The focus of this policy brief is on efforts to redesign state and district school finance systems to align them more closely with the standards-based education reform movement. Past efforts to offset fiscal disparities with state aid in low-property wealth districts have only been moderately successful. Part of the problem lies in the fact that over the past 30 years, strategies to reduce fiscal disparities, whether court ordered or not, have had limited success. Spending per pupil remained highly associated with property wealth. The question of fiscal fairness, however, fails to address what resources are necessary to reach the goal of teaching students to high standards. This requires a shift in thinking from equality to adequacy; a shift that may help policy makers create a new school-finance structure that is linked to strategies that raise levels of student achievement. This report draws up a new finance structure with the goals of identifying the base-level spending needed to teach each student to state standards in each district/school; identifying how much extra funding is needed to teach students with special needs; and providing performance incentives to encourage effective and productive spending. (Contains 43 references.) (JMD)