Framework for Evaluating & Reforming Education Finance Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating and reforming education finance systems to ensure equity, adequacy, and equal opportunity in publicly funded education. We summarize decades of conceptual work, explaining our evolving understanding of the role and purpose of school finance systems, leading to our current framing: The purpose of school finance systems is to deliver the resources necessary for schools to provide all children equal opportunity to achieve common, adequate outcome goals. We provide a two-part approach for evaluating and reforming education finance systems. Part 1 examines whether and to what extent current systems achieve their purpose. Part 2 determines how resources should be distributed to provide equal opportunity in achieving outcome goals with the intent to supply policymakers with the necessary information for calibrating or recalibrating a school funding system to better achieve this goal. We follow with a discussion of lessons learned from recent applications of our framework to elementary and secondary schooling in U.S. states. We conclude with implications for the path forward for broader application of the framework.