8: Research in School Finance: A Concern with Equity and Equality

Abstract

was the editorial consultant for this chapter. Note: The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of four colleagues at EPRI: Judy Sinkin, who made suggestions on the early history of equalization and on the form of recent laws; Marlena Cannon, who provided editorial assistance; and Gloria Graham and Kandy Olbrick, who typed the manuscript. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Ford Foundation in the preparation of the chapter. 309 at UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS on April 3, 2015 http://rre.aera.net Downloaded from 310 Review of Research in Education, 4tions and research on various aspects of the field proliferate; and each year several professional meetings focus on it. Yet, school finance is neither a discipline nor a widely recognized interest area within a single academic discipline. Rather, over the years, it has drawn students and studies from a variety of academic backgrounds and professional specializations and has maintained a central focus on equity in the generation of revenues and equality of opportunity in their allocation.Educational administration was the first discipline in this evolutionary process to recognize the relationship between the raising and distribution of revenues and the quality of education. Much of the early work was concerned with the development of state systems of funding education. Later, the economic concepts of equity and efficiency, with their concern for the allocation of scarce resources, were adapted to the analysis of school funding and the patterns of allocation which resulted from existing systems of school finance. Law contributed a third tradition of scholarship, in which the critique of policy outcomes provided by economics was fitted to the judicial framework of constitutional law in order to forge a theory of litigation which provided the opening wedge for policy change. As the potential for reform came to be recognized, students and practitioners of public policy entered the field; they synthesized previous concepts and methods, drawing upon training in economics, political science, and public, educational, and business administration to apply analytic techniques to the development of new school finance legislation. Providing the dynamic for this intellectual development were scholars and practitioners who served as connectors, bridging all these disciplines and concerns and articulating the transition from one focus to another.The themes of equity in taxation and equality in educational opportunities have supplied the central foci for investigations in school finance throughout this entire development. The search for these goals, defined and redefined according to the values of the times and of the scholars in the field, has been integral to the examination of systems of taxation and the provision of educational services. In our review of the contributions of the major periods in school finance, the thread of equity and equality will be followed as they are understood and utilized in research and public policy.