Politicians, Judges, and City Schools
Politicians, Judges, and City Schools

Author: Joel S. Berke

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 1985-05-21

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1610440471

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During the 1970s, a nationwide school finance reform movement—fueled by litigation challenging the constitutionality of state education funding laws—brought significant changes to the way many states finance their public elementary and secondary school systems. School finance reform poses difficult philosophical questions: what is the meaning of equality in educational opportunity and of equity in the distribution of tax burdens? But it also involves enormous financial complexity (for example, dividing resources among competing special programs) and political risk (such as balancing local control with the need for statewide parity). For those states (like New York) that were slow to make changes a new decade has brought new constraints and complications. Sluggish economic growth, taxpayer revolts, reductions in federal aid, all affect education revenues. And the current concern with educational excellence may obscure the needs of the poor and educationally disadvantaged. This book will provide New York's policy makers and other concerned specialists with a better understanding of the political, economic, and equity issues underlying the school finance reform debate. It details existing inequities, evaluates current financing formulas, and presents options for change. Most important, for all those concerned with education and public policy in New York and elsewhere, it offers a masterful assessment of the trade-offs involved in developing reform programs that balance the conflicting demands of resource equalization, political feasibility, and fiscal responsibility. "Synthesizes the political and fiscal research [on school finance reform] and applies it to the New York Context....A blueprint for how to redesign state school finance....A fine book." —Public Administration Review "This is a book that lucidly discusses the issues in school finance and provides valuable reference material." —American Political Science Review

Economic Incentives and Political Institutions
Economic Incentives and Political Institutions

Author: Thomas Romer

Publisher:

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13:

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Allocation of resources in the local public sector involves economic and political forces. Spending for elementary and secondary education is a major area of public expenditure. In many states, the bulk of this spending is subject to referendum. In addition, grants-in-aid from state governments to local school districts form an important component of the district revenues. This paper has two main features. One is the characterization of local spending when the state aid structure is of the closed-end matching grant type. Under this structure, local tax price is endogenous, since the amount of state subsidy depends on the district's spending choice. The other main feature is the linking of spending proposals to referendum outcomes. In this way, our model makes use of voting data to shed light on the extent to which referenda constrain spending. The empirical setting is public school budget referenda in 544 New York school districts for the 1975-76 school year. Our econometric results and simulations based on them reveal considerable sensitivity of spending to the form of the grant structure, as well as to the referendum requirement. In addition, large school districts appear to behave more like "budget-maximizers" than do small districts, where proposals appear to be more in line with "median voter" demands.