Description
Book SynopsisSpurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public-school funding, the US spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. This work traces the history of reform efforts and concludes that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement.
Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2010 "It is enlightening, maddening, hopeful, frustrating and amazingly informative... The book provides a terrific summary of how the U.S. education system has changed since World War II. It makes a telling argument about how much our well-being depends on our schools. It eviscerates the policymaking that has ruled public education for the last half century. And it buries for all time the notion that getting the courts to fix our schools has any chance of success."--Jay Mathews, Washington Post "Hanushek and Lindseth conclusively enlighten policy makers, professors, school administrators, legal and educational researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students of school administration by providing an exhaustive discussion of decades of school funding and the results for student achievement... The authors' experience and expertise in school funding, research, and data analysis and their ideas for the future of funding and accountability make this an absolute must read."--Choice "This important new book by economist Eric Hanushek and attorney Alfred Lindseth is the most cogent and comprehensive analysis of America's school-finance challenges that I have ever seen."--Chester Finn, Jr., Education Gadfly
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix List of Tables xiii Preface xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Just How Important Is Education? 10 Education and Financial Achievement 11 Education and Poverty 15 Education and the Nation's Economic Well-Being 16 Testing Student Skills 20 Quality of U.S. Colleges 21 Chapter 2: U.S. Education at a Crossroads 23 Years of School Completed 23 Achievement Levels (or the Mastery of Cognitive Skills) 29 International Comparisons 36 Achievement Gaps 38 Chapter 3: The Political Responses 44 Increased Spending and Resources for K-12 Education 45 Increased Equity in Funding for K-12 Education 57 The Standards and Accountability Movement 71 Increased School Choice Options 76 Teacher Certification 80 Conclusions 82 Chapter 4: Court Interventions in School Finance 83 Federal Desegregation Litigation and Milliken II Remedies 84 "Equity" Cases 88 "Adequacy" Cases 95 Chapter 5: Practical Issues with Educational Adequacy 118 Defining an "Adequate" Education 118 The Element of Causation 129 Problems Relating to Remedy 136 Problems Inherent in the Makeup and Processes of the Courts 139 Chapter 6: The Effectiveness of Judicial Remedies 145 Kentucky 147 Wyoming 151 New Jersey 157 Massachusetts 166 Chapter 7: Science and School Finance Decision Making 171 A Simple Decision Model 172 How Much Is Enough? 173 How Should the Money Be Spent? 200 Using Science More Effectively 211 Chapter 8: A Performance-Based Funding System 217 Guiding Principles: Back to Basics 218 A Performance-Based Funding System 219 Big City Schools 258 Conclusions 260 Chapter 9: Making Performance-Based Funding a Reality 263 The Persistence of Illusory Spending Solutions 263 Support for the Status Quo and Resistance to Change 268 Some Current Countervailing Forces 275 Encouraging True Reform: Mutually Agreed Bargains 279 Changing the Focus of the Courts 281 Mobilizing for the Future 287 Notes 291 Legal Citations 353 Federal Court Cases (arranged in alphabetical order) 353 State Court Cases (arranged by state and, within states, chronologically) 354 Sources for Figures and Tables 361 References 363 Index 395
