Contradictory evidence of the relationship between education funding and student achievement could reflect heterogeneous effects by revenue source or student characteristics. This study examines potential heterogeneous effects of a particular type of local revenue--bond funds for capital investments--on achievement by socioeconomic status.…

This paper analyzes how changes in school expenditures affect dropout rates based on data from 466 school districts in New York during the 2003/04 to the 2007/08 school years. Past traditional regression approaches show mixed results in part because school expenditures are likely endogenous, so that one cannot disentangle cause and effect. The…

The purpose of this study is to bring together recent innovations in the research literature around school district capital facility finance, municipal bond elections, statistical models of conditional time-varying outcomes, and data mining algorithms for automated text mining of election ballot proposals to examine the factors that influence the…

One distinction between the markets for corporate and municipal bonds involves institutional constraints that apply to some municipal bond issues. This research focuses on how public finance institutions, in particular explicit debt limits and referenda requirements, affect the borrowing cost of individual school district bond issues. The…

Using logistic regression, this study sought to understand the relationship between district characteristics, district finances, levy characteristics, and campaign expenditures with new operating levy outcomes. We found that employee benefits as a percentage of the district's budget were negatively associated with levy outcomes, while salaries…

In the late 1600s, British physicist Sir Isaac Newton first demonstrated refraction and dispersion in a triangular prism. He discovered that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum. Hold a prism up to the light at the correct angle and white light magically splits into vivid colors of the rainbow! So what do prisms and rainbows have to…

Ipswich, with about 2,200 students, is one of the many school districts in Massachusetts. Ipswich is governed by an open town meeting at which every registered voter may speak and vote. Budgets in Ipswich are highly detailed public documents in which every salary, classroom, and operating expenditure is identified. The budget book provides…

The theory of "voter crosspressure" focuses on the idea that voters have predispositions and try to avoid information (pressure) that would cause them to vote against their predisposition. If a voter is unsuccessful in avoiding that information, he or she will vote against his or her predisposition. (Author/IRT)

The vote-by-mail procedure is presently being tried in Oregon. Supporters claim it is good for democracy because it increases the number of persons involved in decision making. Opponents say it encourages participation by people who know little or nothing about issues on the ballot. (MLF)

Identifies the organizational and public contact strategies used successfully by school supporters in three school funding elections in the Clayton (Missouri) School District between 1975 and 1980. Notes the types of voters contacted by block workers prior to the 1980 election and analyzes their subsequent voting behavior. (PGD)

Discusses 13 mistakes school leaders make in planning and executing campaigns for the passage of school bond and levy referenda. Suggests corrective action for each mistake. (PKP)

A demographic fact is that the population is made up of an increasingly larger percentage of old people. Senior citizens will vote in the same pattern as the rest of the population if they are informed. Presents ways schools can communicate better and gain the suppport of senior citizens. (MD)

Describes school financial election campaign strategy using a random survey of registered voters, concentric targeting of likely "yes" voters, and an integrated database. (PKP)

Describes how one district mounted a successful campaign to get its budget passed after the same budget was defeated three months earlier. (IRT)

Superintendent of Antigo Unified School District, Antigo, Wisconsin, explains the use of school-level and community-level data to build support for bond and budget referenda. Describes the benefits of data-driven decision-making. (PKP)