Presents strategies for improving student academic achievement and U.S. school productivity. Among the strategies are the following: making student achievement a priority goal for schools, enhancing and toughening the curriculum, managing all educational resources at the school and classroom levels, providing a variety of system incentives towards…

This study presents California's recent history of public revenue funding for elementary and secondary education and projects the state's educational and fiscal needs for the next five years. California has experienced a roller-coaster pattern in funding support since 1978, the year of Proposition 13. School financing declined from a position of…

The author addresses the problem of the public's attitude toward the issues of educational finance and relates it to the attitude on government spending a a whole. From the results of tax and expenditure limitations on ballot measures in 1978 and 1979, he observes that there is no national movement to copy California's Proposition 13. Polls taken…

Proposes both low-cost strategies (administrator academies, teacher institutes, school improvement projects, information dissemination programs) and high-cost strategies (teacher compensation, longer school day and year, greater reliance on technology) for improving educational quality. The author concludes with a discussion of educational…

Argues that standards-based education reform has shifted the focus of school finance from equity to adequacy. Requires an explicit connection between the funding provided to schools and the results produced in terms of student learning. (Contains 19 references.) (MLF)

Using extensive data from before and after school finance reforms, the author analyzes the reforms' effects on school finance inequities in Michigan and Missouri, for all school districts and for suburban districts. In Michigan, data from 1970-71 show, the state met neither of two equity standards--equality in expenditure per pupil and fiscal…

A 1977 restudy of Colorado school finance, following a 1974 study of the effects of the state's 1973 finance reforms, indicates that Colorado school finance is still unequal. Colorado's school finance program is essentially a resource equalization plan (also known as a "guaranteed tax base" or "district power equalization"…

Emphasizing the diminished resources of the 1980's, this report offers an overview of the varied experiences of the states in dealing with school finance issues. Although basic inequities in educational services remain, the states' generally poor fiscal condition has resulted in less attention for equity issues. However, public school financing…