In the spring of 2008 the authors surveyed members of the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) to gain insight into their views on education policy issues. The results summarize opinions of this broad group of education researchers and practitioners, providing AEFA members and education leaders with access to views that may be helpful as…

Although rearranging school organizational features is a popular school reform, little research exists to inform policymakers about how grade spans affect achievement. This article examines how grade spans and the school transitions that students make between fourth and eighth grade shape student performance in eighth grade. The authors estimate…

The recent foreclosure crisis has plagued nearly every city in the U.S., including New York City. Despite considerable attention to the causes of these mortgage foreclosures and the consequences they have had for communities, we know little about their impacts on individual families and children. Given that more than 2.8 million U.S. property…

Housing and education share strong ties in the United States. This relationship is shaped, in large part, by mobility. Students move to new schools, homes and neighborhoods as a result of planned and unplanned family relocations. Taxpayers move from one school district to another in a nation where school quality is closely tied to the district in…

Schools are not static entities--reforms are enacted, curriculums change, new principals and teachers arrive and others leave, and, importantly, students exit and enter the school system. These students may be graduating or reaching a terminal grade, beginning school, entering from local private or parochial schools, moving from another district,…

Although the No Child Left Behind Act was intended to help "all students meet high academic standards," it is focused on subgroups of low-achieving students. The authors analyze the possible impact of the legislation's requirement for performance reporting by racial subgroup in light of the considerable racial segregation in U.S.…

The Educational Priorities Panel undertook a study to find out how funds are distributed among community school districts in New York (New York) and how resources are distributed to individual schools within the system. For the first time, in 1992, the New York City Board of Education published detailed budgets for the 32 community school…

In assessing educational equity among school districts, according to the authors, researchers should control for differences across districts in the prices of educational inputs. This paper tests a suggested index for one educational input, teacher salaries. The suggested teacher-salary index, based on a supply-and-demand model using 12 demand and…

Explores how the increasing interest by social science researchers in public policy issues has influenced policy, particularly in the area of education. Offers suggestions for making research on social science utilization and impact stronger. (Author/DB)

Conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues in resource allocation at the intradistrict and school levels are explored. The ways that equity concepts can apply are discussed, and an empirical analysis is presented of vertical equity at intradistrict and school levels in New York (New York). (SLD)

Describes a study to determine the effects of decentralized governance and finance structures on resource allocation to and within schools. Using a common methodology and set of questions, authors analyzed data on school-based budgeting in Chicago, Fort Worth, New York, and Rochester. School-based budgeting occurs at the margins, encourages…

State and federal accountability reforms are putting considerable pressure on schools to increase the achievement of historically low-performing groups of students and to close test score gaps. In this article, we exploit the differences among the large number of elementary schools in New York City to examine how much schools vary in the…

This paper evaluates the impact of the New York Networks for School Renewal Project, a whole school reform initiated by the Annenberg Foundation as part of a nationwide reform strategy. It uses data on students in randomly chosen control schools to estimate impacts on student achievement, using an intent-to-treat design. After controlling for…