In Pennsylvania as in many other states, employee pension costs are a significant source of financial pressure for school districts (Zeehandelaar and Northern 2013, Pennsylvania Public Employees' Retirement Commission 2013). In order to gain greater insight into the nature of Pennsylvania school districts' financial burden related to pension…

In 2008, the Indiana legislature passed and the governor signed into law House Enrolled Act No. 1001, now referred to as Public Law 146-2008, which capped Indiana school districts' ability to raise revenues from the local property tax without local voter approval. To phase in the impact of the law, the state provided school districts with levy…

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…

The purpose of this article was to present the results of a study that analyzed Pennsylvania local school boards' taxing authority, pre- and post-enactment of Special Session Act 1, "The Taxpayer Relief Act," in 2006, in terms of its percent share of school districts' total budget in order to better understand the impact of the new…

Applying a Multiple Streams framework, the article documents the development and ultimate undoing of what became known as the national sales tax plan for education. The authors identify four factors that coalesced to lead the Nixon administration to propose replacing local property taxes with a federal value-added tax to finance K-12 education.…

Presents a general methodology that may be used by states in the design of municipal overburden provisions for their educational aid programs. (RLV)

Describes model, data, results, and implications of a study attempting to clarify two issues previously overlooked in studies of financing public education with local property taxes: (1) that regionally aggregated data may bias test results, and (2) that local fiscal response to grant programs may vary with the wealth of school districts. (SB)

Remarks that the Kenyan government and parents of school-age children are overburdened by their responsibility for financing secondary and higher education, stating that additional sources of funding must be found. Suggests alternative avenues such as other public sources, private sources, sources within the educational system itself, and sources…

School districts can improve their chances of avoiding financial difficulty by developing unreserved fund balance resources specifically for contingencies. Offers guidelines for establishing such a fund. (MLF)

Argues that recent federal education legislation will not eliminate unequal funding, school performance inequities, and student achievement gaps that have persisted in the poorest school districts. Asserts that adequate, equitable, and targeted human and financial resources and standards are necessary, and that the slight increases in federal…