As school quality improves, does the housing market reflect buyers' perception of that change? In 1993, Texas implemented Senate Bill 7 (S.B. 7), commonly known as the Robin Hood financing of local schools, wherein some of the property tax revenues from wealthy school districts are redistributed to less wealthy districts. Data from Dallas County…

This article explores possible fiscal incentives associated with various state formulas for allocating special education funds and the degree to which such incentives affect special education. First we review empirical and contextual evidence in the literature that addresses the relationship between funding formulas and special education…

This article studies the effects of earmarking state lottery profits for education. Because educational expenditures generally exceed the funds earmarked for education by a wide margin, nothing prevents state legislators from using earmarked funds to replace rather than augment funds that would have gone to education in the absence of earmarking.…

Debate over the proper identification and placement of gifted children in public schools is not new. But the pressure put on public schools by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 has brought advocates and opponents of gifted education into starker conflict. This presents a chance to reexamine the foundational premises of the argument in…

This article identifies typical life course situations that women experience, which contribute to a cycle of discrimination or a recurrence of disadvantages simply because of their sex, race, or age. Although men suffer social, health, psychological, and economic disadvantages as they age, this article focuses primarily on women as a more deprived…

Gender discrimination and wage inequity remain problems worldwide. In the United States and Canada, where equal rights and protective legislation have been in place for nearly 40 years, glaring disparities in salaries and job opportunities remain. Similar problems have been studied in the United Kingdom, leading to enactment of the 1975 Sex…

The effects of class size on academic achievement have been studied for decades. Although the results of small-scale, randomized experiments and large-scale, econometric studies point to positive effects of small classes, some scholars see the evidence as ambiguous. Recent analyses from a 4-year, large-scale, randomized experiment on the effects…

American society has long realized the importance of education as a tool for social and economic mobility and therefore has supported free public education with taxpayer dollars. Understanding that every child is entitled to an education appropriate to his or her needs, to varying extents state legislatures have recognized the importance of…

State-level public programs tend to compete more fiercely for scarce funds in periods of rapidly evaporating state and federal support. This article applies competing-interests theory to a statistical model of the determinants of state appropriations for 4-year public colleges and universities. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized least…

In the spring of 2002 the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan requested a study of expenditure and revenue equity and wealth neutrality in Saskatchewan from 1985 through 2000. The Saskatchewan context is unusual, an economy quite dependent on agriculture, politics that have bifurcated along urban-rural lines, and numerous other…

State budget crises, along with voter-passed initiatives limiting property tax levies, have severely reduced school financing in many states in recent years. Rural schools may be particularly vulnerable in that they are typically less able to generate revenue because funding often is tied to enrollment, rural districts tend to have lower property…

Canadian humorist Steven Leacock once told a story about a jockey who became so upset over bad news that he leaped on his horse and rode off in all directions. According to this author, that action well summarizes the condition of the State of Arkansas after receiving a Supreme Court order to provide an equal and adequate education to the children…

Describes the meaning of "rural" and identifies 31 states having a significant rural character. Discusses certain generalizations about rural America. Provides a demographic analysis with school finance implications. Draws implications for rural school finance policy. (Contains 3 tables.)(PKP)

Proceedings of the October 2002 meeting of the Rural School and Community Trust in Manchester, New Hampshire. The finance scholars at the meeting discussed a broad range of issues in rural finance, with particular emphasis on adequacy and equity. (Contains 26 references.) (PKP)

Using data from Texas and Wisconsin to estimate cost functions for elementary and secondary education, examines whether the structure of certain cost-function relationships is different in rural versus nonrural school districts. Finds that although cost structures are similar, factors such as small schools and large percentages of economically…