering reform initiatives are suggested.

Governments and development partners encourage public school authorities to mobilize private funds from diverse non-state stakeholders as a means to expand funding sources to provide quality education for all. While financing public schools with private funds is expected to promote the efficient use of resources due to increased accountability, it raises concerns about financial equity. Using public school panel data from Learning and Educational Achievements in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) in Pakistan, this study examines how private funds mobilized from different stakeholders are associated with efficiency in educating students at a given achievement level and equity in school finance. School fixed effects analyses show that schools relying on education fees or local community contributions were more likely to reduce inefficient capital expenditure. In girls’ schools, financial dependency on private donors is also associated with a reduction in capital expenditure. However, the results suggest that a heavy reliance on education fees and private donors makes schools less efficient. I find no evidence that mobilizing private-fund revenue widened financial inequity. The findings demonstrate the importance of understanding the differential effects of private-fund revenue to develop effective multi-stakeholder financing systems that improve student achievement in a cost-effective manner and ensure financial equity.

Financial equity among school districts across the country has been studied for many years. Research has given mixed reviews that increased funding will equate to higher student achievement. As educators and legislators debate the adequacy and equity of funding for all schools across states and the country, having a strong foundation of research in which to base the discussion is crucial. School funding models must be studied to ensure that all students have an opportunity for an equitable and adequate educational experience. The purpose of this study was to take a look at the Iowa school funding model and the relationship within the model that pertains to the instructional support program and student achievement. Information was gathered from the 20062007 school year for student achievement and school finance for all 365 school districts in Iowa. From this information several factors were analyzed based on student achievement, in which test scores for 4 th grade students on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) was used as the measure for student achievement. Several variables were used on the school finance side to gain insight into both property wealth and socioeconomic status (SES) of students within each district. The instructional support program was the primary focus when addressing the participation levels and tax rates surrounding the program. Several statistical models were set up to examine the relationship between student achievement and school funding in Iowa. Findings revealed no statistically significant relationship between the instructional support program and student achievement. In addition to these findings, previous research was reinforced indicating that school districts with a larger population of low SES students tended to have statistically lower student achievement. Last, as school district enrollment increased the

New federal regulations (State Plans to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators) place increased pressure on states and local public school districts to improve their measurement and reporting of gaps in teacher qualifications across schools and the children they serve. Yet a sole focus on resource disparities between schools within a state ignores an important driver of those disparities: district-level spending variations, particularly when accounting for differences in student populations. The analyses herein evaluate connections between district and school level spending measures and teacher equity measures (such as salary competitiveness and staff: student ratios), and specifically whether inequality in “access to excellent educators” at the school level is greater in states where funding inequalities between school districts are greater. We find that district spending variation explains an important, policy relevant share of school staffing expenditures in 13 states. In many states, including Illinois and New York, a nearly 1:1 relationship exists between district spending variation and school site spending variation. In California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, district spending is positively associated with competitive salary differentials, average teacher salaries, and numbers of certificated staff per 100 pupils. In each of these states, district poverty rates are negatively associated with competitive salary differentials, average teacher salaries and numbers of certified staff per 100 pupils. As such, regulatory intervention without more substantive changes to state school finance systems, addressing district-level inequities, will likely achieve little. Current federal policy pressures state education agencies to report and attempt to regulate inequities that arise because of school finance systems over which those agencies have no direct influence. Our analysis suggests that the administration would be more likely to meet its goals if it attempted to more directly address state school finance system disparities, placing pressure on state legislatures to equitably and adequately fund schools, and following through with the requirement that state-to-district equity provisions translate into district-to-school equity.

Background/Context Dealing mostly in aggregate statistics that mask important regional variations, scholars often assume that district property taxation and the resource disparities this approach to school funding creates are deeply rooted in the history of American education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article explores the history of district property taxation and school funding disparities in California during the 19th and 20th centuries. First, the article documents the limited use of district property taxation for school funding in California and several other Western states during the 19th century, showing that the development of school finance was more complicated than standard accounts suggest. Then, the article examines how a coalition of experts, activists, and politicians worked together during the early 20th century to promote district property taxation and institutionalize the idea that the wealth of local communities, rather than the wealth of the entire state, should determine the resources available for public schooling. Research Design This article draws on primary source documents from state and regional archives, including district-level funding data from nine Northern California counties, to complete a historical analysis. Conclusions/Recommendations The history of California's district property tax suggests the need for continued research on long-term trends in school finance and educational inequality. Popular accounts minimizing the historical role of state governments in school funding obscure how public policies, not just market forces shaping property values, create funding inequalities. In turn, these accounts communicate powerful messages about the supposed inevitability of funding disparities and the responsibility of state governments to correct them. Through increased attention to long-term trends in school funding, scholars can help popular commentators and policymakers avoid assumptions that naturalize inequality and narrow the possibilities for future funding reforms.

Background/Context Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools, charter management organizations, and intermediary organizations. Purpose The current study examines whether this convergence in giving has spread to the entire network of foundations giving to charter-school-related organizations. We do so by extending current work and focus on the broader institutional field that includes the interactions between major foundations, smaller foundations, and grantees over time. Moreover, we look to see, if such a field-wide convergence is present, whether there is evidence consistent with the institutional process of isomorphism in which low-status foundations match the giving strategy of higher status ones. Research Design We test for these dynamics using exponential random graph models (ERGMs), a hypothesis-testing framework for network analysis. More specifically, we analyze the funding ties among 809 foundations that gave grants to California charter schools and charter-school-related organizations between 2003 and 2014, as available through the Foundation Directory Online. We constructed multiyear windows to examine funding ties between foundations and recipients, using organizational characteristics, such as foundation type, foundation year, professionalization, foundation size, organizational type, and location, and endogenous features of the network as independent variables. Findings Results indicate centralization of giving over time, as larger and newer foundations began practicing more targeted giving and the most connected recipients were involved in a disproportionate number of funding ties. We also found evidence consistent with institutionalization, as foundations with professional staffs played a larger role in giving, and smaller foundations increasingly engaged in behavior similar to their larger peers over time. Finally, we found evidence for the consistent effect of propinquity: We observe co-funding and co-receiving ties between foundations and grantees in geographical proximity to each other. Conclusions This work examines the network dynamics of charter school philanthropic giving and provides evidence for the centralization and institutionalization of the field. In turn, this may create inequity in funding for charter schools because it may be more difficult for smaller or less ideologically popular organizations to penetrate the field. Policy makers should be aware of these forces and should take them into account when making budgetary and funding decisions.

Introduction: A robust process of centralization in education administration and school finance has taken place in Hungary in the course of the present decade. The governance, control, and funding of schools has been taken from local government by the state, and the autonomy of headmasters and teachers has diminished. However, neither the objectives of, nor the motives behind this centralization seem to be completely clear. This paper aims to contribute to the clarification of these objectives and motives, and explores whether the reform has been successful in achieving its declared objectives. Methods: The clarification of the objectives and motives relies not only on an analysis of the existing literature, but on the textual analysis of various legal texts, together with the use of structured research interviews and press interviews with education policy makers and people working in education administration. Simple statistical methods (including inequality measures and concentration indicators) are employed to determine the impact of the centralization process via the analysis of administrative data on school finances, teacher earnings and student performance. Results: It was found that while the declared objectives of the centralization included the reduction of inequalities in resource availability and teachers’ wages, and an improvement in equality of educational opportunity, in the first two post-reform years there was a significant drop in the level of resources per student, resulting in a slight increase of inequality of resources. A drop in expenditure may in principle indicate a growth in efficiency, but in this instance this seems actually to have been achieved at the expense of shortages and other school-level problems with a negative effect on the quality of education. Discussion: The usual requirements to be observed in public sector governance reforms were deliberately neglected, and the reform was carried through in the absence of any pilot study or systematic impact assessment. This is all the more problematic as the recent literature on the experience of other countries does not provide unanimous support for centralization. Further, given the declared objectives of the reforms, it is rather remarkable that no systematic monitoring of results was put into place. Limitations: The analysis offered here is confined to the short term effects of the reform. A more complete evaluation of the reform will only be possible later, when the longer term effects of the process become clear. The relatively short time since the reform does not allow the definitive identification and evaluation of the effects of the centralization on student performance. However, the short-term effects on inequalities in school finances and teacher salaries are worth investigating at this point. The limited availability of school budget data from the pre-reform period restricts somewhat the reliability of the analysis of the effects of the reform on school expenditure. A further limitation is that the statistical analysis presented here is restricted to basic schools 2 only, in the interests of simplifying comparisons. However, a preliminary analysis of secondary schools showed very similar patterns. Conclusions: The empirical results are to a certain degree inconclusive. As far as school funding is concerned, the inequality of funding increased right after the centralization, then stagnated and started to diminish significantly only after 2015. At the same time, from the perspective of school funding per student on the basis of the income of various local authorities, the results seem somewhat more satisfactory, and it is possible to identify some positive effects in this respect.