The Education Gadfly Weekly

William J. Fowler Jr., ed., National Center for Education Statistics
July 2002

The National Center for Education Statistics holds an annual conference on school finance and has now gotten around to publishing a 142-page collection of papers from the 1999 and 2000 conferences. Better late than never, however, as these six papers merit a good skim. Only the most intrepid readers are likely to venture beyond the first few paragraphs of some of them, however, or to delve deeply into their many pages of formulas and methodological discussions.

In "Reform and Resource Allocation: National Trends and State Policies," Jane Hannaway, Shannon McKay, and Yasser Nakib look at whether the standards-and-accountability movement has increased the proportion of resources devoted to instruction. Surprisingly, they don't find much overall change, though the evidence from a few states, such as Kentucky and Texas, is more promising.

"Where Does New Money Go? Evidence from Litigation and a Lottery" by Thomas S. Dee. Tennessee and Massachusetts were ordered by courts to boost their education funding. Georgia did so by choice, and paid for it with a new lottery. Dee says that both litigation and lottery led to spending increases, but that the states had only mixed success in productively targeting their additional dollars.

"School Finance Litigation and Property Tax Revolts: How Undermining Local Control Turns Voters Away from Public Education" by William A. Fischel. To equalize funding between schools, many states have assumed effective control of school funding, taking it away from local districts. Fischel presents evidence that, when the people holding the purse strings are no longer the people who use the schools, schools are less likely to be well funded. Fischel is an economist, but this evidence-based call for local control of education financing is written for the layman.

"Using National Data to Assess Local School District Spending on Professional Development," by Kieran M. Killeen, David H. Monk, and Margaret L. Plecki. Teacher professional development has not been much studied. The authors of this paper report on their ongoing attempts to answer the deceptively slippery question of how much is actually being spent on workshops, in-service programs and suchlike.

"Evaluating School Performance: Are We Ready For Prime Time?" by Robert Bifulco and William Duncombe. The authors evaluate the most sophisticated econometric models for rating how efficiently schools turn inputs (e.g. money, parental support) into desired outputs (like academic development). While the techniques aren't yet ready for widespread use, they could someday be a useful tool in the belt of school accountability.

"Making Money Matter: Financing America's Schools" by Helen F. Ladd and Janet S. Hansen. The authors look not only at how money is spent, but also at how resources can best be allocated to improve academic achievement.

Interested readers can download the full report (containing all 6 papers) at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002316.

This fifty-page paper by Cynthia Prince, issues director at the American Association of School Administrators, contends that "offering financial incentives to teachers willing to take on more challenging assignments is essential if we are to staff every school with highly qualified teachers....Changing the way that teachers are paid is critical if we are to attract and hold teachers in the schools that serve students with the greatest needs....In short, incentives matter." She reviews a number of incentive-payment programs underway in various states and communities and draws nine lessons from them as to how such programs should be structured to maximize their chances of success. At the end of the paper is a useful bibliography (including websites) of literature-and specific programs-that bear on this issue. It's good to see the staid A.A.S.A. climbing on something so "radical" as incentive pay for teachers-perhaps that means it's no longer a radical idea-and this is a lucid discussion of how to do it. Especially tantalizing is her suggestion that incentive pay is more or less compelled by the No Child Left Behind requirement that every child have a "highly qualified" teacher, suggesting that NCLB is already having unintended (and in this case positive) effects. You can find the paper (in PDF format) on the web at http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/issues_dept/higher_pay.pdf or send for a copy from American Association of School Administrators, 1801 North Moore Street, Arlington, VA 22209. The phone is (703) 875-0767 and the author's email address is [email protected].

Standard & Poor's
November 30, 2001

In an innovative partnership aimed at improving the transparency of Michigan's charter schools, the financial consulting firm Standard and Poor's (S&P) has produced comprehensive analytical reports for each of the 57 charter schools authorized by Central Michigan University (CMU). As of 2000-2001, those schools enrolled over 22,000 students in 36 cities and towns, making CMU the state's largest charter authorizer and the nation's largest university authorizer. The reports, drawing on data for 3 recent school years, analyze each school's academic and financial performance and compare it with key benchmarks, including the CMU average, district and state averages, and the school's own record. They also measure each school's progress towards the goals stated in its charter, a benchmark that CMU will consider when the time comes to renew the schools' charters. Such report can yield several benefits. They help schools spotlight problems and provide outside justification for tough curricular and personnel decisions. They give schools access to comparable data against which to benchmark their financial and academic performance. They also help parents and others to understand what's actually going on in an individual school, enabling them to make sound decisions about which school may fit a child's needs. Such data can obviously assist policymakers and educators to understand what may or may not work in schools. Finally, these reports can help philanthropists make wiser decisions about where to spend their limited grant dollars. To view the S&P reports, visit http://www.ses.standardandpoors.com. (Click Michigan in the "Select State" field on the home page and then click on "CMU-Sponsored Charter School Reports" under "Administrator's Toolkit.")

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
2002

This report pulls together speeches and essays on improving student achievement in the so-called "middle grades"-six, seven and eight-which are, on the whole, marked by weak academic performance. Written by Hayes Mizell, director of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's urban middle grades reform initiative (which will sunset in 2003), the pieces address challenges of middle school reform, the importance of tying systemic reform to standards and accountability, and hard-nosed lessons learned over Mizell's decade leading this Clark initiative. An unabashed advocate of high standards, Mizell does not fall prey to "middleschoolism"-the notion that adolescents' raging hormones impede their ability to master challenging academics. Anyone seeking an honest diagnosis of our nation's failing middle schools or suggestions on how to fix them will want to peruse this report, which can be downloaded or ordered for free at http://www.emcf.org/programs/student/shootingforthesun.htm.

Southern Regional Education Board
2002

This short (20 page) report from the Southern Regional Education Board contends that states need to get more serious about providing high-quality summer-school programs if they want to end social promotion and lower their grade retention rates. Included here are a bit of data, some examples of strong programs, and 7 sensible (if fairly obvious) recommendations for state policy makers. The essential point is that this is a domain of education where states should assert themselves rather than leaving it almost entirely to local decision-making. You can obtain a PDF version by surfing to http://www.sreb.org/programs/srr/pubs/Summer_School.pdf.

National Center for Education Statistics
June 21, 2002

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently released the results of its 2001 geography assessment in grades 4, 8 and 12. These are national data only-geography isn't tested at the state level-and the only previous results they can be compared with come from 1994. The good news is that 4th and 8th grade scores are up during that seven-year period. (12th grade is essentially unchanged.) The bad news is that all the gains occurred at the lower levels of performance; there was no change in the proportion of youngsters scoring at/above the "proficient" level-and those scores remain very weak: 21 percent in grade 4, 30 percent in grade 8, 25 percent in grade 12. This means, for example, that, while three-quarters of 8th graders know that Florida is a peninsula, just 22 percent were able to give two reasons why tropical deforestation has been occurring. (60 percent gave at least one reason-in response to a question asking for two.) In other words, in a pattern consistent with NAEP results for many years across many subjects, U.S. kids aren't doing badly at the rudimentary levels but their performance tails off as the content (or mode of response) grows more sophisticated. This 180-page report contains many breakouts by gender, race, region, etc. and a lot more sample questions. You can find it on the web at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/geography/results/. Or order a hard copy by phoning 877-433-7827 and asking for report # NCES 2002-484.

Yesterday brought the official release of a much-hyped and professionally leaked "study" of U.S. charter schools by the American Federation of Teachers, timed to coincide with the union's convention in Las Vegas.

In a word, it reeks.

It reeks of error, distortion and untruth about charter schools, how they're working, what effects they're having, what we know about them. It also reeks of politics and self-interest. But why expect otherwise? As Lawrence Patrick of the Black Alliance for Educational Options remarked, "An AFT study on charter schools has about as much credibility as a Philip Morris study on smoking." Everybody knows that the teacher unions find both their monopoly and their memberships threatened by an education reform that focuses on independently operated (and staffed) schools that compete for students, money and teachers. The bigger the charter movement has grown, the more threatened they feel. This "study" illustrates one way of containing that threat.

What's dismaying is that some people take the AFT seriously when it declaims on education policy issues. There were grounds for that response when Al Shanker was in charge. Today, there are far fewer, and none at all in the increasing number of policy domains-charters being a prime example-where the AFT is driven by politics rather than by education.

Every place across the land where the AFT has a presence, its state and local affiliates are doing their utmost to maim and kill the charter school movement. This has been true for years. Ask any legislator or governor. (Increasingly, you could also ask judges, as the latest tactic-in Ohio, for example-is to ask the courts to quash a charter law that elected officials seem disposed to keep.) Wherever there's a push to re-regulate charter schools into pale facsimiles of conventional public schools, you find the union's fingerprints. Wherever there's a move to "cap" the number of charters, the union is involved. Wherever there's an effort to take money away from them, the union is lurking. Wherever there's a campaign to elect to candidates bent on throttling the charter idea, the union is at work.

The union wants to kill off charter schools. Where it cannot do that, it wants to contain them in the smallest possible box with the maximum possible rules. That's its agenda.

This is true of both teacher unions, to be sure. The difference is that the NEA wouldn't have the chutzpa (or brains) to issue a "study" of charter schools and pretend that it's objective. Nor does the NEA have a track record of respectable policy analysis.

The AFT, however, can trade on its track record, which over the years has included solid reports on issues (e.g. state standards, reading instruction, core curriculum) where its agenda is pro-reform. This legacy traces to long-time AFT leader Shanker, an undisputed education reformer and statesman, who hired able people, gave provocative talks, wrote interesting articles and columns, launched a first rate magazine and had his organization issue some insightful reports on serious education issues. (Partly because of that history, Bill Clinton's Education Department lavished money on the AFT to study, among other things, charter schools. No doubt Uncle Sam thereby subsidized this squalid report!)

In Shanker's day, the AFT had a split personality. Al and his Washington team engaged in reformist pursuits even as the union's state and local affiliates (with a tiny number of happy exceptions) were busily subverting every sort of reform, including many of those that Shanker championed.

The subversion process continues. Without Shanker at the helm, however, the union's Washington apparatus has now been enlisted in it. This new "study" is a case in point.

Authorless-a hallmark of Sandy Feldman's regime is that no AFT staff member gets public credit-and glossy, with beguiling photos and the trappings of scholarship, it's simply a hatchet job on charter schools. Though it purports to review a decade of research, in fact it chooses its material from the most critical studies and harps on problems rather than accomplishments. Its conclusion-that policy makers ought to cease any charter-school expansion "until more convincing evidence of their effectiveness or viability is presented"-is precisely the opposite of that reached in the recent RAND review of research on charters (and vouchers), namely that the evidence to date is so spotty that further experimentation is essential before any policy guidance can confidently be drawn. (Rhetoric vs. Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know about Vouchers and Charter Schools)

But further experimentation with charters (as with vouchers) would threaten the AFT's self-interest. So it couldn't be the conclusion of an AFT "study" of this topic even if it's the conclusion that any objective analyst would reach.

This "study" trifles with the truth. It stretches the facts about charter-school enrollments (which are more heavily minority and low-income than their states' student populations). It fibs about charter-school finances (which in most jurisdictions are far lower than the per-pupil allotments of conventional schools). It simply lies about charter-school innovation and experimentation (much of which involves staffing, compensation, and management, areas where the AFT does not want anything to change). It fudges about school accountability. It is disingenuous about the effects that charter competition is having on regular public schools-as yet, few places have enough charters to pose much competition-and it selectively reports the data on student achievement. No, we oughtn't be content with overall charter performance, but there are some stellar schools, some states where the charter results surpass those of regular public schools, and numerous situations where-considering that most of these school are just 2-3 years old-it's way premature to draw firm conclusions about their instructional effectiveness. (Some serious research indicates, for example, that new schools often have an achievement drop at the outset but make it up-and more-once they get a few years under their belts.)

Then there is the overt and implicit "spin." Consider this sentence (from page 58): "Of the more than 2,327 [charter] schools that have opened, only 206 have closed." The reader is supposed to think "Good grief, why so few?" To me, however, it says that, within a single decade, the accountability mechanisms bearing on charter schools have produced a closure rate of 9 percent. How does that compare with the closure rate of failed schools in such AFT-ruled systems as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago?

Which brings us to the most distressing part. The Education Department recently estimated that some 8900 public schools in the United States are already-today-subject to the NCLB provision that says they're so ineffective, and have been for so long, that their students have the right to exit for other schools. Because of establishment lobbying, however, much of it by the AFT, Congress only assured these youngsters the right to transfer to other public schools in their own districts, INCLUDING charter schools. Not to other districts. Certainly not to private schools.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but most of the failed schools I know are located in districts where there aren't a heckuva lot of successful public schools with space for those kids to transfer into. That leaves charter schools as the only other option under federal law. Now the AFT would halt their spread, too.

Coincidence? Hardly. Politics is politics and organizational self-interest must be assumed. What's disgusting is to see it masquerading as disinterested research. And to see people taken in by it.

"Do Charter Schools Measure Up? The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years," American Federation of Teachers, July 2002

In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Jay Greene warns voucher supporters that the teachers unions, the Harvard Civil Rights Project and others, are already sharpening their knives to attack vouchers on a different constitutional front-the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause-by arguing that vouchers increase segregation. But Greene's own research shows that private schools are actually less segregated than public schools because their attendance isn't constrained by politically drawn boundaries that reinforce segregated housing patterns. Private school parents are also more willing to try "racial mixing" because those schools usually maintain discipline and safety-two common concerns of wary parents-much better than public schools. "Choosing Integration," by Jay P. Greene, The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2002 (subscribers only)

American Jews were strong supporters of equal educational opportunity for all children in the civil rights era, but the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee oppose school vouchers (and therefore the Supreme Court's recent Zelman verdict), equating support for this reform with rejection of public education. Rather than fight school choice, argue Seth Leibsohn and Checker Finn, Jewish leaders should embrace it as a civil right that would not only offer poor children a shot at a better education (and promote competition that would improve U.S. public schools) but also combat the problem of declining Jewish identity, as more Jewish parents could take advantage of the option to send their children to Jewish day schools. "Key to Continuity," by Seth Leibsohn and Chester E. Finn Jr., National Review Online, July 17, 2002.

State accountability systems are shining a harsh spotlight on failing schools, and education officials in several states are striving to help those schools turn around. In Florida, principals from all 68 schools recently earning "F" grades in the state's accountability system were called to a meeting where they were connected with experts and specialists and encouraged to shop for the help they need. In Virginia, Governor Mark Warner last week announced a program to rescue the state's 34 worst public schools by deploying special teams of principals, teachers, and mentors to try to help them boost achievement over the next year.

But an article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times reveals the daunting task faced by those charged with repairing failed schools. Veteran journalist Richard Colvin describes what the SWAT team of state auditors saw when it arrived a year ago at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles to develop a road map for improving that troubled school. The auditors encountered a dropout factory, Colvin writes, with dismal test scores, widespread illiteracy, overwhelming truancy, poor teacher training and morale, staff infighting and rudderless administration. Because nearly a third of Fremont freshmen read no better than third graders, and test scores show that about 70 percent of Fremont students don't understand what they read, teachers rely on oral reports, movies, picture books, and art projects rather than high-school level academic work involving books.

The school's new principal told auditors "I don't know exactly where we're going. Whatever it is you would have us do, our goal this year is to do it." The reform plan that was eventually developed by the state team required teachers to gear classes to state standards and prepare rigorous weekly lesson plans. Students were to be engaged in "purposeful activities" in reading and math. Teachers were to be trained in proven techniques and monitored by administrators. To Fremont teachers, Colvin comments, the remedies seemed ridiculously weak and little different from those tried before. When auditors returned in the spring, the school was still lagging behind state expectations in five of six major areas. The district announced plans to raise academic standards by moving to a "block schedule," but teachers balked and organized a student walkout in protest, which led the district to delay the implementation of the reform. At the end of the school year, state auditors found some signs of improvement in teaching practices at Fremont, but little reason to expect that the school would be able to produce higher test scores and avoid more serious state sanctions-if the state comes up with any effective ones, that is.

"'F' means first for help, funds," by Stephan Hegarty, St. Petersburg Times, July 12, 2002

"$3 million plan aimed at worst Virginia schools," by R.H. Melton, The Washington Post, July 11, 2002

"A school flails in a sea of chaos," by Richard Lee Colvin, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2002

Getting the incentives right in the high-stakes game of college admissions is always a challenge, but two recent changes-one in the SAT's disability policy, the other in the admissions system of the University of California-are raising eyebrows.

As part of a legal settlement, the College Board has agreed to stop "flagging" the scores of disabled students who take the SAT under special conditions or with special accommodations, Tamar Lewin reports in The New York Times. Most of those who receive such accommodations have attention deficit problems or learning disabilities like dyslexia. Their special arrangements can include extra time, a separate, quiet room to work in, and the use of a computer. One high school guidance counselor predicts that, once these scores stopped being flagged as "Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions," it will "open the floodgates to families that think they can beat the system by buying a [disability] diagnosis and getting their kid extra time." A college admissions dean observes that "the kids who are going to get most hurt are the kids who do have real disabilities." There is already evidence that accommodations are more often given to affluent youngsters; a study also found that private school students are four times as likely as public school students to receive such favored test-taking treatment. As the Times article notes, great uncertainty surrounds how much extra time on a test fairly compensates for the labored reading of someone with dyslexia or the challenges faced by a student with attention deficit disorder. Perhaps the extra time should be offered to any student who might benefit from it.

The new admissions system at the University of California is not about helping students with disabilities, but all students who have faced "life challenges." According to Daniel Golden of The Wall Street Journal, though, U.C.'s campuses seem to care more about life challenges for students from some groups than others (which, Golden notes, would be a violation of a 1996 state referendum that barred the use of preferences for racial and ethnic groups). The universities have already rejected using poverty as a measure of disadvantage because that would actually reduce the numbers of black and Hispanic students on campus. Instead, they are assigning students points for various types of disadvantage, and working hard to coach minority students in how to present their hardships. Many students who are not black or Hispanic are finding that the challenges they've faced in life are not great enough to earn them a spot in the state's top public campuses, no matter how high their grades and test scores may be.

"Abuse is feared as SAT test changes disability policy," by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times, July 15, 2002

"Barriers students faced count in university admissions process," by Daniel Golden, The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2002 (subscribers only)

Supporters and opponents of Edison Schools frequently butt heads over whether Edison-run schools are performing better than similar schools in the same districts. An article in The New York Times explores how the two sides can examine the same student achievement data and come to opposite conclusions, making several points along the way that are relevant to any effort to evaluate school effectiveness. "Complex calculations on academics," by Jacques Steinberg and Diana Henriques, The New York Times, July 16, 2002.

Readers with a stomach for more commentary from the Gadfly's Checker Finn may want to peruse "An Open Letter to Lawrence H. Summers," which reflects upon Summers' first year as president of Harvard. In this piece from the summer 2002 issue of Policy Review, alumnus Finn urges Summers to welcome ROTC back to campus, curb grade inflation, and resist pressures to balkanize the campus along racial and ethnic lines. See http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/finn.html.

This fifty-page paper by Cynthia Prince, issues director at the American Association of School Administrators, contends that "offering financial incentives to teachers willing to take on more challenging assignments is essential if we are to staff every school with highly qualified teachers....Changing the way that teachers are paid is critical if we are to attract and hold teachers in the schools that serve students with the greatest needs....In short, incentives matter." She reviews a number of incentive-payment programs underway in various states and communities and draws nine lessons from them as to how such programs should be structured to maximize their chances of success. At the end of the paper is a useful bibliography (including websites) of literature-and specific programs-that bear on this issue. It's good to see the staid A.A.S.A. climbing on something so "radical" as incentive pay for teachers-perhaps that means it's no longer a radical idea-and this is a lucid discussion of how to do it. Especially tantalizing is her suggestion that incentive pay is more or less compelled by the No Child Left Behind requirement that every child have a "highly qualified" teacher, suggesting that NCLB is already having unintended (and in this case positive) effects. You can find the paper (in PDF format) on the web at http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/issues_dept/higher_pay.pdf or send for a copy from American Association of School Administrators, 1801 North Moore Street, Arlington, VA 22209. The phone is (703) 875-0767 and the author's email address is [email protected].

National Center for Education Statistics
June 21, 2002

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently released the results of its 2001 geography assessment in grades 4, 8 and 12. These are national data only-geography isn't tested at the state level-and the only previous results they can be compared with come from 1994. The good news is that 4th and 8th grade scores are up during that seven-year period. (12th grade is essentially unchanged.) The bad news is that all the gains occurred at the lower levels of performance; there was no change in the proportion of youngsters scoring at/above the "proficient" level-and those scores remain very weak: 21 percent in grade 4, 30 percent in grade 8, 25 percent in grade 12. This means, for example, that, while three-quarters of 8th graders know that Florida is a peninsula, just 22 percent were able to give two reasons why tropical deforestation has been occurring. (60 percent gave at least one reason-in response to a question asking for two.) In other words, in a pattern consistent with NAEP results for many years across many subjects, U.S. kids aren't doing badly at the rudimentary levels but their performance tails off as the content (or mode of response) grows more sophisticated. This 180-page report contains many breakouts by gender, race, region, etc. and a lot more sample questions. You can find it on the web at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/geography/results/. Or order a hard copy by phoning 877-433-7827 and asking for report # NCES 2002-484.

Southern Regional Education Board
2002

This short (20 page) report from the Southern Regional Education Board contends that states need to get more serious about providing high-quality summer-school programs if they want to end social promotion and lower their grade retention rates. Included here are a bit of data, some examples of strong programs, and 7 sensible (if fairly obvious) recommendations for state policy makers. The essential point is that this is a domain of education where states should assert themselves rather than leaving it almost entirely to local decision-making. You can obtain a PDF version by surfing to http://www.sreb.org/programs/srr/pubs/Summer_School.pdf.

Standard & Poor's
November 30, 2001

In an innovative partnership aimed at improving the transparency of Michigan's charter schools, the financial consulting firm Standard and Poor's (S&P) has produced comprehensive analytical reports for each of the 57 charter schools authorized by Central Michigan University (CMU). As of 2000-2001, those schools enrolled over 22,000 students in 36 cities and towns, making CMU the state's largest charter authorizer and the nation's largest university authorizer. The reports, drawing on data for 3 recent school years, analyze each school's academic and financial performance and compare it with key benchmarks, including the CMU average, district and state averages, and the school's own record. They also measure each school's progress towards the goals stated in its charter, a benchmark that CMU will consider when the time comes to renew the schools' charters. Such report can yield several benefits. They help schools spotlight problems and provide outside justification for tough curricular and personnel decisions. They give schools access to comparable data against which to benchmark their financial and academic performance. They also help parents and others to understand what's actually going on in an individual school, enabling them to make sound decisions about which school may fit a child's needs. Such data can obviously assist policymakers and educators to understand what may or may not work in schools. Finally, these reports can help philanthropists make wiser decisions about where to spend their limited grant dollars. To view the S&P reports, visit http://www.ses.standardandpoors.com. (Click Michigan in the "Select State" field on the home page and then click on "CMU-Sponsored Charter School Reports" under "Administrator's Toolkit.")

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
2002

This report pulls together speeches and essays on improving student achievement in the so-called "middle grades"-six, seven and eight-which are, on the whole, marked by weak academic performance. Written by Hayes Mizell, director of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's urban middle grades reform initiative (which will sunset in 2003), the pieces address challenges of middle school reform, the importance of tying systemic reform to standards and accountability, and hard-nosed lessons learned over Mizell's decade leading this Clark initiative. An unabashed advocate of high standards, Mizell does not fall prey to "middleschoolism"-the notion that adolescents' raging hormones impede their ability to master challenging academics. Anyone seeking an honest diagnosis of our nation's failing middle schools or suggestions on how to fix them will want to peruse this report, which can be downloaded or ordered for free at http://www.emcf.org/programs/student/shootingforthesun.htm.

William J. Fowler Jr., ed., National Center for Education Statistics
July 2002

The National Center for Education Statistics holds an annual conference on school finance and has now gotten around to publishing a 142-page collection of papers from the 1999 and 2000 conferences. Better late than never, however, as these six papers merit a good skim. Only the most intrepid readers are likely to venture beyond the first few paragraphs of some of them, however, or to delve deeply into their many pages of formulas and methodological discussions.

In "Reform and Resource Allocation: National Trends and State Policies," Jane Hannaway, Shannon McKay, and Yasser Nakib look at whether the standards-and-accountability movement has increased the proportion of resources devoted to instruction. Surprisingly, they don't find much overall change, though the evidence from a few states, such as Kentucky and Texas, is more promising.

"Where Does New Money Go? Evidence from Litigation and a Lottery" by Thomas S. Dee. Tennessee and Massachusetts were ordered by courts to boost their education funding. Georgia did so by choice, and paid for it with a new lottery. Dee says that both litigation and lottery led to spending increases, but that the states had only mixed success in productively targeting their additional dollars.

"School Finance Litigation and Property Tax Revolts: How Undermining Local Control Turns Voters Away from Public Education" by William A. Fischel. To equalize funding between schools, many states have assumed effective control of school funding, taking it away from local districts. Fischel presents evidence that, when the people holding the purse strings are no longer the people who use the schools, schools are less likely to be well funded. Fischel is an economist, but this evidence-based call for local control of education financing is written for the layman.

"Using National Data to Assess Local School District Spending on Professional Development," by Kieran M. Killeen, David H. Monk, and Margaret L. Plecki. Teacher professional development has not been much studied. The authors of this paper report on their ongoing attempts to answer the deceptively slippery question of how much is actually being spent on workshops, in-service programs and suchlike.

"Evaluating School Performance: Are We Ready For Prime Time?" by Robert Bifulco and William Duncombe. The authors evaluate the most sophisticated econometric models for rating how efficiently schools turn inputs (e.g. money, parental support) into desired outputs (like academic development). While the techniques aren't yet ready for widespread use, they could someday be a useful tool in the belt of school accountability.

"Making Money Matter: Financing America's Schools" by Helen F. Ladd and Janet S. Hansen. The authors look not only at how money is spent, but also at how resources can best be allocated to improve academic achievement.

Interested readers can download the full report (containing all 6 papers) at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002316.