Between 1999 and 2018, 210 shootings have occurred on public school campuses in the United States. The increased need for security and student support may crowd out instructional resources post-shooting. Shootings may also cause students, especially those from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, to move away, leading to declines in…

State budgets temporarily crashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown, placing education funding at risk. To demonstrate implications for school finance, we show that (1) school districts are racially segregated along class lines; (2) higher-poverty districts receive a greater share of funds from state, as opposed to local sources,…

During and for many years after the 2008-10 Great Recession, financial crises in districts across the country triggered varying state involvement in those districts' finances and governance, up to and including complete takeover. While these actions were most prominent in a handful of states, all states have laws that enable them to intervene in…

This paper offers new evidence on the impacts of school finance reforms (SFRs) precipitated by school finance litigation, exploring the extent to which the impact of SFR differs by district racial composition. Using difference-in-differences and event study models with a series of district and year (or state-by-year) fixed effects, and a…

This article explores whether two popular policy initiatives are compatible or conflicting strategies for enhancing educational equality in diverse large urban centers. These two initiatives are (1) charter school expansion and (2) improvement of resource equity across urban public school systems through policies often referred to as weighted…

I investigate a possible unintended consequence of Proposition 2½ override behavior--that it led to increased segregation in school districts in Massachusetts. This can occur because richer, low-minority towns tend to have more successful override votes that attract similar households with relatively high demands for public services who can afford…

New York's School Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides state-funded property tax relief for homeowners. Like a matching grant, STAR changes the price of education, thereby altering the incentives of voters and school officials and leading to unintended consequences. Using data for New York State school districts before and after STAR was…

The Great Recession led to marked declines in state revenue. In this paper we investigate whether (and how) local school districts modified their funding and taxing decisions in response to state aid declines in the post-recession period. Our results reveal school districts responded to state aid cuts in the post-recession period by countering…

This paper examines voluntary contributions to public education via charitable school foundations, booster clubs, parent teacher associations, and parent teacher organizations. We use panel data on school-supporting charities with national coverage from 1995 to 2010, which we geocode and match to school districts. We document the meteoric rise of…

Increased spending and decreased student performance have been attributed in part to teachers' unions and to the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) they negotiate with school boards. However, only recently have researchers begun to examine impacts of specific aspects of CBAs on student and district outcomes. This article uses a unique measure…

Michigan radically altered its school finance system in 1994. The new plan, called Proposal A, significantly increased state aid to the lowest-spending school districts and limited future increases in spending in the highest-spending ones, abolishing local discretion over school spending. I investigate the impact of Proposal A on the distribution…

Of thirty-eight states with lotteries, sixteen earmark lottery profits for primary and secondary education. In this article, we use a panel data set of states with lotteries to examine the impact of earmarking lottery revenues on state educational spending. We can reject the hypothesis that spending increases dollar for dollar with earmarked…

A Comparable Wage Index (CWI) is an attractive mechanism for measuring geographic variations in the cost of education. A CWI measures uncontrollable variations in educator pay by observing systematic variations in the earnings of comparable workers who are not educators. Together, the 2000 census and the Occupational Employment Statistics survey…

This article breaks new ground in the debate on school finance and equality of per pupil school expenditures. We are able to merge school district data with the individual and family data of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). This allows us to examine both student and school district characteristics and to assess several measures of…