Facing substantial financial pressure, many districts close schools in order to preserve solvency and improve student outcomes. Using a new longitudinal data set on all non-Cook County Illinois schools, we examine the determinants of high school closure decisions from 1986 through 2006. Our dataset combines information from a wide variety of…

Though charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon in American education, they have been in existence long enough now to allow for evaluation of operational outcomes relative to traditional public schools. Using a comprehensive data set for the State of Michigan that spans the years 1995 through 2006, this article aims to provide such an…

The goal of this study is to simultaneously explore resource allocation across schools within large urban school districts and across all schools within major metropolitan areas that include those urban districts in the state of Texas. This study uses a three-year panel, from 2005 to 2007, for Texas elementary schools in the Houston, Dallas,…

Using Levin and McEwan's (2001) "ingredients method," this study identified the major activities and associated costs of school levy campaigns in five districts. The ingredients were divided into one of five cost categories--human resources, facilities, fees, marketing, and supplies. As to overall costs of the campaigns, estimates ranged from a…

Public school funding in Massachusetts is based on foundation budget principles. However, funding formula modifications often create disparities between district foundation budgets and actual required spending levels. This study provides an in-depth look at Massachusetts' state aid formulas used between 2004 and 2009 and utilizes two approaches to…

Evidence suggests that accountability and financial pressures are causing schools across the country to reduce investments in subject areas that are not assessed for accountability purposes. However, due to the design of financial reporting systems in most states, inadequate data are available to analyze spending levels and patterns for specific…

Fiscal disparities within school districts may be the next area "ripe" for litigation. Equity and adequacy litigation have largely focused on between-district fiscal disparities. Research suggests that within-district disparities may be as unfair to high poverty schools. When the school funding pie is not growing, remedying within-district fiscal…

Recent changes in public school educational finance in the state of Kansas are shown to have had little positive effect on student educational achievement. A differences structure is used to determine the effect of changes in revenue per student at the district level on changes in measures of student achievement. Measures of achievement employed…

A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted of Gordon, Kane, and Staiger's (2006) proposal to raise student achievement by identifying and replacing the bottom quartile of novice teachers, using value-added assessment of teacher performance. The cost effectiveness of this proposal was compared to the cost effectiveness of voucher programs, charter…

The purpose of this study was to replicate the analysis made by D. Verstegen and L. Driscoll in "The Illinois Dilemma" (2008) utilizing the actual allocations to districts resulting from the funding formula in Illinois for the 2004-2005 school year to understand the influence of adjusted values on determinants of fiscal equity. The results of a…

This article presents the authors' response to a response to their research on Illinois in which the authors analyze the equity, adequacy, and legal issues related to school finance. The Responders' quarrel with that portion of the authors' research that addresses equity and create a "de novo" analysis, by treating unequals equally--an invalid…

The 2001 recession had a major effect on Georgia's fiscal condition. We explore how economic conditions affected state and local financing of K-12 education in Georgia. We find that the magnitude of postrecession cuts in state real revenue per student varied widely across the local school systems in Georgia. We then examine whether and how cuts in…

In the postbellum southern U.S., African Americans were steadily disenfranchised, a modern publicly financed universal school system with racially segregated schools was created, and public school monies were allocated so that white pupils received substantially more than black pupils. An earlier paper (Ng and Halcoussis 2003) established a…

In this study, we surveyed school district superintendents in a southeastern state about their budget-building strategies. The majority of responding superintendents had worked with their most senior principals and business managers for less than three years. Patterns of variance along the openness of budget-building processes, information…

Two years ago a fiscal equity analysis assessed the current Virginia equalization formula over its history (fiscal year 1975-fiscal year 2003). The findings indicated by accepted equity statistics were that the level of equity improved from fiscal year 1975 through fiscal year 1994 and leveled off from fiscal year 1994 through fiscal year 2003.…