Weighted student funding (WSF) decentralizes control over resources and empowers principals as financial leaders of their schools. In this study, we set out to understand how principals are making use of those leadership opportunities. Based upon a 2017-18 survey of 639 principals in 14 school districts implementing WSF, we find that principals…

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts have led to new federal data collections on school-level expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required states to collect and report, for the first time, school-level data on both personnel and non-personnel expenditures…

In order to determine the effectiveness of Hawaii State expenditures on public education (one-third of Hawaii's general revenues funds), the state legislature asked that the state auditor study the feasibility of applying a model to analyze expenditures for public education. The state auditor engaged Dr. Bruce S. Cooper, a professor at Fordham…

Findings of a study on public school funding and accountability in Hawaii are presented in this report. Following a detailed executive summary, the introduction outlines the state legislative history that mandated the study and describes the study's design. Chapter 2 discusses the different methods used to analyze educational expenditures and…