EDB 540: School Budgeting and Finance

The economics of education -- The need for adequate funds -- Financing education equitably -- Patterns for school finance systems -- Sources of revenue -- Eroding local control -- Education : a state function -- Federal interest in education -- The influence and climate of the courts -- Public funds and nonpublic schools -- Financing school facilities -- Administering the district and school budget -- Accounting and auditing -- Business aspects of the school community -- Human resources and school finance -- The road ahead in school finance

Pointing to the disparities between wealthy and impoverished school districts in areas where revenue depends primarily upon local taxes, reformers repeatedly call for the centralization of school funding.Their proposals meet resistance from citizens, elected officials, and school administrators who fear the loss of local autonomy.Bryan Shelly finds, however, that local autonomy has already been compromised by federal and state governments, which exercise a tremendous amount of control over public education despite their small contribution to a school systems funding. This disproportionate relationship between funding and control allows state and federal officials to pass education policy yet excuses them from supplying adequate funding for new programs. The resulting unfunded and underfunded mandates and regulations, Shelly insists, are the true cause of the loss of community control over public education. He demonstrates the effects of the most infamous of underfunded federal mandates, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and explores why schools implemented it despite its unpopularity and out-of-pocket costs. Shellys findings hold significant implications for school finance reform, NCLB, and the future of intergovernmental relations.

Sponsored by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), this groundbreaking new handbook assembles in one place the existing research-based knowledge in education finance and policy, thereby helping to define this evolving field of research and practice. It provides a readily available resource for anyone seriously involved in education finance and policy in the United States and around the world.
The Handbook traces the evolution of the field from its initial focus on school inputs and the revenue sources used to finance these inputs to a focus on educational outcomes and the larger policies used to achieve them. It shows how the current decision-making context in school finance inevitably interacts with those of governance, accountability, equity, privatization, and other areas of education policy. Because a full understanding of the important contemporary issues requires input from a variety of perspectives, the Handbook draws on contributors from a variety of disciplines. While many of the chapters cover complex state-of-the-art empirical research, the authors explain key concepts in language that non-specialists can understand.

State aid and the pursuit of educational equity: an overview / John Yinger -- Financing a constitutional education: views from the bench / Anna Lukemeyer -- Funding and accountability: some conceptual and technical issues in state aid reform / David N. Figlio -- Prospects for achieving equity or adequacy in education: the limits of state aid in general equilibrium / Thomas J. Nechyba -- The impacts of school finance reform in Kansas: equity is in the eye of the beholder / William Duncombe and Jocelyn M. Johnston -- A decade of reform: the impact of school reform in Kentucky / Ann E. Flanagan and Sheila E. Murray -- School finance reform in Michigan: evaluating proposal A / Julie Berry Cullen and Susanna Loeb -- School finance reform in Texas: a never-ending story? / Jennifer Imazeki and Andrew Reschovsky -- School finance reform and school quality: lessons from Vermont / Thomas Downes -- APPENDIXES: -- A. A guide to state court decisions on education finance / Yao Huang, Anna Lukemeyer and John Yinger -- B. A guide to state operating aid programs for elementary and secondary education / Yao Huang -- C. A guide to state building aid formulas for elementary and secondary education / Wen Wang

Concepts of school finance equity : 1970 to the present / Robert Berne and Leanna Stiefel -- School finance litigation in the name of educational equity : its evolution, impact, and future / Paul A. Minorini and Stephen D. Sugarman -- The impact of court-mandated school finance reform / William N. Evans, Sheila E. Murray, and Robert M. Schwab -- Court-mandated school finance reform : what do the new dollars buy? / Margaret E. Goertz and Gary Natriello -- The politics of school finance in the 1990s / Melissa C. Carr and Susan H. Fuhrman -- Educational adequacy and the courts : the promise and problems of moving to a new paradigm / Paul A. Minorini and Stephen D. Sugarman -- Enabling "adequacy" to achieve reality : translating adequacy into state school finance distribution arrangements / James W. Guthrie and Richard Rothstein -- Performance standards and educational cost indexes : you can't have one without the other / William D. Duncombe and John M. Yinger

Why do we need to know what money buys? : research on resource allocation patterns in elementary and secondary schools / Lawrence O. Picus and Minaz B. Fazal -- The quest for equalized mediocrity : school finance reform without consideration of school performance / Eric A. Hanushek -- Money does matter : a research synthesis of a new universe of education production function studies / Richard D. Laine, Rob Greenwald, and Larry V. Hedges -- Does equal funding for districts mean equal funding for classroom students? : evidence from California / Linda Hertert -- Beyond district-level expenditures : schooling resource allocation and use in Florida / Yasser A. Nakib -- Bringing money to the classroom : a systematic resource allocations model applied to New York City public schools / Sheree T. Speakman ... [et al.] -- Allocating resources to influence teacher retention / Neil D. Theobald and R. Mark Gritz -- Stretching the tax dollar : increasing efficiency in urban and rural schools / David M. Anderson -- The allocation of educational resources and school finance equity in Ohio / Thomas B. Timar -- Resource allocation patterns within school finance litigation strategies / R. Craig Wood and Jeffrey Maiden -- Redefining school-based budgeting for high-involvement / Priscilla Wohlstetter and Amy Van Kirk -- The politics of school-level finance data and state policy making / Carolyn D. Herrington -- Implications for policy : what might happen in American education if it were known how much money is actually spent? / James W. Guthrie