School Funding Adequacy Cases MS Word - Forty-four out of 50 states have experienced some form of school finance litigation. This ECS StateNote lists the cases and outcomes of adequacy litigation in the states. (Michael Griffith and Molly Burke, Education Commission of the States, February 2005)...

A Survey of Finance Adequacy Studies MS Word - This report provides a summary of adequacy studies that have been undertaken for a government entity, or for a private group, and then made public. Studies were done in Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina and Wyoming. (Michael Griffith, ECS, September 2001)...

Do Local Sales Taxes for Education Increase Inequities? The Case of Georgia’s ESPLOST - Increasing reliance on unequally distributed local revenue bases run the inherent risk of increasing inequalities in fiscal capacity across school districts, according to this report. States that depend more on local rather than state revenue have more unequal interdistrict revenue distributions. This paper examines Georgia’s use of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for Education (ESPLOST) and analyzes its effects on funding equity across districts and policy implications for Georgia and for other states using local sales taxes to fund education. (Ross Rubenstein and Catherine Freeman, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, 2002)...

[Oregon] K-12 and ESD School Finance: State School Fund Distribution - After the 1990s, the Oregon Education Service Districts (ESD) began receiving State School Fund dollars to help compensate for property tax cuts. However, the issue of an imbalance in state and local revenue per student among ESDs was not addressed until 1999. This report discusses Oregon's school finance system for distributing State School Fund dollars to K-12 school districts and ESDs. It provides an overview of the principles used to define financial equity for school districts and their implementation in the K-12 equalization formula. The formula uses four different methods to adjust for cost differences among school districts, including: (1) weighted student count, (2) teacher experience adjustment, (3) transportation grant and (4) facility grant. (Oregon Legislative Revenue Office, November 2001)...

Equal Educational Opportunity Act: Measuring Equity - In June 1997, the Vermont legislature passed Act 60, The Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA), following a February state Supreme Court ruling in a class-action suit that Vermont's method of paying for education was inequitable and unconstitutional. Act 60 replaces varying local school tax rates with a single statewide property tax. This report discusses the equalizing effects of the EEOA that were documented during the first full year of implementation. The three major conclusions include: (1) education tax rates are now uniformly tied to local per-pupil spending levels across the state, (2) school accountability procedures for student performance have been established under the EEOA and (3) schools statewide are now required to implement uniform quality standards. The report recommends implementing a new financial accounting system to measure spending by school rather than by school district. The next EEOA report is due in the 2005 school year. (Vermont Department of Education, April 2001)...