This EdSource Q&A provides clear, accurate answers to some of the most common questions about the current state of education funding in California and what the state's fiscal crisis means for schools. School districts and other education stakeholders can share this brief with their communities and cite it in addressing questions about the…

Alaska will face a large fiscal gap and growing budget deficits in the near future. The timing of such fiscal gap open hinges on the joint effect of state budget growth and the oil price change. This paper explains Alaska's dependence on state spending and offers policy options addressing the fiscal gap. State spending: (1) supports nearly one in…

The State of Alaska spends 75% of its operating revenues on transfer payments to individuals and local governments and on salaries and benefits of state workers. By the year 2000, dwindling petroleum revenues will result in a projected $1 billion gap between state income and spending, but inflation and growing population could widen that gap to…

A survey to find what part of the bill for education the State will be paying. (EA)

The concept of municipal overburden refers to the relationship between municipalities' educational funding and the fiscal stress generated by their heavy expenditures on both educational and noneducational services. The authors examine three aspects of the problem of municlpal overburden. First, in a literature review, they discuss the measurement…

Recent court decisions have declared that those public school financing systems dependent substantially on local ad valorem (property) taxes violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The violation stems from the fact that local school district spending and educational quality are dependent on the values of real property in the…

Appointed in 1978, the New York State Special Task Force on Equity and Excellence in Education was charged with improving educational equity in the state. This volume of the report first presents seven alternative school finance plans developed by the task force to demonstrate how its recommendations could be implemented. The report notes each…

This review discusses the fiscal difficulties of the City and School District of Philadelphia and describes the projection of expenditures and receipts and the mounting deficits implied by these projections. Three different projections are made to point out alternative fiscal outlooks: a high projection that corresponds to strong economic…

This paper describes Illinois' program for warning school districts of impending financial troubles and the reactions of superintendents to the state's "early warning" program. In February 192, the State of Illinois issued a list of 111 school districts, out of a total of 946 districts, that were on the Financial Watch list. Of…

The purpose of this monograph is to explore the concept of educational adequacy, defined by Cubberley as "a generous system of free public schools," and to apply those measures in an analysis of educational adequacy in the state of Illinois. The difficulty in defining what constitutes a generous education is that there is no clear…

A statewide task force established to improve educational equity in New York State describes its activities and results in this report. The task force chairman's letter of submittal discusses the Levittown v. Nyquist decision that led to the task force's formation and reviews the group's deliberations. The report then summarizes task force…

Providing a basis to help Alaskans determine future spending levels and priorities, this report traces how the state spent more than $26 billion in general funds from fiscal years 1981 through 1986 before oil prices crashed and brought state revenues tumbling down with them. Figures indicate that cumulative general fund expenditures over the…

This publication presents comprehensive, comparative expenditure data by local school system for the whole United States for the 1969-70 year and compares four decades of progress in school finance. The analysis in the document permits a view of State and national progress toward reducing or eliminating financial inequality and of the magnitude of…

This monograph evaluates the equity, adequacy, and efficiency of the Illinois system of school finance. After a brief introduction outlining the purpose and limitations of the study, it first develops two operational definitions of equity, based on disparity measurements and on the association between district spending and local wealth. The…

This report concentrates on the equity problem in Illinois public school finance. Central to this report is the thesis that there are three basic strategies for attacking the equity problem: make adjustments in the existing "foundation level" grant-in-aid system, abandon the "foundation" idea for a grant-in-aid system, and…