School district leaders are responsible for managing million-dollar budgets, but many have received little or no training in education finance. Marguerite Roza discusses a recent analysis of administrator preparation programs that revealed startling gaps in content, including a tendency to focus on revenue in their finance education, instead of on…

An Alberta school district that used a cost-recovery model to finance school services for 20 years is finding that the model produces unintended negative results. Some schools didn't spend this money on services but used it for other school operations. Some spent the money on external consultants. Professional relationships were damaged, and…

Describes statutory limitations on taxation or spending adopted in eight states and the effects on educational programs. (WD)

Studies of the relationship between increased spending for education and student achievement have failed to take into account teacher knowledge and ability. The authors' study showed wide variation within schools and concluded that research on the effects of schooling is weakened by concentrating on entire schools and school systems. (Author/WD)

A national survey measures and reports the attitudes of the public toward the public schools in 1970. (Author)

Since 1966, support of public schools has been damaged by widely accepted hypotheses built by Coleman, Jencks, and others on inadequate samples and faulty measurement. Describes the research of Herbert Walberg and his associates who are generating diametrically opposed hypotheses from new data. (Editor)

Differences in the corrected state rankings on Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are explained by the percentage of students taking the test and by student composition by sex, race, and average family income. Higher state per capita educational expenditures are significantly related to higher average SAT scores. Policy implications are…

When the Cincinnati Public Schools devised a reform strategy for improving student performance, it became clear that the district's traditional budgeting system was inadequate. Traces the district's process of moving to a system of student-based budgeting linking funding equity and flexibility to accountability and excellence. (MLF)