We study the progressivity of state funding of school districts under Tennessee's weighted student funding formula. We propose a simple definition of progressivity based on the difference in exposure to district per-pupil funding between poor and non-poor students. The realized progressivity of district funding in Tennessee is much smaller--only…

This paper estimates the causal effect of equalizing revenues across public school districts on students' intergenerational mobility, using variation from 13 school finance reforms passed in 20 US states between 1986 and 2004. Since households sort in response to each reform, post-reform revenues are endogenous to an extent that varies across…

Community Colleges are pivotal institutions in American society--crucial to economic competiveness and efforts to revive the American Dream. As open-access institutions located close to where students live and work, community colleges are uniquely situated to jumpstart social mobility for those who aspire to the middle class. This issue brief…

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…

Two years after the U.S. Department of Education awarded $650 million in Investing in Innovation grants, some of the winners are still facing financial uncertainty. Other grantees have also encountered problems with matching funds coming through, and some nonprofit grantees have been forced to contribute their own money to match the initial…

Michigan radically altered its school finance system in 1994. The new plan, called Proposal A, significantly increased state aid to the lowest-spending school districts and limited future increases in spending in the highest-spending ones, abolishing local discretion over school spending. I investigate the impact of Proposal A on the distribution…

Congress has recently focused on the complex relationship between federal student aid, states' funding appropriations for higher education, and institutional tuition and fee levels. Fueling this focus is the ongoing cost shit in public higher education, from states to students and families, as well as to the federal government via student aid…

Tax revenue flows to California's nearly 1,000 school districts through many different channels. According to the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence (2007), this system is so complex that the state cannot determine how revenues are distributed among school districts, and after reviewing a large number of academic studies in the Getting…

This report examines funding disparities between two seemingly similar schools in Virginia and North Carolina. It finds that the federal, state, and local policies designed to distribute education funds systematically provide more money to higher-income students and wealthier schools. (Contains 5 figures.) [This report was also produced by the…

Two proposals in the bill currently circulating to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seem to be shoe-ins for making their way into federal law. The impetus behind both proposals is to help poor kids by making sure that districts spend as much money on them as gets spent on rich kids. Going against the grain, the National Council on Teacher Quality…

While there is a wealth of research on school finance equity and adequacy, and school finance theory clearly documents differences between the two concepts, no study has examined whether the reforms engendered by each approach actually differ in terms of resource distribution. This study examines the issues using district level data on expenditure…

In a major development in the state politics of resource allocation, two rival political movements--school finance reform supporters and spending/tax limitation supporters--are going to confront each other in several states. (Author/IRT)

Examines the extent to which Minnesota's current school finance program satisfies the criteria of fiscal neutrality, equalization of fiscal effort, and accommodation of educational need. (Author/IRT)

Very little progress has taken place in achieving greater fiscal neutrality. The change in definition of local school district wealth produced a significant redistribution of basic subsidies with the relatively poorer districts receiving less funds. (Author/IRT)