Achieving A General, Suitable and Efficient Education In Arkansas

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Achieving A General, Suitable and Efficient
Education In Arkansas

• Lawrence O. Picus
• USC Rossier
• School of Education

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• The school funding system now in place in the
  State of Arkansas is inequitable and inadequate
• Chancellor Collins Kilgore
• In Lakeview v. Huckabee

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Whats This About?

• Concepts of equity and adequacy
• What school finance theory says about both
• How equity and adequacy can be achieved

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System Requirements

• Substantial Uniformity
• Substantial equality of financial resources
• Substantial equal educational opportunity for all
  students

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Three Requirements

• Embody legitimate standards for student
  performance
• Provide a method for accountability to ensure the
  standards are met
• Provide and allocate sufficient resources to
  deliver the standards

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Establishing an Equity Framework

• Who is the Group?
• What is the Object?
• What is the Principle?
• What Statistic(s) do you use to measure the
  degree of equity?

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Equity Equal Amounts of What?

• Horizontal Equity
• Vertical Equity
• Fiscal Neutrality

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Arkansas School Funding

• Foundation program
• Base level revenue
• Additional base funding
• Categorical grants for vertical equity
• Limited assistance for capital expenditures

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Adequacy How Much Money Do We Need?

• School finance adequacy requires providing enough
  fiscal resources to insure that all students can
  perform at high levels

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Costing Out Adequacy

• Defining adequacy
• Implementation issues
• Measuring costs and expenditures
• Concerns and other issues

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Four Approaches to Defining Adequacy

• Cost functions
• Expenditures in districts/schools that meet
  performance benchmarks
• Professional judgment
• Cost of effective school-wide strategies

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Implementation

• How proscriptive should the model be?
• Who controls spending decisions?
• Simple, transparent and easily understood
• Establish a base foundation level
• Adjust for
• Student characteristics
• District characteristics
• Price differences

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Measuring Cost and Expenditures

• Understanding the difference between a cost and
  an expenditure
• Choosing which to use
• Wyoming ? Costs
• Oregon ? Expenditures
• Combinations of the two

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Concerns and Other Issues

• Look at the total picture
• Individual components of the funding model may
  not tell the whole story
• Details are important, but dont forget the major
  assumptions in the model

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Conclusions

• Lakeview sets the stage for significant Reform
• Need to tie finance reform to student performance
  
• Define adequacy
• Collect and use better data
• What is the cost?

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How to Contact Me

• Lawrence O. Picus
• Professor, USC Rossier School of Education
• EDPA WPH 702G
• University of Southern California
• Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031
• 213 740-2175
• lpicus_at_usc.edu