Examines Michigan's attempt to abolish the school property tax and implications for New York State policymakers. Michigan substantially reduced the local property tax for local school operations, adopted a permanent set of tax and revenue limits, and devised a problematic assessment cap. Totally eliminating the local school property tax may be…

Analyzes public school funding patterns across the 50 states to help address continuing fiscal inequity problems. Findings support other investigations showing substantial variations in the distribution of public education revenues within states, even after years of ameliorative litigation and legislation. Equalization is costly and requires…

Analyzes limited English proficiency (LEP) program costs in 15 representative California elementary schools. Personnel, classroom, resource, and administrative costs were analyzed for five program models (bilingual early exit, bilingual late exit, double immersion, English as a Second Language, and sheltered English). Across all models, the total…

Explores whether scale economies in a single statewide, nonproperty-tax-supported district differ from studies in more traditional settings. The sample consisted of 179 randomly selected Hawaiian elementary and middle schools enrolling sixth-grade students. Stanford Achievement Test scores for grades three and six were used. Smaller schools had…

Examines the evolved meaning of useful policy information associated with district consolidation in rural New York State. Advocates a grass-roots triangulation approach that establishes a common proxy of small K-12 districts embedded within small township jurisdictions, identifies particular enrollment patterns in a seven-county area, and…

Explores the recent status of funding formula use among the states, focusing on changes over the last eight years. Determines how guidelines or formulas drive usage and discusses innovations in formula design. Funding formulas are becoming more complex and are used to protect base budgets and achieve equity. Although formula usage will not…

Examines the use of the reciprocal method as an alternative to more conventional methods of university service department cost allocation. This method can be used with software that is readily available and with already known data. Reciprocal cost allocation will provide appropriate allocation values for financial reporting and data for university…

Estimates variations in expenditures per pupil among local education areas (LEAs) within the United States, based on U.S. Census data for the 1989-90 school year. States with the highest expenditure variations and widest range of per pupil expenditures include the unified LEAs of Alaska and New York; the elementary districts in Arizona, Illinois,…