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Introduction

Benjamin Michael Superfine

in The Courts and Standards-Based Education Reform

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the structure and main argument of the book, and situates the book at the nexus of two converging trends: the courts' increasing role in education ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the structure and main argument of the book, and situates the book at the nexus of two converging trends: the courts' increasing role in education policy and the spread of standards-based reform and accountability policies. It discusses the basic methodology underlying the analyses in the book and argues that an approach sensitive to legal rules and principles, the underlying education policy landscape, and the institutional characteristics of various governmental entities is needed for an examination of how courts have addressed standards-based reform. The chapter also discusses the courts' historical role in education policy and evidence about the effectiveness of judicial action in this field.Less

Introduction: The Essential Questions Regarding a Federal Right to Education

Kimberly Jenkins Robinson

in A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy

In this introduction, Kimberly Jenkins Robinson explains that despite some gains from state school finance litigation, educational opportunity and achievement gaps remain prevalent throughout the ... More

In this introduction, Kimberly Jenkins Robinson explains that despite some gains from state school finance litigation, educational opportunity and achievement gaps remain prevalent throughout the United States. To address these enduring gaps, many scholars have argued that the United States should recognize a federal right to education, despite the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to recognize this right in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. It also is important to note that after decades in state court litigation, advocates have recently returned to federal court to argue for a federal right to education. Therefore, this introduction outlines that the book takes up three timely and essential questions regarding a federal right to education: Should the United States consider recognizing a federal right to education? How could the United States recognize such a right? And what should the right guarantee? The introduction concludes with a summary of each chapter.Less

The Rose Case: A Case Study in Legal Advocacy

Anne Newman

in Realizing Educational Rights: Advancing School Reform through Courts and Communities

To examine the opportunities and challenges of attempting to secure educational rights through courts, Chapter 4 offers a case study of a landmark school finance lawsuit from Kentucky, Rose v. ... More

To examine the opportunities and challenges of attempting to secure educational rights through courts, Chapter 4 offers a case study of a landmark school finance lawsuit from Kentucky, Rose v. Council for Better Education.This case is often celebrated as the beginning of the “third wave” of school finance litigation, and it offers important lessons for ongoing school finance reform and for evolving conceptions of what the legal right to education entails. The chapter focuses on an under-analyzed feature of cases like Rose: how moral claims about educational entitlements can inspire citizens to mobilize and support litigation, which in turn can impact judicial outcomes and policy implementation. The chapter considers how particular educational rights claims figured into the Rosecase, and where they converged and diverged with moral claims about educational justice. This focus highlights the interplay between moral and legal conceptions of educational rights, and how the philosophical ideals advanced in the first part of the book may shape rights-based advocacy in practice.Less

The Fight for Funding

Campbell F. Scribner

in The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy

This chapter examines how state support for education expanded greatly but not steadily over the course of the twentieth century. In fits and starts, legislatures increased subsidies to local school ... More

This chapter examines how state support for education expanded greatly but not steadily over the course of the twentieth century. In fits and starts, legislatures increased subsidies to local school districts, trying to modernize public education with new buildings and textbooks, better teachers, and wider course offerings. Complicating the process, however, were underlying questions about the purpose and structure of state aid. In school finance, minimums were first codified in statutory tax rates during the nineteenth century, which established a floor for local support but proved unequal to the task of modernizing and equalizing school facilities. By the mid-twentieth century, most states had implemented foundational aid to supplement local revenues, but again limited their support to insufficient levels of adequacy.Less

Explaining Trends in High School Graduation: The Changing Elementary and Secondary Education Policy Landscape and Income Inequality over the Last Half Century

Leah Platt Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo

in Human Capital in History: The American Record

Goldin and Katz (2008) document the key role that the educational attainment of native-born workers in the U.S. has played in determining changing returns to skill and income distribution in the ... More

Goldin and Katz (2008) document the key role that the educational attainment of native-born workers in the U.S. has played in determining changing returns to skill and income distribution in the twentieth century. Understanding the forces driving the supply of educated workers is thus critical. This paper focuses on the role of elementary and secondary educational institutions in the United States, which have changed dramatically over the latter half of the century, in determining high school graduation rates. In part, these institutional changes have been formally legislated and implemented as specific programs, but the programs alone do not explain the full extent of the dramatic rise in spending. I review relevant literatures and policy history, and present original descriptive analysis of the role of income inequality in shaping graduation and spending from 1963 to 2007. Results suggest that inequality, which previous research establishes as negatively correlated with the establishment of public secondary schooling earlier in the twentieth century, was positively correlated not only with education spending levels but also with aggregate high school graduation rates at the state level. This relationship holds with inequality at the bottom of the distribution as well as at the top.Less

Introduction

Caroline M. Hoxby

in The Economics of School Choice

This introductory chapter explains the rationale for conducting an economic analysis of school choice. Economists produce tools for evaluating various impacts of school choice. Without these tools, ... More

This introductory chapter explains the rationale for conducting an economic analysis of school choice. Economists produce tools for evaluating various impacts of school choice. Without these tools, such as general equilibrium tools, is it not possible to predict the effects of school choice on student sorting. It is also argued that school choice and school finance are interdependent, and that school choice affects the labor market for educators. The chapter furthermore examines the impact of school choice on special education, school productivity, and academic achievement.Less

The Nineteenth-Century Business School: Fall of the Classical and Rise of the Vocational and School of Opportunity Traditions

in Creating New Knowledge in Management: Appropriating the Field's Lost Foundations

The collegiate school of business (CSB) was established to elevate business training and to make higher education practical. An example of the CSB was the Wharton School of Finance and Economy (WSFE) ... More

The collegiate school of business (CSB) was established to elevate business training and to make higher education practical. An example of the CSB was the Wharton School of Finance and Economy (WSFE) at the University of Pennsylvania. After five decades of experimentation, however, the business school did not integrate with the college and was used by students to take short courses and earn certificates that would allow them to obtain jobs and promotions in the near term, rather than to earn a degree. The WSFE's efforts in applied social science succeeded as professional social work but not as a business school. Out of the WSFE emerged the vocational school of business (VSB), which broke with the college and partnered with Extension and the School of Opportunity. The VSB attracted students in part by linking education to employment. Although the VSB succeeded with the public, it turned the business school into a rogue actor in the research university.Less

School Finance

Lucas A. Powe Jr.

in America's Lone Star Constitution: How Supreme Court Cases from Texas Shape the Nation

This chapter discusses the legal battles over school finance in Texas. Texas was an Anglo-ruled state with two minorities as second-class citizens: blacks and Hispanics. Hernandez v. Texas and the ... More

This chapter discusses the legal battles over school finance in Texas. Texas was an Anglo-ruled state with two minorities as second-class citizens: blacks and Hispanics. Hernandez v. Texas and the history of discrimination against Hispanics illustrate why any desegregation remedies had to consider Hispanics as well as blacks. That was the ruling in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, but the major case involving Hispanics was not litigated as racial discrimination but rather as a wealth discrimination case. The chapter examines this case, which involved the Edgewood Independent School District that filed a lawsuit claiming that it has been discriminatorily treated under the Equal Protection Clause. It also considers two other cases filed by Edgewood parents including Demetrio Rodriguez, called Edgewood II and Edgewood III, as well as the legal tussle over property taxes as a source of school funding in Texas and whether education was a fundamental right.Less

School Finance

Harry Brighouse, Helen F. Ladd, Susanna Loeb, and Adam Swift

in Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making

This chapter illustrates the decision-making process by looking at three key decisions concerning financing: Should the central policy makers provide more funds to certain local governments than to ... More

This chapter illustrates the decision-making process by looking at three key decisions concerning financing: Should the central policy makers provide more funds to certain local governments than to others to compensate for differences in the cost of schooling or the needs of students? If so, how much more? Should local governments be allowed to supplement funds from the central government through taxes or other means? And should local governments have autonomy to determine how to spend the money they receive from the central government, or should the central policy makers dictate how the money is to be spent?Less

Conclusion: Education, Inequality, and the Hidden Power of Taxes

Camille Walsh

in Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation, and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869-1973

The conclusion briefly traces the repercussions of the project of taxpayer identity and legal racial liberalism in the post-Rodriguez era, looking at school financing cases at the state court level ... More

The conclusion briefly traces the repercussions of the project of taxpayer identity and legal racial liberalism in the post-Rodriguez era, looking at school financing cases at the state court level in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as partial victories for educational access, such as Plyler v. Doe, in 1981. Recent taxpayer rights claims to "take back" school districts (and school funding) are a significant continuation of the same articulations of whiteness that pervade the history of property tax-based school funding. This chapter argues that the remaining high level of racial segregation and inadequate, unequal educational funding can only be remedied through a more integrated legal understanding of the historical connections between race and class, taxation and inequality.Less

Perspectives in Public-Private Partnerships in Education

Rajashri Chakrabarti and Paul E. Peterson

in School Choice International: Exploring Public-Private Partnerships

This book provides a series of general, overarching assessments of the promise provided by public–private partnerships, focusing on specific partnerships in particular countries. The conventional ... More

This book provides a series of general, overarching assessments of the promise provided by public–private partnerships, focusing on specific partnerships in particular countries. The conventional division between the public and private sector—between publicly financed and managed schools versus privately financed and managed schools—is examined, while initiatives that are publicly funded but privately managed are evaluated. Public–private partnerships can be divided into four broad categories: Publicly funded resources that are publicly managed, privately funded resources that are privately managed, publicly funded resources that are privately managed, and privately funded resources that are publicly managed. For the purposes of this book, publicly funded privately managed schools are divided into two subcategories: Schools where the nongovernmental authority approached the state for funding; and schools where private authorities have been invited to manage.Less

School Vouchers as a Redistributive Device: An Analysis of Three Alternative Systems

Raquel Fernández and Richard Rogerson

in The Economics of School Choice

This chapter examines the consequences of several school voucher programs that serve to redistribute income in a manner which affects the distribution of the quality of education across students. It ... More

This chapter examines the consequences of several school voucher programs that serve to redistribute income in a manner which affects the distribution of the quality of education across students. It considers three voucher programs: the lump-sum, means-tested, and means-equalizing voucher programs. The analysis reveals that vouchers, especially the power-equalizing vouchers, generate large increases in a nation's income and well-being. This is because they generate more optimal investments in education than any version of current school finance operating at the district level could.Less

Capturing Professional Consensus: The California State Department, 1983–1990

Suzanne M. Wilson

in California Dreaming: Reforming Mathematics Education

This chapter examines the administration of Louis “Bill” Honig, who was on California's State Board of Education in the 1970s. Before Honig's administration, the California Department of Education ... More

This chapter examines the administration of Louis “Bill” Honig, who was on California's State Board of Education in the 1970s. Before Honig's administration, the California Department of Education (CDE) had been focusing on programs in early childhood, school finance, and school improvement, curriculum was practically off the map, and the state issued “frameworks” that were intended to describe the goal of K–12 curriculum in all subject matters. Honig and his colleagues, on the other hand, wanted to change testing, curriculum, teacher education, school organization, and parent and community involvement across all grade levels and all subjects. This chapter then examines the teaching system in place in California during late 1970s, and what changes and adjustments were attempted at the time.Less

Introduction

Howard M. Blonsky

in The Dropout Prevention Specialist Workbook: A How-To Guide for Building Skills and Competence in Education

This chapter includes the reasons that students drop out of school, a proposed job description for the social worker working as a dropout prevention specialist (DPS), thoughts on going into the ... More

This chapter includes the reasons that students drop out of school, a proposed job description for the social worker working as a dropout prevention specialist (DPS), thoughts on going into the school and developing working relationships with staff and students, an explanation of school data and finances and how to use them, and the importance of persevering on behalf of students.Less