In the mid 1990s, the U.S. Congress requested a major study of the U.S. system of elementary and secondary education finance by the National Research Council (NRC). This volume of background papers was prepared in conjunction with one part of the study. It includes eight papers commissioned by the NCR's committee to inform its discussions about equity and adequacy in education finance, two of the issues it was specifically charged to address. The papers are: (1) "Concepts of School Finance Equity: 1970 to the Present" (Robert Berne and Leanna Stiefel); (2) "School Finance Litigation in the Name of Educational Equity: Its Evolution, Impact, and Future" (Paul A. Minorini and Stephen D. Sugarman); (3) "The Impact of Court-Mandated School Finance Reform" (William N. Evans, Sheila E. Murray, and Robert M. Schwab); (4) "Court-Mandated School Finance Reform: What Do the New Dollars Buy?" (Margaret E. Goertz and Gary Natriello); (5) "The Politics of School Finance in the 1990s" (Melissa C. Carr and Susan H. Fuhrman); (6) "Educational Adequacy and the Courts: The Promise and Problems of Moving to a New Paradigm" (Paul A. Minorini and Stephen D. Sugarman); (7) "Enabling 'Adequacy' To Achieve Reality: Translating Adequacy into State School Finance Distribution Arrangements" (James W. Guthrie and Richard Rothstein); and (8) "Performance Standards and Educational Cost Indexes: You Can't Have One without the Other" (William D. Duncombe and John M. Yinger). Each paper contains references. (Contains 29 tables and 4 boxes.) (SLD)