Examines distance education's efficacy in nine New York school districts affiliated with Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). Distance education enables small rural schools to expand their curriculum. Districts vary in utilizing distance education. Distance-education courses cost considerably more to offer than traditional courses.…

Summarizes a New York State Board of Regents study group's findings in four sections: an overview and critique of the real property tax; proposals for reforming this tax; proposals for shifting away from real property; and proposals for freeing resources by improving management of educational systems. Progress could be made on all fronts…

Ideally, voters' and state legislatures' policy choices should underlie a property tax system that is straightforward, comprehensible, systematic, and reasonably related to policy objectives. Administration should be uniform and fair. New York State's property tax system lacks a uniform valuation standard and "circuit breaker" and has…

Examines the fiscal environment surrounding New York's use of property taxes to raise local education revenue. The property tax should not be abandoned. The recent statewide increased burden stems from a cyclical slowing in personal income growth and a shift in funding responsibility from state to local governments. Application of the property tax…

Assuming that New York will continue to rely heavily on the property tax to finance education, this paper summarizes the conceptual arguments for statewide taxation of business property for education. The plan would improve local decision making, but would lead to highly undesirable consequences for New York City's school children and…

Summarizes arguments for and against replacing the local school property tax by a local school income tax. Explores the empirical effects of such policies for New York State. Using a 3% income tax and refashioning state aid to a foundation level of $8,068 per pupil would not require substantial new state revenues. (38 footnotes) (MLH)

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 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…

Analyzes the efficiency of earmarking lottery revenues. Findings suggest that this practice does not benefit the statutory recipients. Earmarking has been concurrent with declining educational expenditures in real terms in all five education lottery states. Education expenditure trends of the six nonlottery states are indistinguishable from those…

Rural areas are hard-pressed to finance education, because incomes are lower and fiscal resources are less available. Problems in crop farming, energy mining, and textile manufacturing counties are taking their toll on rural Americans. Because local governments cannot maintain existing services, the time is right to reformulate federal rural…

Develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the behavior of Iowa school district managers affected by declining enrollment and estimates the impacts on school costs. Estimates the declining enrollment adjustment period length and evaluates theoretical implications of selected proposals for compensating local school districts faced with…

Uses a time-series approach to investigate whether Michigan's school finance arrangements provide equal opportunity for Black minority students. Employing four relationship-based measures (the correlation coefficient, slope, elasticity, and adjusted relationship), the study found a generally positive relationship between Black student enrollment…

Examines adequacy and stability concepts found in education finance reports and Oregon reform efforts and legislation, highlighting funding for safety net districts. The concept in the governor's commission report are largely undefined, making operationalism and measurement difficult. A centralized, comprehensive database would aid future research…

Financing school capital projects in New York State is a responsibility involving both local school districts and the state government. State building aid is provided through an aid ratio and approved expenditure formula. This formula has an equalizing effect among districts by explicitly providing an aid amount inversely proportional to property…