Superintendent Dan Domenech unsuccessfully battled New York's governor and legislature about a cut in state funding. Long Island has only 16 percent of the state's population but is being earmarked for 50 percent of the cuts. Domenech's earlier successes included a preschool for disadvantaged children, a full-day kindergarten, and a before- and…

Shows how to estimate comprehensive educational cost indexes that control for school district inefficiency and include them in state aid formulas. Simulates for New York the impact of several aid formulas on educational performance and evaluates them using several equity criteria. (Author)

Discusses Milwaukee's (Wisconsin) use of public tax dollars to finance private education and what the implications are for public schools. Examines how the controversial concept got started, its support in the courts, and the pros and cons of its implementation on public schools relative to the school-choice debate. (GR)

Alberta's 1996 introduction of performance-based funding for colleges, universities, and technical institutes is a substantial departure from previous Canadian practice. Origins and implementation of the two-year pilot project are described and several conceptual deficiencies are examined. Further research on the impact on educational quality and…

Fearing a federal court in Oklahoma might end a state-financed merit-scholarship program targeted by a discrimination lawsuit, black legislators passed a bill making the program race and gender neutral. State regents are criticized for failing to develop effective policy to remedy past discrimination. (MSE)

Discusses how colleges and state agencies are divided over responsibility for the costs of helping students with disabilities, with slow progress delaying student accommodations and straining college finances. (EV)

Considers how higher education supply is adapting to an evolving new world and suggests areas where research would shed light on the strategic choices institutions are making and help guide policy decisions. These include effects of tuition levels on state appropriations and out-of-state enrollment, and effects of admissions policies on different…

Explores how most states have adopted financing systems that link colleges' appropriations to performance, despite little evidence that the plans produce results. (EV)

Summarizes goals of state education aid, presents a conceptual model of aid's welfare effects, and examines the literature of tax and expenditure effects. Capitalization changes the relative desirability of two goals; equalizing resources across districts becomes less important than equalizing school districts' actual spending levels. (Contains 45…

This article discusses the tricks of the trade that legislatures in formerly de jure segregated states might use to maintain racial funding disparities in existence before Brown and whether such ploys might be vulnerable to legal challenges. The first section provides an overview of modern school finance formulas and explains how legislatures in…

This article proposes a general conception of educational adequacy and draws on a lengthy history of economic theory and emerging empirical evidence to support that conception. The author reviews empirical methods for measuring educational adequacy and synthesizes findings from a number of recent studies of the cost of an adequate education. He…

In this column, Linton provides updates on the various programs of the U.S. Department of Education. Among other things, he discusses the matter of restoring federal financial aide eligibility to certain offender populations, currently under study in Congress, and that Congress also is continuing a rare substantive discussion of issues related to…

An overview of formal government language-in-education planning for community languages (CLs) that has been undertaken in Australia and New South Wales is provided, moving from the more informal programmes provided in the 1980s to school-oriented programmes and training at the turn of the century. These programmes depend on community support; for…

What steps are needed to be taken to rebuild public investment in America's higher education? In this article, the author offers three actions which he believes the US higher education community must collectively embrace and suggests that the higher education community should also learn to speak with a common voice. To help put that idea into…

This is a case study of a state institution granted charter status in 1992 in exchange for capping its request for state funds. St. Mary's College of Maryland received widespread freedom from state procedural controls, including procurement, personnel, and some capital development processes. The state, however, retained its oversight of the…