The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires all states to report school-level spending data. This fall, the Department of Education released the first round of data on per-pupil expenditure as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As states continue to release new spending data, it will be possible for a variety of stakeholders to…

Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K-12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state's school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds…

New federal regulations (State Plans to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators)1 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…

The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965" ("ESEA") requires that school districts provide services to higher-poverty, Title I schools, from state and local funds, that are at least comparable to services in lower-poverty, non-Title I schools. The current Title I comparability requirement allows school districts to…

Employed various statistical techniques to measure fiscal equity in Virginia. The new state aid system for financing education was unable to mitigate large and increasing disparities in education revenues between more and less affluent localities and a strong and growing linkage between revenue and wealth. Includes 34 footnotes. (MLH)

Defined as the provision of adequate resources to enable all children to meet a state's proficiency standards, school finance adequacy is being addressed in some way in almost every state. Because states are under increasing pressure to define what constitutes an adequate education and determine how to fund it, this issue of "Insights" examines…

Updated were statistics of an earlier study done by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) in 1980, entitled "The Missouri School Finance Study." The recent results differed from the earlier study's, illustrating the extent to which revenues per pupil depended on local property wealth and income. The results of the first study…

Every Year, thousands of American children enter school already behind. Although most Americans are aware of that fact, what they often don't know, is that instead of organizing our educational systems to make things better for these children, we organize systems of public education in ways that make things worse. This report is unique among…

This report examines the disparity in education expenditures in elementary and secondary schools for each state for the period from 1979-80 to 1993-94. Data from the Census Bureau's Survey of Local Governments were used, and the object of analysis was instructional expenditures per pupil. School districts were grouped into four categories: (1)…

Using three determinants of equity--disparity, wealth neutrality, and sufficiency--this study examines public school financing in four Canadian provinces (Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick) to find whether equity as defined in the United States has been achieved and what the state role has been. (JW)

Using extensive data from before and after school finance reforms, the author analyzes the reforms' effects on school finance inequities in Michigan and Missouri, for all school districts and for suburban districts. In Michigan, data from 1970-71 show, the state met neither of two equity standards--equality in expenditure per pupil and fiscal…

This paper establishes the importance of examining resource-allocation behavior at microlevels of educational systems and reports on the progress being made in New York to develop and examine a set of relevant indicators. The paper presents findings that were part of a multistate effort conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education…

Consisting primarily of tables, this two-part report provides a detailed summary of the cost of education per full-time equivalent student (FTES) for the 71 California community college districts in the 1994-95 academic year. Introductory sections describe data sources and present a table showing 1994-95 FTES for the 71 districts by resident,…

Two papers in this report document that as the percentage of African American students and students of color has risen in the Milwaukee Public Schools, funding per pupil has plummeted compared to funding in predominantly white suburban districts. It underscores that school funding reform is not only an educational necessity, but also a matter of…

Given the overall annual expenditure of approximately $250 billion on public education in the United States, there is great interest in how these dollars are allocated to states. This brief presents data showing the relationship between access to public-education resources and community wealth across all school districts in the United States for…