Education finance encompasses questions of equity, efficiency and effectiveness, accountability, and intergovernmental aid. What are the relationships among funding, policies, teachers, and student outcomes? How equitably are resources distributed to schools within school systems?

Assessing the Impact of State Accountability Systems on Equity and Adequacy in School Finance

Ross Rubenstein, Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Sonali Ballal

This project examines the impact of state accountability systems on equity and adequacy in school finance and asks whether the implementation of education accountability systems leads to resource redistribution.

Does Title I Funding Improve School and Student Achievement? An Analysis Using New York City Data

Meryle G. Weinstein, Leanna Stiefel, and Amy Ellen Schwartz

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Title I funding in increasing resources and achievement for students attending schools with high concentrations of poverty and assess how school and outcomes differ between Title I schools and non-Title I schools.

New York State Education Finance Research Consortium, EFRC

Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz

A multi-university collaboration with the New York State Education Department to commission and carry out applied research that will help the State’s Regents Commissioner, Legislature and Governor devise effective state education policies.

The Political Economy of Inequity in America’s Public Schools

Sean Corcoran and Howard Rosenthal, New York University, and Thomas Romer, Princeton University

An interdisciplinary research program on the politics and economics of school finance in the U.S., funded by the Spencer Foundation. In this project we will assemble a comprehensive panel database for the education finance systems of the 50 states and their school districts. We aim to collect and synthesize the institutional details of state finance systems over the 1970-2000 period (or at minimum, the years surrounding the four census years of 1970-1980-1990-2000), to combine with demographic, financial and political data on states and school districts. This panel—which would be the first of its kind to be made publicly available to the research community—will aid academic researchers, state policymakers, and school finance experts, analysts and litigants in better understanding the dynamics that produce within- and between-state disparities in school spending.