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…

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…

Using grid and group theory (Douglas 1982, 2011), the study described in this article examined the intersections of technology and school finance in four schools located in districts differing in size, wealth, and commitment to technology integration. In grid and group theory, grid refers to the degree to which policies and role prescriptions…

The purpose of this study was to assess the equity and adequacy of the NYC schools through analysis of the distribution of key resources before and after its 32 decentralized community school districts were recentralized into ten administrative regions in 2003. The study used a framework for assessing adequacy based on economic, sociological, and…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of school district expenditures in predicting student achievement in Ohio for the school year 2009-2010. Building upon the concept of the "65 percent solution," the research questions that guided this study were: (1) What percentage of Ohio's school district's operating…

Although there exists a large body of research concerning the relationship between expenditure and student achievement, a lack of research exists analyzing this relationship as it pertains specifically to students with disabilities. Given the increasing fiscal and academic pressures districts face to allocate resources efficiently, the purpose of…

In 2003, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, upheld a trial court decision that funding for public education in New York City was unconstitutional and decreed that the state needed to increase operating aid to school districts by $5.6 billion per year ("Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v. State of New York 2003").…

Educators face increasing demands to raise student achievement, to improve classroom instruction, and to demonstrate accountability in an environment of high stakes testing. However, meeting these demands is challenging in the face of numerous risk factors that jeopardize the academic success of elementary and secondary students. To that end, the…

The K-12 student population is becoming increasingly diverse in the United States. In particular, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) rose from 4.7 million in 1980 to 11.2 million in 2009, more than doubling from 10% to 21% of the student population (U.S. Department of Education n.d.). At approximately 1.8 million, the state of…

The purpose of this article is to introduce a new statistic to capture the ratio of equitable student outcomes given equitable inputs. Given the fact that finance structures should be aligned to outcome standards according to judicial interpretation, a ratio of outputs to inputs, or "equity ratio," is introduced to discern if conclusions can be…

In most school achievement research, the relationships between achievement and explanatory variables follow the Newton and Einstein concept/principle and the viewpoint of the macro-observer: Deterministic measures based on the mean value of a sufficiently large number of schools. What if the relationships between achievement and explanatory…

This article is an update of a previous study by the author which examined the growth of elementary and public school revenues for school years 1982-1983 through 1991-1992 (Alexander 1997). Using the same framework, this study provides an analysis of the factors accounting for changes in real per-pupil revenues across the 50 states and the…

Texas charter school districts (CSDs) are accredited and monitored by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) utilizing the various components within the state accountability systems for both state and federal requirements. Yet, Texas CSDs are believed to operate with few regulatory restrictions on administrative, instructional, and pedagogical methods.…

Indiana has a long history of school funding issues and distribution formula revisions. The most recent modifications to the formula were made between 2005 and 2009. One of the more controversial revisions was the removal of the minimum guarantee from the formula. As a result of these changes, three school districts filed a lawsuit challenging the…

Superintendents and other school administrators live with tensions in political economy. The voting public believes school funding is fixed when the economy expands and new state programs are introduced. Administrators are publicly criticized when, strained for resources, their schools cannot perform within the "do more with less" paradigm. This…