This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California…

This dissertation examines the impact a Tax Ratification Election has on student achievement in Texas. Texas schools continue to struggle with shrinking budgets and increasing standards of student achievement (Equity Center, 2011). This study will provide greater insight into whether school districts that have completed a TRE have created a…

Illinois confronts a financial crisis that threatens its capacity to implement the state's long-fought-for plan for improving our education system. Two-thirds of our school districts are now deficit-spending. Districts have dismissed at least 6,400 educators and aides, closed schools, lengthened bus routes, and reduced programs in everything from…

This paper explores what happens to similar groups of children educated in different school districts. In this case, the "twins" in the study are groups of students who live in the same state in similar geographies and who share certain demographic characteristics. For this report, "twin districts" have very similar sizes and…

In an effort to address severe budget deficits at both the state and local levels, schools and educational programs are being asked to trim budgets. The Advanced Placement Program is one program that will certainly be scrutinized. This article presents a general overview of AP social studies, a brief history of the AP social studies program, and…

The popular narrative of Wisconsin's collective bargaining battle started out being about money. Should public employees pay more toward their healthcare? Can school districts offset state aid cuts using the additional revenue from employee healthcare contributions? Does collective bargaining have a cost? This article gives an overview of…

Traditionally, district and corporate leaders regarded chief financial officers, or CFOs, as chief accountants. They were the individuals tasked with ensuring financial compliance, settling the books, creating reports, and cutting costs. The CFO was inherently risk averse and internally focused; he or she was there to backstop the ambitious plans…

The purpose of this study was to identify financial management strategies that school business officials have found most successful in achieving school district financial stability. To accomplish, 208 Illinois school business officials in six counties: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties, excluding Chicago School District 299,…

We theorized that student test score performance will be positively related to the percentage of school district revenues raised from local taxes and with salary levels of school district administrators. Using both fixed and random effects panel analyses, we examine data for 217 Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 school districts in New Jersey for the years…

Every year, each Vermont Local Education Agency is required to submit an Annual Statistical Report to the Vermont Agency of Education providing an accounting of annual revenues and expenditures to the people of Vermont, their legislature, and the executive branch of government. The Vermont Agency of Education compiles the financial information…

There is widespread concern that administration consumes too much of the educational dollar in traditional public schools, diverting needed resources from classroom instruction and hampering efforts to improve student outcomes. By contrast, charter schools are predicted to have leaner administration and allocate resources more intensively to…

During the late 1990s and 2000s, the State of Florida enacted a set of education reforms spearheaded by Governor Jeb Bush. These policies, which emphasize test-based accountability, competition, and choice, have since become known as the "Florida Formula for education success," or, simply, the "Florida Formula." In recent…

Despite a large literature examining the effect of litigation on education finance and student achievement, there is relatively little recent evidence about how extra resources generated by litigation are spent. This paper uses national data to examine the effects of high court finance rulings from 1991 to 2002 on school districts' education…

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…

Using a panel of U.S. school districts spanning 1970-2000, we examine the relationship between income inequality and fiscal support for public education. In contrast with recent theoretical and empirical work suggesting a negative relationship between inequality and public spending, we find results consistent with a median voter model, in which…