Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the connections between state education finance distribution models and student achievement. To date, lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state finance systems have been heard in 45 states; the judicial interpretation of the requirement to provide equality of educational opportunity has…

Colorado has been experiencing the efforts by local property tax groups to reduce the dependence for educational revenue by moving away from local property taxes to wider based taxation plans. Paralleling these efforts have been attempts by various groups, through the courts, to change the method of financing education to provide more equality of…

Investigates alternative measures of school district wealth, focusing on the issue of intergovernmental aid (particularly equalization aid), arguments for and against different wealth measures, jurisdictional implications of the use of alternative wealth measures in four states, and the effect of alternative wealth measures on state equalization…

This study examines various factors that influence school district spending and spending from locally raised taxes in Colorado and Minnesota. The factors include the levels of state and federal aid; the nature of the state general aid formula; local fiscal characteristics including the average market value of residential housing, the percent of…

Data on 174 Colorado school districts were used to measure districts' responses (as indicated by per-pupil expenditures) to their own fiscal capacity and to state aid that changes over time. Colorado's modified guaranteed tax base (GTB) formula was analyzed and a model constructed that took into account the formula's limits on district spending…

The authors' review of several studies on school district fiscal response to state aid formulas precedes a summary of their research results from case studies of Colorado and Minnesota. The studies reviewed examined factors influencing district fiscal capacity and expenditure changes made in response to aid formulas, especially to…

A 1977 restudy of Colorado school finance, following a 1974 study of the effects of the state's 1973 finance reforms, indicates that Colorado school finance is still unequal. Colorado's school finance program is essentially a resource equalization plan (also known as a "guaranteed tax base" or "district power equalization"…

To study the impact of school finance reform on minorities and the poor, researchers gathered data on educational revenues and spending, tax effort, district wealth and income, ethnicity, and urban location in California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, and Texas. Their data analysis used various measures of educational equity and fiscal…

As volume six of a nine-volume, six-state study of the impact of school finance reform on minorities and the poor, this report examines the history, status, and effects of finance reforms in Colorado. The authors chronicle Colorado's school financing methods since 1936 and discuss the Colorado School Finance Act of 1973. They then describe…