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In addition to setting high standards for student performance, educational policies must consider what resources are essential to provide an adequate educational program to meet all students' learning needs. Policy makers also want to ensure that educators make efficient use of available resources. In this exploration of school finance policy, we advance a conception of adequacy as the ideal state of vertical equity, examine the evolution of this concept through judicial reviews, and discuss methods for determining the level of funding required to achieve adequacy. We then discuss economic and political problems inherent in institutional inefficiencies that are likely to derail efforts to raise achievement in poorly performing schools even after granting them an adequate level of resources. The paper concludes with a description of how a state funding formula might provide a foundation for adequacy in all districts.

The author argues that there is a critical need for research and scholarship into the impact of educational governance structures (the formal arrangements for making and administering public policy on education) on the native and quality of decisions made and the degree of success in implementing those decisions. The author notes the new directional shift of the current educational reform movement from a centralized bureaucratic emphasis to a more decentralized quasi market orientation and links them to similar societal trends associated with the information age revolution. A framework for conceptualizing the problem of allocating decision-making authority about education among interested parties is presented an (discussed using illustrations from the United States, England, and Australia. Research issues are identified.

Objective: Evaluate outcomes in cochlear implant (CI) recipients qualifying in AzBio noise but not quiet, and identify factors associated with postimplantation improvement. Study Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Tertiary otology/neurotology clinic. Patients: This study included 212 implanted ears. The noise group comprised 23 ears with preoperative AzBio more than or equal to 40% in quiet and less than or equal to 40% in þ10 signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The quiet group included 189 ears with preoperative AzBio less than 40% in quiet. The two groups displayed similar demographics and device characteristics. Interventions: Cochlear implantation. Main Outcome Measures: AzBio in quiet and noise.Results: Mean AzBio quiet scores improved in both the quiet group (pre-implant: 12.7%, postimplant: 67.2%, p < 0.001) and noise group (pre-implant: 61.6%, postimplant: 73.8%, p ¼ 0.04). Mean AzBio þ10 SNR also improved in the quiet group (pre-implant: 15.8%, postimplant: 59.3%, p ¼ 0.001) and noise group (pre-implant: 30.5%, postimplant: 49.1%, p ¼ 0.01). However, compared with the quiet group, fewer ears in the noise group achieved within-subject improvement in AzBio quiet (!15% improvement; quiet group: 90.3%, noise group: 43.8%, p < 0.001) and AzBio þ10 SNR (quiet group: 100.0%, noise group: 45.5%, p < 0.001). Baseline AzBio quiet ( p < 0.001) and Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) scores ( p ¼ 0.004) were associated with within-subject improvement in AzBio quiet and displayed a higher area under the curve than either aided or unaided pure-tone average (PTA) (both p ¼ 0.01). Conclusions: CI patients qualifying in noise display significant mean benefit in speech recognition scores but are less likely to benefit compared with those qualifying in quiet. Patients with lower baseline AzBio quiet scores are more likely to display postimplant improvement.

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