MOSER, Michele

The equality of public school district funding in the United States : a national status report - Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, jan./feb.2002

For over 30 years, the distribution of educational opportunities and the equality of education funding across communities has generated considerable interest among policy makers, the public, and the courts. This article takes advantage of national data sets to examine funding equality across shool districts in 49 states for fiscal years 1992 and 1995. Its presents rankings of each state's funding equality and explores factors that may be related to the level of equality within states and to changes across years. The analyses suggest that, overall, within-state equality improved slightly between 1992 and 1995, although most states' relative ranking changed little during the period. States with fewer sholl districts relative to students tended to have a more equal distribution of education dollars than states with more districts. States with higher proportions of revenues provided by state governments generally showed a more equitable distribution of resources than states in which districts were more dependent on local renevues