Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses : Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America's Public Schools

by Hanushek, Eric A.; Lindseth, Alfred A.

• ISBN13: 9781400830251
• ISBN10: 1400830257
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public-school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this book, Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth trace the history of reform efforts and conclude that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Instead, Hanushek and Lindseth propose a new approach: a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising student achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions about how to run their schools, ultimately leading to improved student performance. Hanushek and Lindseth have been important participants in the school funding debate for three decades. Here, they draw on their experience, as well as the best available research and data, to show why improving schools will require overhauling the way financing, incentives, and accountability work in public education.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Just How Important Is Education?	p. 10
Education and Financial Achievement	p. 11
Education and Poverty	p. 15
Education and the Nation's Economic Well-Being	p. 16
Testing Student Skills	p. 20
Quality of U.S. Colleges	p. 21
U.S. Education at a Crossroads	p. 23
Years of School Completed	p. 23
Achievement Levels (or the Mastery of Cognitive Skills)	p. 29
International Comparisons	p. 36
Achievement Gaps	p. 38
The Political Responses	p. 44
Increased Spending and Resources for K-12 Education	p. 45
Increased Equity in Funding for K-12 Education	p. 57
The Standards and Accountability Movement	p. 71
Increased School Choice Options	p. 76
Teacher Certification	p. 80
Conclusions	p. 82
Court Interventions in School Finance	p. 83
Federal Desegregation Litigation and Milliken II Remedies	p. 84
"Equity" Cases	p. 88
"Adequacy" Cases	p. 95
Practical Issues with Educational Adequacy	p. 118
Defining an "Adequate" Education	p. 118
The Element of Causation	p. 129
Problems Relating to Remedy	p. 136
Problems Inherent in the Makeup and Processes of the Courts	p. 139
The Effectiveness of Judicial Remedies	p. 145
Kentucky	p. 147
Wyoming	p. 151
New Jersey	p. 157
Massachusetts	p. 166
Science and School Finance Decision Making	p. 171
A Simple Decision Model	p. 172
How Much Is Enough?	p. 173
How Should the Money Be Spent?	p. 200
Using Science More Effectively	p. 211
A Performance-Based Funding System	p. 217
Guiding Principles: Back to Basics	p. 218
A Performance-Based Funding System	p. 219
Big City Schools	p. 258
Conclusions	p. 260
Making Performance-Based Funding a Reality	p. 263
The Persistence of Illusory Spending Solutions	p. 263
Support for the Status Quo and Resistance to Change	p. 268
Some Current Countervailing Forces	p. 275
Encouraging True Reform: Mutually Agreed Bargains	p. 279
Changing the Focus of the Courts	p. 281
Mobilizing for the Future	p. 287
Notes	p. 291
Legal Citations	p. 353
Federal Court Cases (arranged in alphabetical order)	p. 353
State Court Cases (arranged by state and, within states, chronologically)	p. 354
Sources for Figures and Tables	p. 361
References	p. 363
Index	p. 395
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.