This study examines the impact of court-ordered finance reform in New York State resulting from "Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York" on equity of inputs using synthetic controls. The findings herein indicate court mandated education finance reform in New York had little to no impact on equity of educational inputs despite an…

Local control has been a bedrock principle of public schooling in America since its inception. In 2013, the California Legislature codified a new local accountability approach for school finance. An important component of the new California Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) approach is a focus on English learners (ELs). The law mandates that…

Policymakers and practitioners often must balance distributing resources equitably and efficiently while being accountable for high student achievement. This paper focuses on these concepts as they relate to English learners and examines equity and efficiency in Minnesota's educational funding from 2003 through 2011, the years spanning…

The research described in this paper expands on attempts to conceptualize, measure, and evaluate the degree to which states have aligned their finance systems with their respective accountability policies. State education finance and accountability policies serve as levers to provide equal educational opportunities for all students--scholars have…

While accountability in higher education has been a topic of debate for decades, in recent years the discussions have shifted to emphasize efficiency and economic measures of success. A prominent example of this accountability movement is the increase in popularity of performance funding policies. One of the most recent states to implement…

California is in the midst of the nation's most significant current overhaul of a state school funding and accountability system. This paper examines the state's recent reforms enacted through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) against the new accountability framework articulated by Linda Darling-Hammond, Gene Wilhoit, and Linda Pittenger in…

California recently overhauled its K-12 public education finance system. Enacted in 2013, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) replaced California's 40-year-old funding formula. The LCFF increases district officials' fiscal flexibility; provides more resources to districts serving larger proportions of low-income, English learner (EL), and…

In 2013, Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislature radically restructured the state's school funding system and accountability systems with a weighted student formula and a mandated local planning process in each district. The new law substitutes local politics and grassroots agency for state-driven mandates and compliance reviews. While…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative seeks to prepare all students to graduate high school without remedial needs, to improve transparency across states' accountability systems, and to foster efficiencies in the development and distribution of educational resources. The reform was adopted in more than 40 states and has been described as…

Is public education equitable and does it provide an equal opportunity to all children and youths? Equity in public school funding is a critical issue facing all communities and has been addressed by the courts in all but five states. A key focus is on funding gaps between rich and poor school districts. Recently, attention has turned to the…

We provide an expanded environmental scan to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) faced by education communities. Grounded in the literature, we identified 48 indicators and grouped them into 6 broad categories: (1) budget levels, (2) funding patterns, (3) community needs, (4) external economic conditions, (5)…

The inequitable distribution of well-qualified teachers to students in the United States is a longstanding issue. Despite federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind Act and the use of a range of incentives to attract teachers to high-need schools, the problem remains acute in many states. This study examines how and why teacher quality is…

This study explores within-district fiscal resource allocation across elementary schools in Texas and Ohio large city school districts and in their surrounding metropolitan areas. Specifically, I ask whether districts widely reported as achieving greater resource equity through adoption of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) have in fact done so. I…

This research investigates state finance policies for public education using survey methodology. The purpose is to update previous work and the existing knowledge base in the field as well as to provide a compendium of finance and policy options that are used across the states to finance public elementary and secondary schools. Chief state school…

The impact of performance funding on community college student outcomes is a contested issue. Performance funding policies in most U.S. states involve too small a proportion of funding to change college behavior. English further education colleges are similar to U.S. community colleges. 1992 policy reforms in England centralized policy control,…