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To my wife, Eleanor, best friend,
sharpest critic, closest advisor, and
loving supporter.
Allan Odden

To my family, Susan Pasternak and

Matthew Picus, who help me keep
this in perspective.
Larry Picus
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface xvii

1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

TO SCHOOL FINANCE 1
1. The Scope of Education Finance in the United States 4
Enrollment 4
Schools and School Districts 4
Impact on the Economy 6
School Revenues and Expenditures 7
2. Early Developments in School Finance 10
Early Actions 10
The Growing Importance of State Governments 11
Evolution of the State Role in Education Finance 12
3. Evolution of the School Finance Problem 13
Traditional Fiscal Disparities 13
The School Finance Problem as Fiscal Adequacy 16
The School Finance Problem as Productivity 17
4. Summary 18

2 LEGAL ISSUES IN SCHOOL FINANCE 19

1. The Legal Background of School Finance Litigation 20
The Three “Waves” of School Finance Litigation 21
2. The First Wave: Federal Equal Protection Litigation 21
The Strict Scrutiny Test 22
The Rational Basis Test 23
The Early Cases 24
Fiscal Neutrality 24
3. The Second Wave: State Law Equity Cases 27
4. The Third Wave: Adequacy 29
Giving Meaning to the Education Clause 29

ix
x Contents

“Pre-Adequacy” Cases 31
Adequacy Cases 32
Conflicts between the Courts and the Legislature 33
Rulings with More Explicit Remedies 35
Adequacy and Standards 38
Does Adequacy Require Equal Outcomes? 38
The Impact of the Recession 39
5. Summary 40
6. A School Finance Legal Scorecard 40

3 A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING EQUITY

AND ADEQUACY IN SCHOOL FINANCE 42
1. Does Money Matter? 43
2. Equity in School Finance 46
Ex Ante versus Ex Post 47
The Unit of Analysis 48
Objects of Interest 50
The Group 53
Equity Concepts 54
3. Adequacy 64
Links to Litigation and School Finance Formulas 65
Measuring Adequacy 66
Setting the Adequacy Spending Level 67
4. Summary 71

4 ADEQUATE STAFFING AND RESOURCES

FOR AMERICA’S SCHOOLS 76
1. General Issues for Determining Adequate
School Resources 77
Preschool 77
Student Count for Calculating State Aid 79
Full-Day Kindergarten 80
School Size 80
2. Adequate Staffing for the Core Programs
in Prototypical Schools 83
Core Teachers/Class Size 83
Specialist/Elective Teachers and Planning and Preparation Time/
Collaborative Professional Development 85
Instructional Facilitators/School-Based Coaches/Mentors 86
Contents xi

3. Staffing for Extra Student Needs 87

Tutors 88
English Language Learning (ELL) Students 91
Extended-Day Programs 93
Summer School 95
Special Education 97
Gifted and Talented Students 99
Career and Technical Education 102
4. Additional Staffing and Resource Needs 103
Substitute Teachers 104
Student Support/Family Outreach 104
Aides 106
Librarians 106
Principal 106
School Site Secretarial Staff 107
Intensive Professional Development 107
Technology and Equipment 111
Instructional Materials 113
Student Activities 118
5. Summary of Staffing and Other Resources
for Prototypical Schools 118
6. District Resources 122
Central Office 122
Operations and Maintenance 124
7. Appendix A: History of Special Needs
Programs 132
Compensatory Education 132
Bilingual Education 134
Special Education 135

5 A COHESIVE SCHOOL STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING

STUDENT LEARNING 138
1. Laying A Foundation for Change 139
2. Setting Ambitious Goals 142
3. Adopting Effective Instructional
and Curriculum Programs 142
4. Being Strategic about Core and Elective Classes 145
5. Organizing Teachers into Collaborative Groups 145
6. Engaging in Data-Based Decision Making 146
xii Contents

7. Implementing a Systemic Professional

Development Program 146
8. Providing Effective Interventions for
Struggling Students 147
9. Developing Widespread Instructional Leadership 148
10. Creating an Accountability Culture 148
11. Being Serious about Teacher and Principal Talent 149
12. Summary 149

6 SCHOOL FINANCE STRUCTURES:

FORMULA OPTIONS 151
1. Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations 152
Advantages of a Federal Approach to Financing Education 152
Intergovernmental Grants and Their Objectives 154
2. School Finance Formulas 160
Equity and Adequacy of the Simulation Sample Districts 160
Flat Grant Programs 164
Foundation Programs 171
Guaranteed Tax Base Programs 181
Combination Foundation and Guaranteed Tax Base
Programs 191
Full-State-Funding and State-Determined Spending Programs 198
3. Adjustments for Price Differences 199
4. Simulation of Adjustments for Special-Needs Students 201
5. Summary 205
Study Group Exercises 205
Individual Exercises 207
Summary Tables 208

7 IMPROVING STATE SCHOOL FINANCE SYSTEMS 210

1. A Framework for Analysis 210
2. School Finance in Wisconsin 212
The Wisconsin School Finance Problem 214
Improving the Wisconsin School Finance System 218
3. School Finance in Illinois 222
The Illinois School Finance Problem 222
Improving the Illinois School Finance System 225
Contents xiii

4. School Finance in Washington 228

The Washington School Finance Problem 229
Improving the Washington School Finance System 231
5. Summary 232

8 SCHOOL DISTRICT BUDGETING 235

1. Defining Budgets 236
2. Approaches to Budgeting 238
3. Budget Preparation 240
School Site Budgets 241
The District Budget Process 244
Estimating Expenditures 247
Accounting for Expenditures and Revenues 248
Budget Preparation Summary 253
Budget Modification 253
Budget Approval 254
Administering the Budget 254
4. Budget Implementation 255
Distribution of Funds to the School Site 255
Allocation of Nonstaff Resources 257
5. Summary 259

9 A FRAMEWORK FOR MORE EFFECTIVE USE

OF THE EDUCATION DOLLAR 262
1. Changes in Educational Resources and Their
Use over Time 263
Changes in the Level of Resources 263
Educational Expenditures by Function 264
Changes in the Use of Educational Resources
over Time 266
A Suspect Proposal for More Effective Use of Educational
Resources 269
A Better Way to Track the Use of Education Resources 269
Use of Adequacy-Oriented School Finance Reform
Dollars 277
2. The Cost Increase Pressures on Schools 279
Small Class Sizes 280
Many Electives 281
xiv Contents

Automatic Pay Increases 282

Charging Average Rather Than Actual Teacher Salaries 283
3. Summary 284

10 STRATEGIC BUDGETING TO IMPROVE

STUDENT LEARNING 287
1. Goals and Principles to Guide Strategic Budgeting 288
2. Engaging in Strategic Budgeting 291
A Well-Funded Middle School in Need of Restructuring 291
A Midwestern District with 3,500 Students 296
An Underfunded District in the West 299
A Middle School in an Eastern City 302
Value Judgments Part of Strategic Budgeting 304
Additional Budget Cutting Efforts 305
3. Summary 306

11 REDESIGNING TEACHER SALARY STRUCTURES 308

1. Changing the Way Teachers Are Paid 309
Why Change the Teacher Salary Schedule? 309
Linking Teacher Pay Changes to Core Educational Goals 311
Setting New Goals and Objectives for Teacher
Compensation 311
2. The Elements of Teacher Salary Structures 313
3. Determining Adequate Beginning and Average
Teacher Pay Levels 315
Competition in the Education Labor Market 316
Competition in the Broader Labor Market 316
Beginning Salary Benchmarks 316
Average Salary Benchmarks 317
Adjustments to Salaries 317
4. Paying Wage Premiums 318
When Are Wage Premiums Necessary? 318
How Large Should Wage Premiums Be? 319
Should the Wage Premium Be Coupled with
an Effectiveness Criterion? 320
Are Wage Premiums Needed Based on District Characteristics
as Well? 321
Contents xv

5. Base Pay Progression Elements Linked to Teacher

Effectiveness 321
Examples of Changes in the Salary Schedule 322
6. Structuring Bonuses Based on Improvements
in Student Learning 332
Performance Elements 333
Performance Measures 333
Performance Improvement Targets 334
Bonus Payout Structures: Balanced Scorecards 336
Individual versus Whole-School Bonuses 338
Cost Estimates and Overruns 339
7. Effective Processes for Designing and Implementing
Teacher Pay Changes 340
8. Summary 341

12 THE PUBLIC FINANCE CONTEXT 343

1. Taxation Overview 346
Trends in Federal, State, and Local Taxation 346
Changes in Tax Structures 347
2. Assessing and Understanding Taxation 348
Public Finance Criteria for Evaluating Taxes 349
3. Analysis of Individual Taxes 357
The Income Tax 357
The Sales Tax 364
The Property Tax 370
Lotteries 382
4. Summary 384

Appendix: Using the Simulation 387

Glossary 392

References 398

Name Index 431

Subject Index 438

This page intentionally left blank
Preface
In this fifth edition of School Finance: A Policy Perspective, we continue the emphasis
of the first four editions on the use of education dollars and the need to spend current
and all new dollars on more effective programs and services—in short, to use the dol-
lars in the education system to more effectively produce student learning. Our prime
goal in the fifth edition is to strengthen the book’s orientation to the issues that school
principals and other site-based education leaders face on a daily basis, while maintaining
our efforts to instill a deep understanding of the issues faced by those at the policy level
in school districts and states. To do this, we have enhanced the chapter that describes
our evidence-based approach to school finance adequacy, added a chapter that shows
how schools and districts can weave all these elements into a cohesive and effective
School Strategy, and in Chapter 10, use the allocation of resources embedded in this
school strategy to show how schools and district can reallocate resources to research
Evidence-Based school strategies. That chapter addresses the resources, programs, and
services needed in prototypical elementary, middle, and high schools to provide every
child an equal educational opportunity to achieve at a level that will meet any state’s
student proficiency standards. Following the introduction of our Evidence-Based model
in Chapter 4, we discuss the use of these resources in subsequent chapters on resource
allocation strategies to implement that model. Other chapters cover issues of budget-
ing and reform of state school finance systems. This enables readers to compare and
contrast the resources in their state, district, and school, using at least one approach
that could be deemed adequate in terms of funding levels and effective in terms of
specific use of resources. We have continued to streamline several of the other chapters
(sometimes even dividing them into two separate chapters) to concentrate on key issues
in school finance litigation, definitions of equity and adequacy, revenue raising, and
revenue distribution (both state-to-district and district-to-school). We also have updated
all material from the fourth edition.
The fifth edition includes a revised simulation capacity that allows readers
to input staffing and resource data from a school—as well as from all schools in a
district—and to immediately receive a report indicating whether the school or district
can, via resource reallocation, afford the strategies included in the Evidence-Based
adequacy model developed in Chapter 4. In addition, the book includes a revised and
enhanced school finance simulation that enables students, professors, and research-
ers to use web-based tools (www.mhhe.com/odden5e) to analyze the nature of school
finance problems and to simulate the effects of different school finance structures on

xvii
xviii Preface

both a 20-district sample and universe data sets for several states. The fifth edition has
five major sections:

1. Three introductory chapters, one providing an overview of key school

finance issues, one on issues in school finance litigation, and one that devel-
ops an equity and adequacy framework for analyzing state school finance
structures.
2. Two chapters, explaining the rationale behind the Evidence-Based model.
The first identifies adequate resources for prototypical elementary, middle,
and high schools using the Evidence-Based approach to school finance
adequacy. We have used this model in our work with a number of state leg-
islative commissions around the country. The second chapter in this section
describes how these individual programmatic elements can be integrated
into a cohesive schoolwide strategy to boost student learning and reduce
achievement gaps.
3. Three chapters on budgeting adequate resources to districts and schools.
This includes an updated chapter on state-to-district funding formulas; a
chapter on reforming state school finance systems to make them more fair
and adequate. This chapter provides examples for three individual states and
allows the student to simulate further options using real school district data
from those states. The third chapter focuses on budgeting dollars to schools
with an emphasis on moving to a school-based budgeting approach.
4. Three chapters on the effective allocation and use of education resources.
The first describes how resources are currently allocated, while the second
uses both a school and district simulation to show how resources could be
more effectively allocated. This chapter emphasizes the allocation recom-
mendations in the Evidence-Based model. The third chapter in this section
describes a new approach to teacher compensation that offers suggestions
on how the dollars spent on teacher pay systems could be more effectively
structured.
5. The fifth section includes an extensive chapter on the public finance context
of school financing and provides an analyses of the major funding sources for
schools—income, sales, and property taxes.

The book also includes an appendix that provides instructions for using the simula-
tions in Chapters 6 and 7.

1. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the topic of school finance. It begins with
information on the current status of funding for public K–12 education in the United
States, showing how much is spent, where those funds come from, and how levels
and sources of funding have changed over time. It shows that as a nation, we spend
Preface xix

a great deal of money on K–12 education and that the amount we spend has grown
considerably over time. Chapter 1 also discusses the manner in which school finance
inequities have changed over the past 30 years. The chapter looks at the “tradi-
tional” school finance inequities in several states, where districts with lower prop-
erty wealth per pupil tend to have lower expenditures per pupil—even with higher
school tax rates—than do districts with higher per-pupil property wealth. These
high-wealth districts tend to have higher per-pupil expenditures even with lower school
tax rates.
The chapter then shows that several states today have what we call the “new”
school finance problem: higher-property-wealth districts with higher expenditures
per pupil but also higher tax rates, and lower-property-wealth-per-pupil districts with
lower expenditures per pupil but also lower school tax rates. The chapter suggests that
remedying these different types of fiscal inequities might require very different school
finance reform strategies. Finally, the chapter discusses how the issue of adequacy has
entered the school finance policy agenda.
Chapter 2 reviews the evolution of school finance court cases, from the initial
Serrano v. Priest decision to the adequacy cases of the late 1990s and 2000s. The chapter
shows how strongly litigation has shifted from equity to adequacy issues. This chapter
has been rewritten to make the ideas and concepts more understandable and to update
all the pertinent legal issues. A chart on the book’s website (www.mhhe.com/odden5e)
contains citations for the various school finance court decisions across the country and
their constitutional bases.
Chapter 3 begins with a short discussion of whether money “matters,” arguing
that this was less of an issue in the 20th century, when attention was primarily focused
on equity. We argue that today, the adequacy issue directly relates to the “does money
matter” question, so it is not an add-on, but a core issue in school finance. The chapter
then develops an equity-and-adequacy framework for analyzing state school finance
systems. It draws from the Berne and Stiefel (1984) equity framework that was used in
the first edition of the text and adds a discussion of such issues as ex ante versus ex post
equity perspectives, the unit of analysis, and various elements of equity including the
group, the object, and different measures of horizontal and vertical equity. The chapter
also adds the concept of adequacy to the overall framework and presents an adequacy
statistic, the Odden-Picus Adequacy Index. The chapter concludes by asserting that
most analyses of the equity and adequacy of state school finance systems use state and
local revenues per pupil and focus on the degree of per-pupil revenue equality (using
the coefficient of variation and the McLoone Index statistics) and the degree of fiscal
neutrality, or the linkage between revenues per pupil and property wealth per pupil.

2. AN APPROACH TO SCHOOL FINANCE

ADEQUACY
This section includes two related chapters. Chapter 4 identifies an adequate level of
school resources, and Chapter 5 addresses how the various individual programs can be
used in a powerful school wide strategy.
xx Preface

Chapter 4 updates the Evidence-Based approach to school finance adequacy, one

of the four major methods used around the country to identify an adequate level of
education resources which we created to use in the conduct of adequacy studies in sev-
eral states, is the Evidence-Based Model. The model identifies a set of research-based
resources for prototypical elementary, middle, and high schools that will provide all stu-
dents an equal education opportunity to meet their state’s performance standards. The
material in this chapter draws heavily from the work we have done in states where we
have conducted adequacy studies. We are currently conducting research in schools that
have used this level and type of resources to dramatically improve student performance
in recent years and we are increasingly confident that the resources identified repre-
sent a reliable approach to identifying the resources needed to ensure school finance
adequacy. The precise cost of adequacy in any state will depend on the teacher salary
and benefits levels used to estimate total costs. The issue of compensation is addressed
in an updated and revised Chapter 11. We recommend a careful review of Chapter 11 as
we make reference to the material contained in that chapter in several places through-
out the rest of the text. These include our discussion of the effective use of resources
in Chapter 10, the information regarding budgeting at the school and district level in
Chapter 8, and the material in Chapter 7 on redesigning a state’s school finance struc-
ture to make sure it is adequate.
Chapter 5 addresses what we have found to be common elements of schools
and districts around the country that have dramatically improved student learning
and reduced achievement gaps, what many are now calling “moving the student
achievement needle.” The purpose of this chapter is to show how many different
schools and districts in the country have woven the various programmatic elements
described in Chapter 4 into an integrated School Strategy to increase student
achievement.

3. ALLOCATING AND BUDGETING DOLLARS

FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES
This section includes three chapters: Chapter 6 on traditional state funding formulas,
Chapter 7 on using those formulas and structures to improve state school finance struc-
tures, and Chapter 8 on budgeting.
Chapter 6 begins by noting that all levels of government (local, state, federal) in
the United States play a role in funding schools; this system is called fiscal federalism.
It then describes the core elements of state school finance formulas: base allocations
provided through flat grant, foundation, guaranteed tax base (district-power-equalizing
and percentage-equalizing), and combination formulas. The chapter provides a gen-
eral description of how these programs work through the use of a 20-district sample
in an updated simulation program. The focus of this chapter is on how different
school finance formulas work (i.e., their costs and their effects on horizontal and verti-
cal equity, as well as adequacy). The chapter includes a discussion of four different
methods for determining an adequate base spending level: the professional-judgment
approach, the successful-district approach, the cost-function approach, and the evi-
dence-based approach.
Preface xxi

While the last part of Chapter 4 discusses the rationales and the types of adjust-
ments for three categories of special-needs children (those from a low-income back-
ground, those with physical and mental disabilities, and those with limited English
proficiency), Chapter 6 describes different ways states can adjust funding formulas for
these categories of special pupil needs.
Chapter 7 uses the analytic tools outlined in Chapters 3, 4, and 6 to identify school
finance problems in three states, and then, using district data from the three states
representing different kinds of school finance situations, suggests reforms that would
remedy the identified problems. This chapter uses the simulation program, available on
the McGraw-Hill website (www.mhhe.com/odden5e), adapted for the individual states.
Over time, this website should have data sets for more states. It currently has data for
more recent years for the states discussed in the chapter, so professors could have stu-
dents analyze the nature of the school finance problems with more recent data, as well
as simulate and propose school finance reforms.
The Washington data set discussed in Chapter 7 presents a more “traditional”
school finance problem of unequal distribution of funds due to the unequal distribu-
tion of wealth. The chapter shows how traditional school finance models can be used
to increase horizontal equity, fiscal neutrality, and adequacy, and to make adjustments
for different student needs. The Wisconsin data set presents the “new” finance prob-
lem. In this instance, the wealthiest districts are relatively high spending but also have
relatively high tax rate districts, while the poorest districts tend to be low spending and
exert low tax efforts. The chapter shows how guaranteed tax base (GTB) programs exac-
erbate fiscal equity for such states and identifies alternative school finance mechanisms
to improve inequity and adequacy. The Illinois data present a finance situation that
not only is tricky to resolve but also requires substantial additional resources on both
adequacy and property tax reduction grounds.
The goal of Chapter 7 is to show how various elements of school finance structures
can be used to resolve different types of school finance problems. For each state, the
chapter includes an analysis of both the school finance problem and the effectiveness or
ineffectiveness of different formulas in resolving the problem.
We encourage any reader or professor to send us data sets from their states that
we could convert into a simulation to add to the website. The variables we would need
are described at the end of Chapter 7.
Chapter 8 is an updated chapter on budgeting educational resources. It focuses
more on the nuts and bolts of budgeting and less on research about budgeting processes.
The chapter starts with the traditional triangle that structures budgeting—revenues,
expenditures, and educational programs—and then discusses how these play out as
central issues in school district budgeting. It includes explanations of the general fund
and restricted funds. It also includes descriptions of various ways that districts provide
resources to school sites, from the more traditional staffing formulas to emerging needs-
based, per-pupil funding formulas. In addition, the chapter examines how the recom-
mendations in Chapter 4, which identify adequate resources for prototypical schools,
could be used to budget resources to all schools in a district. It also raises the issue of
how expenditures might be reported by the same budgeting categories in the future. It
includes short summaries of the weighted-pupil approach to budgeting. The goal is to
illuminate the key ways in which districts allocate resources for schools.
xxii Preface

4. THE ALLOCATION AND EFFECTIVE USE

OF DOLLARS
Chapter 9 is completely rewritten. It provides a detailed analysis of the way states,
districts, and schools allocate and use educational resources, summarizing research
from national-, state-, and school-level databases. The chapter shows that there are
surprisingly common patterns in the uses of the education dollar. It also shows that dur-
ing the past 30 years the bulk of new dollars has been used to expand services outside
the regular, core instructional program (i.e., to provide extra services for numerous
categories of special pupil needs). The chapter concludes that while these uses reflect
good values—more money for many categories of special-needs students—the specific
applications of those new dollars have not had much impact on student learning. The
implication is that we need to retain these values but find more effective uses for these
extra resources. The chapter concludes with a recommendation for reporting expendi-
tures of education resources by educational strategy at the school level—a new financial
reporting mechanism that would provide expenditure information, now lacking, by the
categories of adequate resources developed in Chapter 4.
Chapter 10 addresses the challenge of using school resources more effectively.
It discusses the issue of resource reallocation to school-level strategies that produce
higher student performance. Drawing from the school staffing discussion in Chapter 4,
it examines resource use and reallocation processes that could produce expenditures in
line with the model. This chapter does not draw definitive conclusions about the impact
of the adequacy model (though it is an approach we strongly support), but it does show
how this model has a cost structure different from traditional schools and thus uses dol-
lar resources differently.
This chapter uses both a school level redesign or reallocation tool and a newly
developed District Simulation that can be used by district administrators for assessing
reallocation possibilities in all the district’s schools. To use the school redesign simula-
tion, readers need to input staffing and discretionary dollar data (note that it is only
staffing resources and not the school’s actual budget), together with the average cost
of teachers, administrators, and instructional aides. The simulation then provides a
report analyzing whether, fiscally and via resource reallocation, the school could afford
the Evidence-Based model developed in Chapter 4. The directions for the District
Simulation are included in the “Read First” and “FAQ” tabs of the EXCEL based pro-
gram, which is available on the McGraw-Hill web page for this book (www.mhhe.com/
odden5e). The chapter suggests activities a professor could use as a course paper using
results from either or both of these simulation programs.
Chapter 11 is an updated version of approaches to redesigning teacher compen-
sation systems to make them both more effective and more efficient. It addresses the
issue of teacher salary levels and benchmarks that could be used by states and districts
to set teacher salary levels, potentially at an adequate level. It discusses the need to
provide salary premiums for teachers in subject area shortages (e.g., mathematics
and science) and in hard-to-staff schools in high-poverty areas. It identifies several
new knowledge- and skills-based teacher salary structures that could now draw on the
teacher effectiveness metrics that most states and districts are developing in response
Preface xxiii

both to the federal Race to the Top program as well as waivers from No Child Left
Behind accountability mechanisms. Finally, the chapter discusses how to design per-
formance bonus programs that would provide either individual teachers or all teachers
(as well as administrators and classified staff) in a school with a salary bonus for meeting
preset targets for improved student performance. More details on these ideas can be
found in Odden and Wallace (2007).

5. THE PUBLIC FINANCE CONTEXT

Chapter 12 reviews the public finance context for school finance, analyzing the base,
yield, elasticity, equity, economic effects, and administrative costs of income, sales,
and property taxes as revenue sources for public schools. It discusses mechanisms to
improve the regressive incidence at lower income levels of both the sales and the prop-
erty tax, and reviews various property tax limitations states have enacted on this primary
public school revenue source. It also includes a short analysis of lotteries as a source of
school revenues.
All but the first chapter in this fifth edition include a set of study questions. Many
of these study questions can be used as formal assignments in a school finance course.

6. APPENDIX: THE SIMULATION

An integral part of this book is the school finance simulation designed to accompany
the text. We have made a number of improvements to the simulation that accompanied
previous editions of this book. The original 10-district simulation has been expanded to
include 20 districts. Additionally, two new school finance statistics are provided—the
Verstegen Index and the Odden-Picus Adequacy Index. The 20-district simulation is
designed to accompany Chapter 6. We have found that the simulation dramatically
improves student understanding of the statistics used by the school finance profession
and helps them understand the myriad complexities involved in making changes to a
state’s school-funding system. The 20-district simulation that accompanies this edition
should continue that tradition.
The simulation is available on the book’s website at www.mhhe.com/odden5e. The
appendix describes the general use of the simulation and provides information on how
to access it on the web. Additional documentation is available on the website.
In addition to the 20-district simulation, we include data sets for several years
for Kentucky, Illinois, Vermont, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin for
analysis and simulation of alternative school finance reforms. As noted, if professors
send us an Excel file with their state’s data, we will create a simulation for that state as
well and put it up on the web.
At the end of the preface of the first edition, we said, “We hope this will help the
country accomplish its goals of having all students learn to think, solve problems and
communicate, graduate from high school, and be first in the world in mathematics and
science.” We continue this hope with this edition.
xxiv Preface

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book of this magnitude is almost always the result of activities far beyond
those of the authors. We are responsible for the text and for any errors and omissions,
but without the insights, assistance, support, and work of others, a book might never see
the light of day. We would like to thank the people who played major roles in helping
us produce the fifth edition of this book.
Professor William Glenn of Virginia Tech University rewrote Chapter 2 on the law
related to school finance, updated the school finance legal chart on the book’s website
and also created the Virginia simulation on the book’s website. We thank Dr. Michael
Goetz, an independent consultant in education finance and policy, for his work over the
years on both the 20-district simulation and the various state simulations. He is a genius
at debugging the glitches that have emerged in the simulations over the years, and in
tailoring new data sets to state simulations. He provided the new, more recent state sim-
ulations for Illinois, Washington, and Wisconsin, and updated all previous simulations
to run on EXCEL 2010. David Knight, a doctoral student at the USC Rossier School of
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