Educational Inequality and School Finance: Why Money Matters for America's Students

by Bruce D. Baker

Overview

In Educational Inequality and School Finance, Bruce D. Baker offers a comprehensive examination of how US public schools receive and spend money. Drawing on extensive longitudinal data and numerous studies of states and districts, he provides a vivid and dismaying portrait of the stagnation of state investment in public education and the continuing challenges of achieving equity and adequacy in school funding.
 
Baker explores school finance, the school and classroom resources derived from school funding, and how and why those resources matter. He provides a critical examination of popular assumptions that undergird the policy discourse around school funding—notably, that money doesn’t matter and that we are spending more and getting less—and shows how these misunderstandings contribute to our reluctance to increase investment in education at a time when the demands on our educational system are rising.
 
Through an introduction to the concepts of adequacy, equity, productivity, and efficiency, Baker shows how these can be used to evaluate policy reforms. He argues that we know a great deal about the role and importance of money in schools, the mechanisms through which money matters for student outcomes, and the trade-offs involved, and he presents a framework for designing and financing an equitable and adequate public education system, with balanced and stable sources of revenue.
 
Educational Inequality and School Finance takes an issue all too often relegated to technical experts and makes it accessible for broader public empowerment and engagement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682532423
Publisher:	Harvard Education Press
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Bruce D. Baker is a professor in the Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Administration at Rutgers Graduate School of Education in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He previously served on the faculty at the University of Kansas from 1997 through 2008. In addition to publishing numerous articles, chapters, and a textbook on school finance, he has testified on school funding inequities and inadequacies in state and federal courts. He has also worked with state legislatures and boards of education in Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Maryland to inform and reform various aspects of state school finance systems. He blogs at Schoolfinance101.wordpress.com and can be found on Twitter @schlfinance101.

Table of Contents

1 Why Money Matters 1

2 School Finance 101 17

3 Money Myths and Misdirections 33

4 How Schools Use Money 55

5 School Finance Reforms and Results 81

6 State Funding Formulas and District Disparities 103

7 Erosion of Equity and Adequacy 135

8 Evaluating Education Innovations 161

9 Applying High-Quality Cost Analysis to School Finance Policy 187

10 Equitable, Adequate, and Sustainable School Funding 205

Notes 237

Acknowledgments 269

About the Author 271

Index 273