ERIC Number: ED508583
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Mar
Pages: 34
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Reflections on Equity, Adequacy and Weighted Student Funding. Working Papers Series. SAN08-04
Ladd, Helen F.
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Within the context of the school finance literature, the concepts of equity and adequacy raise a number of complex definitional and pragmatic issues. The purpose of this paper is to clarify those issues and to use those concepts to evaluate the recent policy proposal called Weighted Student Funding (WSF). Though WSF contains some equity-enhancing elements, it is likely to fall short of its equity goals because the weights are likely to be inappropriate and the approach fails to take full account of the concentrations of challenging-to-educate students and their effects on the distribution of teachers. In addition, the WSF proposal can be faulted for paying no attention to adequacy, potentially stigmatizing individual students, and placing so much focus on individual schools. A more complete evaluation of WSF would require a broader institutional perspective that extends beyond the equity and adequacy considerations of this article. (Contains 8 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Educational Finance, Educational Equity (Finance), Financial Support, Financial Policy, Problems, Teacher Distribution, Labor Market, Educational Quality, Expenditures, Educational Facilities, Outcomes of Education, Politics of Education, Resource Allocation, Foreign Countries
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. P.O. Box 90239, Durham, NC 27708-0239. Tel: 919-613-7401; Fax: 919-681-8288; e-mail: ppsinfo@duke.edu; Web site: http://www.pubpol.duke.edu
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Duke University, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Identifiers - Location: New Zealand; South Africa; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A