School Finance 101: Gaming Adequacy by Creating a Veneer of Empirical Validity
Posted on July 23, 2013
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This post comes from a work in progress… and addresses games states play to validate their choices to spend less than might actually be needed in order to achieve desired outcome standards. This post will be followed by another which reviews three major smokescreens commonly used to argue that none of this matters anyway.
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Over the past two decades in particular, states and advocacy groups have engaged with greater frequency in attempting to define the amount of funding that would be necessary for achieving adequate educational outcomes. One might characterize the period as one of the rise of empiricism in school finance, which coincided with a shift in litigation strategies from emphasis on funding equity to emphasis on funding adequacy – specifically whether funding was adequate to either provide specific programs and services or to achieve specific measured educational outcomes. In some cases, states have adopted their empirical strategy in response to judicial orders that the legislature comply with state constitutional mandate for the provision of an adequate education. In other cases, states have proactively set out to validate spending targets they know they can
School Finance 101: Reformy Distractions, Diversions & Smokescreens from What’s Really Needed
This post is a follow up to the previous, and is based on work in progress. ===== We conclude with a discussion of three themes in the current political rhetoric regarding school finance that we see as creating significant barriers to substantive reforms. Three arguments in particular, are pervasive in the broader education reform debate, with implications for school funding equity and adequacy: