Year-round schools have a place in the urban education process. However, the many fiscal pressures facing large city school systems may prohibit them from instituting the rescheduled school year. Only if State governments make fundamental reforms in their educational finance systems can urban school districts participate in the benefits of…

Eight critical issues relevant to Kansas school finance are discussed in this report; issues include recent school finance litigation, assessment of the School District Equalization Act (SDEA), recommendations for improving the SDEA, validity of the power equalization models, measures of local district funding ability, mechanisms used by other…

The Serrano decision has caused policy makers in California to search for departures from the current system of public school finance. Citizen and legislative evaluation of alternative finance systems is being confused by the employment of diverse interpretations of Serrano. Although the Court's decision may appear to indicate clear-cut methods of…

This report is one of a series on education finance undertaken to document existing disparities in expenditures for education, to analyze the sources of the disparities, and to describe and evaluate the gains and losses that would occur in differing types of school districts under alternative fiscal policies. This study shows that North Carolina's…

This document consists of a series of papers by different authors on the subject of school finance and equal educational opportunity. The papers discuss equalizing educational opportunity by means of a resource equalizer or guaranteed valuation grants-in-aid; the impact of changing school finance on metropolitan areas; and three types of…

This paper provides a historical review of equity in funding education in Alberta. It describes government attempts to address fiscal inequities and shows how the introduction of full spending in 1994 addressed many of the equity problems in Alberta. Full provincial funding of education has proved an overall success, but it faces the following…

This report focuses on the relationship between State aid to education and incentives for the efficient allocation of resources. Following a description of the historical and current manifestations of State aid, an empirical analysis was conducted to study the impact of State aid on several variables. More State aid was found to be associated with…

This book offers an overview of educational finance law and examines constitutional challenges to state aid plans. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to education finance litigation, including the early history of education finance litigation and early education finance theory. Chapter 2 discusses the states' responsibilities for providing equal…

This report concentrates on the equity problem in Illinois public school finance. Central to this report is the thesis that there are three basic strategies for attacking the equity problem: make adjustments in the existing "foundation level" grant-in-aid system, abandon the "foundation" idea for a grant-in-aid system, and…

This summary provides an overview of developments in school finance litigation since the United States Supreme Court's historic and lamentable 1973 ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez" that wealth-based discrimination in educational expenditures does not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to…

This document examines the effect that alternative ways of reforming school finance would have on major city school districts. Using census data, the authors attempt to show that parity between tax effort and revenue yield will not in itself insure fiscal justice for most major city schools. The paper considers the higher costs of educational…

This book explores three major fiscal problems facing elementary and secondary education in the United States: (1) school district difficulties in making ends meet, (2) disparities in expenditure levels and tax burdens among school districts, and (3) declining revenues and enrollments in nonpublic schools. The authors examine the underlying causes…

This study focuses on how central city school districts can benefit from educational finance reform. The publication is designed for use by both those charged with the responsibility for education matters and by the general public. The document begins with a discussion of the fiscal impact of several popular alternative school finance reforms,…