COF CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCE Department of Educational Administration Phone 309/438-3636 -8 331 DeGarmo Hall Normal, Illinois 61761 with only the financial support of the good people of Illinois. Since that time, the National Institute of Education, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Office of Education have all put out requests for proposals and commissioned studies on the measurement of equity.(8) That must be an ongoing investment of research and development resources. If we are ever to get even a modest amount of agreement on what constitutes: "equity," "equalization," "wealth neutrality," "disparity," "equal expenditure for equal effort," etc., then it will take a lot of research and development by a lot of people. At some point, however, we may get the professional educators and the legislators to remember that if a phrase or a word in a law is not measureable, then it is going to be quite difficult to either administer the law or to litigate disputes concerning the law. That practice will make for less literary law, but that may be the price one pays for objective administration. Bend chathand Ben C. Hubbard Sincerely yours, 6. Alan Hick G. Alan Hickrod Director 1. 2. 3. References and Notes Personnel at the Center were inclined to favor Representative Carl D. Perkins' earlier bill, The School Finance Act of 1973 and also certain aspects of Representative David R. Obey's The School Tax Equalization Act of 1973. Similar support was indicated for bills introduced by Senators Stevenson and Mondale; for example, Walter F. Mondale's The Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act of 1973. All of these proposals were intended to help states reduce expenditure per pupil disparities within their boundaries. For a review of these cases see Levin, Betsy, State School 4. The Center for the Study of Educational Finance was mandated by the Illinois School Problems Commission, a legislative commission of the Illinois General Assembly, to conduct an annual evaluation of the state grant-in-aid system following the reform of that system in 1973. The first year's evaluation is found in Hickrod, G. Alan, Hubbard, Ben C., and Yang, Thomas W. C., The 1973 Reform of the Illinois General Purpose Educational Grant-in-Aid: A Description and an Evaluation, 1975, Center for the Study of Educational Finance, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, 61761 (also available in Tron, Esther (ed.), Selected Papers in School Finance, 1974, U.S. Office of Education and as document ED 127 681 in the CEF CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCE Department of Educational Administration Illinois State University Phone 309/438-3636 5. 6. ERIC Document Reproduction Service, P.0. Drawer 0., Bethesda, Maryland). The second year's evaluation may be found in Hickrod, G. Alan, Yang, Thomas W. C., Hubbard, Ben C., and Chaudhari, Ramesh, Measurable Objectives for School Finance Reform, 1975, Center for the Study of Educational Finance, Illinois State University (also available as ED 103 977 in the ERIC Document Reproduction Service). The third year's evaluation is in Hickrod, G. Alan, Hubbard, Ben C., Yang, Thomas W. C., Rasanond, Tharin, and Chaudhari, Ramesh, The 1973 Reform of the Illinois Grant-in-Aid System: An Evaluation After Three Years, 1976, the Center, Illinois State University. The evaluation techniques used in Illinois were also used on Kansas and Michigan data in Yang, Thomas W. C., Measurement of School Revenue Equity in the States of Illinois, Michigan, and Kansas, 1975, the Center, Illinois State University. Data from Ohio have also been analyzed using these techniques but publication has been held up due to complications arising from a case now at trial in Ohio, e.g., Board of Education of City School District of City of Cincinnati, et al. vs. Martin W. Essex et al. An impressive study relating disparities in expenditure per pupil between school districts within a state to a whole host of variables can be found in Harrison, Russell S., Equality in Public School Finance, 1976, Lexington Books. A large number of scholars in addition to professor Mc Loone have made contributions to the literature on the measurement of equity in school finance. See, for example, works by: Garms, Walter I., Michelson, Stephan, Grubb, W. Norton, Feldstein, Martin S., Wilensky, Gail R., Firestein, Robert E., Barkin, David, Gensemer, Bruce L., James, H. Thomas, Thomas, J. Alan, Kelly, James A., Johns, R. L., Alexander, Kern, Alexander, Arthur J., Jordan, K. Forbis, McLure, William P., Benson, Charles S., Barro, Steven, Fox, James N., Berne, Robert, Cohn, Elchanan, Odden, Allan, Callahan, John J., Wilkins, William, Moskowitz, Jay, Sinkin, Judy, Berke, Joel, etc. In fact, it is almost impossible to remain in the modern field of school finance and school finance reform for very long without struggling over problems of definition and measurement of "equity' concepts. In many instances conceptual and measurement tools have been taken from the field of economics and adjusted" to fit circumstances in school finance. CLF CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCE 8. 331 DeGarmo Hall Normal, Illinois 61761 For an early statement of the Center's concern in this area |