This paper identifies which investments in school facilities help students and are valued by homeowners. Using novel data on school district bonds, test scores, and house prices for 29 U.S. states and a research design that exploits close elections with staggered timing, we show that increased school capital spending raises test scores and house…

This paper asks whether increasing public school funding can be an effective long-run crime-prevention strategy in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the effect of increases in funding early in children's lives on the likelihood that they are arrested as adults. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in public school funding, leveraging two…

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.…

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.…

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…

A brief examination of the voting patterns in seven budget elections from 1974 to 1978 in Eugene (Oregon) School District 4J reveals that there are no significant differences between the percentage of people voting Yes in precincts with community schools and the percentage of people voting Yes in other precincts. The turnout rate in precincts with…

Describes and analyzes a participatory approach to budgetary decision-making used by an exemplary high school. In spite of the budgetary forces dividing instructional departments, support units, and administration, an equitable division of resources provided to the school was consistently achieved each year. Includes 29 references. (MLH)

During the late 1960s and early 1970s a tax revolt occurred that affected school budgets in states in which citizens vote on school taxes and budgets. While the revolt was started by persons opposed to any tax increases, it was helped by those who felt that reduced enrollments should mean lower school costs and by those who felt that only persons…

Results of a study of voter behavior in three actual and two hypothetical school budget and bond elections in Missouri's Columbia Public School District suggest that voters can be effectively classified so that voting behavior can be predicted. Over 450 registered voters responded to a mailed questionnaire featuring 46 items that measured…

Kansas City residents were questioned about their attitudes toward education, the school district, schools in their neighborhood, educational expenditures, and voter behavior. Some comparative conclusions were drawn based on responses of people outside the Kansas City, Missouri School District; data from this survey was also compared with a 1970…

The general thrust of this report is to examine the impact of school closures on the following clusters of variables: population and land use trends--including changes in age structure, birthrates, racial composition, social and economic characteristics, demolitions and new structures, and occupancy rates in residential and commercial structures;…

This research is based on more than 1,600 school district property tax elections in California from the mid-1950s to 1972. Population, housing, social, demographic, and economic information by school district was available. This large, comprehensive, and consistent data base permitted investigation of the choices of the electorate with respect to…

This research addressed the contemporary problem of declining support for school funding requests. The study examined current factors and factors over time (1969-77) that underlie school tax balloting. Data were collected from four previously studied districts and statistically analyzed. Voters' attitudes toward school community relations,…