Determining the level and distribution of special education funding is an ongoing issue. Attempting to meet the extensive range of students' needs, while balancing funding coming from federal, state, and local sources leads to uneven funding burdens and questions about whether all student needs are being met. Traditionally, funding for special…

Community colleges are the linchpin of the nation's current efforts to increase the proportion of adults with postsecondary education. Yet, despite the significant historical role community colleges have played in expanding access to higher education, there are reasons to question whether community colleges are equipped to supply these additional…

North Carolina special education funding utilizes a dollar allotment per identified student, applying a funding cap based on a percentage of district average daily membership. While representing an attempt to reduce over-identification of students with special needs the funding cap has led to large systematic disparities in district fiscal…

On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…

The general purpose of this article is to extend the examination of previous efficacy analyses of Texas' education finance system by paying particular attention to the ability of the Texas Foundation School Program (FSP) to generate revenue to support ELL educational activities. This article will examine the efficacy of formula components within…

This research briefly summarizes a series of Ohio Supreme Court litigation known as "DeRolph v. State" and then measures the equality of expenditures among Ohio school districts. "DeRolph v. State" was a high-profile school finance adequacy case. Nevertheless, the high court continuously expressed concern for the financial…

This article considers the role of higher education in state budgets. It empirically models and tests the balance wheel hypothesis in a robust framework. The balance wheel model posits that in good economic times, higher education is an attractive area for states to fund and tends to be funded at a higher rate than other state budget categories.…

The purpose of this study was to replicate the analysis made by D. Verstegen and L. Driscoll in "The Illinois Dilemma" (2008) utilizing the actual allocations to districts resulting from the funding formula in Illinois for the 2004-2005 school year to understand the influence of adjusted values on determinants of fiscal equity. The…

Although datasets such as the Integrated Postsecondary Data System are available as inputs to higher education funding formulas, these datasets can be unreliable, incomplete, or unresponsive to criteria identified by state education officials. State formulas do not always match the state's economic and human capital goals. This article analyzes…

The standard benefit incidence algebra generally produces biased estimates of the distribution of public spending on education when students from poor and rich families are enrolled in schools that receive different levels of public spending per student. Except in very rare instances, removing these biases entails combining several sources of…

The fight over school funding in most states involves a long battle in the courts that may span several years and never have a definitive endpoint because resistance to adequate funding of public schools appears to be endemic to government processes. The "DeRolph" case, first filed by the plaintiffs in December 1991, is one such legal…