This paper examines whether the existence of national education goals implies a new federal role in school finance. Disparities across the 50 states in terms of fiscal capacity and tax effort, education spending, and several measures of educational outcomes are analyzed. The next section summarizes a study of variables that predict states with high and low scores on student mathematics achievement. Findings indicate that substantial differences in fiscal capacity, educational spending, and student outcomes existed across the 50 states. These differences make it difficult for all states to meet the national education goals by the year 2000. A new federal role to reduce interstate disparities would be to implement some kind of nationwide base education spending, adjusted by state and regional cost of educational differences, and to fully fund categorical programs. Twelve figures are included. (LMI)